Archive for the 'broken websites' Category

Do you go in and test your own website, every page and link, every day?

Is that ridiculous or an obvious thing to do?

I just tried comparing Eurostar with P&O Ferries for a booking later this week. Eurostar went straight through in a very few clicks and gave me the answer. P&O’s pop up for cars over a certain height stopped me in a my tracks and wouldn’t go away – neither cancel or ok being effective. I tried again and got past it by not being over a certain height and then amending it later. I got through the process only to get the message the site was down

Guess who gets the business?

So maybe worth testing all those links everyday for usability and functionality isn’t an expensive overhead.

And …ouch – I ‘m sure we have a few glitches on our site

PS end of day – so far first direct’s iphone app and British Airways sites have both failed today

Uncategorized, broken websites | No Comments

This isn’t a complaint ( it will be if Avis take money from my credit card). It’s feedback to help Avis improve

It relates to this Tuesday 12th July Belfast City Airport

Buying
a) I tried to book a same day before I left for the airport ( a last minute flight to spend a short surprise evening for my better half’s birthday !!) – the website froze when getting to the car choice/before offering prices. You could click on the car but nothing would happen. Tried several ways and couldn’t get past it. It was either a technical problem or the agent later suggested it was because it was a same day booking which the website cant do – if so then please add that message rather than just “hanging” on me!

b) During this and other recent searches I was getting frequent webchat prompts – its really annoying. If you are doing this during “dwell” times – why not spend the time improving the layout and presentation of your website as a better avoidance of the need for service, rather than adding an additional customer effort and cost to you. If you are going to offer webchat why not put a clear button on the pages so I can choose when to use it ( and a clear phone offer button too)

c) When I did use the webchat the agent told me I’d have to phone as he couldn’t book – surely if the chat is there to improve conversion you need to give them that function? He (“James”)  gave me the number and then “hung up” on me – ie he closed the conversation before I could ask anything else. I suggest you improve your training on conversation etiquette

d) I phoned on the way to the airport and got straight through. The agent had trouble hearing me – mobiles aren’t ideal – but considerably hindered by the background noise in the call centre. It didn’t sound like Manchester or Barcelona – have you outsourced?

e) I made the booking including my wizard number and credit card – he handled it quickly and well ( it seemed…)

Pick up
f) First off the flight and straight through – only one guy in front of me at the desk but it must have been a complex one and there was only one member of staff. A couple of guys behind the screen behind the desk as I walked up were perhaps going off shift as it was 3.47 and a bank holiday in Belfast. I know the time as I texted as I walked up and checked it ten mins later when I saw the stop watches on the counter saying £20 voucher if you wait more than 3 minutes – I didn’t bother picking one up and I never got offered a £20 voucher

g) The lady ( Sandra) apologised for delay when she’d finished ( about 5 past 4) and said she’d not been able to have keys ready as my credit card had failed. I asked the digits and they weren’t recognisable. She said that was what was recorded with my wizard number when I first registered it online – I said it couldn’t be. (Mystery solved later). We used my credit card – all fine. Signed the bits and went to car.

h) Off to car park and found car. Doh – scratches not marked on the sheet. This happens a lot. Avis car park cabin isn’t occupied – drat. Wondering whether to bother going back to the terminal when I notice the paperwork is not in my name – ah that explains the credit card issue. It’s a booking for 5 days, not 14 hours, so I can start to imagine the future credit card bill I’ll no doubt get to sort out. I look for a phone number on the paperwork to ring the desk – not there, so off I trek back to the terminal

i) No queue and we sort out the credit card and another car in short order.  The car has 5 dings marked on the paperwork – this doesn’t bode well as I’m betting there’s more. Why is that car in service? I ask for a phone number and Sandra offers to ring me in 5 mins to check with me

j) I go back out to the cars and guess what – the car has some dings missing and some additional ones. Final straw is the tank isn’t on the full marker. I’m outta here. Sandra rings and I am not happy. I walk back and insist on her sorting out the credit card here and now as I’m going elsewhere. She can’t – I have to ring…… I ring and hand her my phone while I go the next desk and get a car “with no dings in it please”. It takes 2 mins, is bigger for the same price and has no dings. I retrieve my phone and take the desk phone number and Sandra’s name in case the bill becomes a problem. She’s “not allowed” to give out her surname – what’s that about !  Maybe the sign for disgruntled customers on an Avis call centre door in Oklahoma gives a clue  

Its now an hour after I came to the desk first time. That’s one hour out of an evening and a mood that isn’t fit to take to a birthday surprise visit!!  I take my time on the 30 min drive and wonder why I didn’t just phone a cab

Post event
k) At 5.30 next morning I drop the car back and tweeted a question using #avis . I’ve seen no response

l) Today I’m booking again – shall I use Avis? There isn’t anywhere to give suggestions on your website.  The “we try harder” site now looks corporate rather than a forum to give feedback – I couldn’t find anywhere obvious to post. I can only find the complaints email address.

m) I write this journey down in an email – but haven’t sent it yet. Why go to the effort? Avis used to be a really nice client 10 years ago and I’ve used them ever since. I love Angie Court’s passion – is she being missed in Avis UK?

