Posted by: Peter Massey | 22.04.2010
I flew to Stockholm last Thursday morning at 7.30am by British Airways from terminal 5. I’m just on the way to pick up my car, one week later.
Why did I fly? Because no one mentioned any possible disruption, despite the fact that 90% of flights were already stopped by 7am. Blissful ignorance.
Did they not have the information to give? Somehow I doubt that.
Did they think about the effort they would cause their customers downstream? To quote Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon:
“I think most big errors are errors of omission not commission. The times when they were in a position to notice something and act on it…and yet failed to do so”
The chain of ‘customer effort’ and frustration that BA have created for me is fascinating. And the amount ot work it caused other people and companies. All avoidable, had BA been open and honest. I’ll try and précis it.
- An afternoon of calls and web searches by me, my PA, by my concierge service, by my Swedish collague. To get information, assess options, arrange hotels, try to get a car. At least 3 calls into hotels, 6 to the office, several to local car companies, that I could see. Many calls, texts and emails to friends and contacts to try to get a car. Many calls on our behalf.
- 2 hours shopping for clothes and necessities.
- 6 texts and 2 calls to a colleague’s son whose friend had a car we could hire.
- Multiple attempts and 4 calls into 3 insurance companies to check cover for the car.
- The colleague’s son’s friend taking the morning off work to get the car test renewed before it ran out the following week.
- The son planning to fly to his sisters in London who would have to keep the car before he drove it back for his friend.
- The PA trying to get a car crossing for the channel and googling, texting routes.
- The 26 hour journey across 7 countries by car.
- The 3 calls to HSBC for bouncing my card, presumably for being used in different countries. The very poor handling of which is resulting in them losing our business accounts. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
- The re-organising of picking up a new car back home.
- The colleague’s wife driving to Dover to pick us up.
- The re-re-organising of picking up the car ( with 2 subsequent re-visits, but that’s another story of customer effort)
- The abortive trip to Heathrow to move the car, but there were no shuttles. Big well done to BAA for waiving the car park fees!
- The actual trip now to Heathrow to pick the car up.
I could go on……. but I’m distracted by the effort in resolving how Fiat sold me a “previous model” as a new car without telling me and hoping they’d get away with it.
One small omission by company, many large effects for customer. Huge customer effort…..
So my message is….. think about the effort you cause your customers downstream. They will. To quote Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, again:
“I think most big errors are errors of omission not commission. The times when they were in a position to notice something and act on it…and yet failed to do so”
British Airways, Customer satisfaction, HSBC, airlines, banking, complaint, customer experience, dumb things | No Comments
Posted by: Peter Massey | 17.09.2007
I loved the sign, held up at the Belgian Grand Prix: “Want to borrow a tenner, Ron?”.
An offer of help to McLaren fined $100m last week for using (or not) information from a disgruntled designer at rivals Ferrrari. That’s what happens I suppose when you’re offered a Fiat as a company car instead of a 360!
The weekend news was full of people taking their own tenners out of the confidence shaken Northern Rock. Or Northern Crock as they are now colloquially known. These tenners add up.
For once I had time this weekend to read the papers rather than skim them. Both these stories, and the unfortunate missing Maddie McCann, got me thinking about the truth vs the PR – the steak vs the sizzle as one of my Aussie colleagues calls it.
By the weekend, it seems that far from being sweet and innocent as first claimed, the Mclaren team had 5 trillion emails and texts flying back and forth between test driver De La Rosa and the Fiat driving engineer with answers to various useful questions.
By the weekend, a Portuguese senior policeman, who illegally leaks daily by the sounds of it, is under investigation for covering up a confession under torture in some other kidnap case.
By the weekend, the root cause of Northern Rock’s crash in confidence was starting to be debated. Was it Northern Rock’s business model of borrowing from banks, rather than savers, to lend to borrowers? How many others face the same risk eg Alliance and Leicester? The business model didn’t sound very risky to them, the FSA or the Bank of England. After all that’s what the banking system does.
Or was it the big banks who parcelled up the US sub prime loans, who say they don’t know their exposure (or at least they’re not going to quantify it in front of the newspapers), who have sufficiently little confidence in each other to lend to each other, who just might benefit in a fire sale of some of these upstarts.
Or was it the Government for not letting Lloyds buy Northern Rock just before the crisis, for not getting the BofE to “kick ass” and make bankers lend to each other to keep the wholesale banking system running?
I read the headlines of “no need to panic” whilst in the business pages the end of Norther Rock is only a matter of time, with collapsing confidence in the stock market.
The final blow to confidence, if needed, was a completely lack lustre performance by our Darling chancellor on Radio 4 this morning….. he seemed more interested in staying on message that the UK economy has been wonderfully managed. And of course 100% reasurance that there’s no risk, and no, the insurance scheme wasn’t going to take up that cast iron risk. Surely its as safe as money in the bank?? How short he must feel the public’s memory is of government reassurances about Rail and Equitable Life.
So in these stories, which is steak and which sizzle?
I was left with the overwhelming feeling that I couldn’t tell anymore from reading the papers, nor did it matter. I wasn’t going to get the truth in the headlines given the barrage of PR from one side vs another. In very few pages was there an analysis of the whole problem, the root causes, the possible outcomes. I didnt feel I was getting the story behind the story. Whatever happened to independent journalists researching and writing their own stories rather than repeating salicious gossip, top and tailing PR copy, making sure they include a bold statement from government without evidence just so they don’t get hassle later (sadly, the BBC’s the worst at that!)
Maybe its time that a new channel be started – heh maybe its there on the internet – TrueGoogle.com or some such. The stories behind the stories, from people who have no axe to grind, who quote sources rather than government leaks. Save me looking please – my weekends are only so long – what are your favourite sites for this kind of analysis? Meanwhile I’ll start reading the Economist again despite swearing I wouldn’t because they spammed my letter box so hard.
So back to Ron Dennis’ tenner……
Pavarotti arrives at the pearly gates.
St Peter opens them and says, “Oh, it’s you, Luciano, come on in. Squeeze through.”
Pavarotti says, “Hold on, I’ve got an envelope for you. It’s from the Pope.”
St Peter opens it up and reads it. “HERE’S THAT TENOR I OWE YOU.”
banking, humour, journalism | No Comments
Posted by: David Naylor | 10.01.2007
first direct called a couple of weeks ago – the fraud department – to check on recent dodgy transactions. These calls always annoy me and seem to have very little logic behind them – checking whether I made the 11.67 payment to Tesco DVD rental –“yes, just like I do every month on standing order”. But today they proved their worth and stopped 2 transactions which I hadn’t made. One was for £365.
That’s all well and good but then they screwed up. Rather than trusting me to cut up the card they want it returned in pieces as proof. They stopped the card leaving me without access to my current account in the week before Christmas and the replacement will take ‘5 to 7 working days’ to reach me.
You’re feeling so grateful they’ve caught the transactions that it seems hard to complain about the two points above. After all if I didn’t buy anything on my card then it would never be cloned, so it is my fault!!
We actually think first direct is a pretty good company when it comes to not doing the dumb things to customers. You can read our ‘100 Things…’ whitepaper on them in the library via the link.
PS. The card arrived in 2 days.
banking, identity theft | No Comments
