Posted by: Peter Massey | 4.09.2007

Heh its David Naylor birthday in Wednesday(www.budd.uk.com/founderdn.html) . He is still a teenager apparently as it’s his umpteenth birthday today. Which kinda made me notice that it’s Budd’s 6th birthday this week too!!

My US colleague Bill Price (http://www.drivasolutions.com/) also mailed about the 6th birthday as he started in the US at the same time having just left Amazon’s customer service with a world beating record. In March you’ll be able to read the book “The Best Service Is No Service” that he’s co-written with our Aussie colleague David Jaffe (http://www.limebridge.com.au/ ). He records that we have now worked for 72 clients in the US with top ones being well known names like Expedia, Dell, McDonald’s, Microsoft, CheckFree and Hyatt.

So how far have we got in the UK? 45 clients and counting – but heh does size matter when Brits last longer? Whoops, better be careful of Anglo-America relations given Bush n Basra.

It’s nice to be able to say thanks to prestigious companies such as Norwich Union, RIAS, HSBC, M&S, RBS, Axa, Nationwide and Pru in retail financial services; 3, Orange, Vodafone and Vertu in telecoms; AOL, Microsoft and Ingenico in technical support, not to mention many others.

So enough of the ads – what about the hindsight – what did we say 6 years ago, more importantly what are we saying about 6 years out?

Well 6 years ago we said the same stuff as we’re saying now. CRM is dead, fancy stuff doesn’t work. Brilliant basics is what customers want: The best service is no service, Fast+Simple experiences.

What’s new today is we’ve developed some sexy ways of getting those brilliant basics in place.

What’s it to be in 6 years time? 2013 – now that sounds spooky. What will be the big thing?

Well of the things being talked about today that I’d bet on, here are my top 6. What’s yours?
1) Most companies will still be thinking about doing good things for their customers rather than doing them
2) India will start offshoring calls to England
3) Self service will become ‘community service’ and become effective
4) The embedded web will be in most applications we use to work and play with; the idea of looking at the web will die out
5) Your granddad will be dictating software applications, it’ll be that simple; and my software will still crash daily
6) Buying will drive the way we do business, not selling ( ok may be I’m too optimistic – make that 12 years)

Send me your 6 year out bets…..
Happy birthday David
Peter

birthdays, future |

Anonymous

David Jaffe from LimeBridge down under says says:

1. Speech recognition has been replaced by thought recognition software. The two are pretty similar. Thought Rec doesn’t work but the vendors claim it does and its even more expensive.

2. Analytics at some companies has become so sophisticated that staff can answer the customers questions before they are even asked…a typical call now sounds like:

Agent: Hello Mrs Brown welcome to bank X

Customer I just called to ask about..

Agent: Your lost credit card, yes we knew you had lost it and we’ve already sent a new one and cancelled the last one

Customer Well actually I didn’t know I’d lost it I was just calling to ask…

Agent How to increase your limit…well we’ve already done and you can now spend up to 5000

Customer That’s nice but I was really calling to just to

Agent: Add your frequent flyer scheme…already done

Customer: No, I was just calling to say I’m leaving

Agent: yes we knew that…

3. So many agents are working at home that call centres have all been turned into indoor bowling and 5 a side soccer centres

4. The chinese population pyramid has become so unstable that they Chinese are buying children from other countries in exchange for Mattel toys that don’t work.

5. Vice President Clinton fails a drug test at the 2012 Apec summit and is found to be a man.

6. The London Olympics are called off after the third London Tsunami devastates the venue…

14.09.2007 13:15