This example shows a typical multichannel customer journey and I can use it as an example. It’s a useful lesson on how the different channels don’t hang together and how some upstream decisions affect the experience eg car condition policy before fixing them, eg resourcing for staff in car park and at desk to do the job fully eg better sound deadening/ microphones in call centre. In isolation some are minor issues, some major – but the real issue is how they add up. This is typical of what causes complaints – no one thing.

More importantly it shows how customer effort can creep into every step. Avis is normally a great example of “The Best Service Is No Service” with very little customer effort – go online, book, pick up key, drop car.

n) The good news ( so far …) is that Avis haven’t taken anything off my credit card

The bottom line
Avis just lost my two bookings for Italy in August – one cost £700+ and the other cost £300.

Have they lost me forever? It depends what happens next. I wont send by email yet, I’ll tweet this and see what happens.

Customer effort, brilliant basics, broken websites, complaint, customer experience, europcar, feedback, listening | No Comments

Netpromoter scores abound and it’s interesting to see the US NPS benchmarks now being published in competition with the American Customer Satisfaction Index ( ACSI ) . Recently colleague Bill Price in the US was speaking at a conference on customer happiness and we all continue to push the case for removing dumb things under the banner of reducing customer effort (search categories: “customer effort”), another way of measuring customers.

So many things to measure: likelihood to recommend, satisfaction levels, happiness and effort.

I just wish people would stop putting their money and energy into measuring and use it to change things instead. The top scorers in all the these measures are the same people. The Amazons, USAAs, Southwesterns. They don’t need to be told their scores in order to change things. They live that way. They’re always listening and changing. Open to feedback, honest and transparent towards their customers and their staff.

The attention is on doing the right thing, not on measuring if we did the right thing.

Take two examples yesterday and today.

The Apple store in Covent Garden. So good it makes you purr. Sales help given, diagnostic tool for iphone and service given, additional questions answered, no time wasted. No one has tried to measure me.

Booking some Virgin Atlantic flights today. So poor I nearly gave up 3 times. 75 minutes in total. It was only the very poor chance of finding anything better ( in process terms) that stopped me. Measured in the middle of the process. And failed my feedback test: when speaking to the agent I asked what she’d do if I gave feedback and was offered the website as a place to put it.

There’s just no excuse for some of the obvious things…. the agent had to book my kids whilst I booked myself at the same time in order to get on the same flight for sure. Why? Neither she nor I can book flights on the same place out and different flights back – that’s got to be pretty common. Her price quote for me is higher than mine. The website rejected both bookings part way through booking and then changed the prices when I went back in. The webchat help can’t do anything to help as the process doesn’t allow. The credit card fees are per booking at £30+. I get pinged to give them webchat feedback scores on the agent – completely irrelevant and untimely. You can hardly hear the poor woman in the new Swansea call centre for background noise. She got off the phone pretty pronto when I started asking about sitting all 4 of us together.

And I’m writing this blog whilst I wait for my confirmation emails so I can book car hire and parking. 50 minutes and waiting. I’ll have to go back into the site and look up my arrival times.

OK so Ive booked with them but would I recommend them on any measure? Do they know these things are broken? Betcha they do.  Do they care – they got significant sum of money anyway.

I suggested the advisor bring up some benchmarks in her monthly feedback session – easyjet, the passport office, directgov. Will it change – I doubt it very much. It was like this the last time I flew with them and the time before and so on…..

So if you cant offer good service, if you aren’t already a benchmark, then don’t measure me – it makes my experience worse still. Talk to your front line staff – they know what the score is. And they know what to do about it.

Postscript: It’s now the day after. Needless to say the only pre book seats available are in 2s.

No confirmation emails came anyway, only a text for one of the bookings so I have had to ring and get the ref for the other. No answer on the customer services line so I gave up and rang using the sales option. Despite a vehement attempt to get rid of me, I hung on in and got them to give me the missing ref. Emails had been sent and failed apparently. They never send text confirmations apparently so that’s confusing.  So I called again, hung on til I got thro to customer services but couldn’t be helped. We, the agent and I, decided the only way to get 4 seats together in advance was to reach Richard Branson and get him to change the system. I really really wish I hadn’t given my money to Virgin til booking 4 people out, 2×2 back was solved. No wonder the first agent got off the phone fast yesterday when I mentioned seats.

Apple, Customer effort, Customer satisfaction, Virgin, airlines, broken websites, customer experience, feedback, netpromoter | No Comments

My decision to join the Sunday Times Wine Club some years ago was fuelled in equal part by laziness and greed. I enjoy a glass of wine – especially red wine and even more especially good, red wine. But, I do not enjoy having to carry the bottles (I daren’t put ‘cases’ there, even if it is true) back from the shops.

The combination of decent wines, home delivery and a special introductory offer at that time proved irresistible! And I have to say that their customer service, on the odd occasion when I have not been satisfied, has been pretty much exemplary. I have also taken advantage of a couple of their so-called ‘wine plans’ – most recently to try   some Spanish wines – which provide regular deliveries of mixed cases, and a good introduction to a new region. But, I was reaching a point where something different was in order.

Generally I use the website to place orders and have done so successfully throughout my membership. But, on one occasion recently, I was unable to get the website to recognise a voucher that I had to use. I was forced to use the phone to contact them! I say ‘forced’, but it has always been a pleasant and enjoyable experience in the past. There was a longer delay than normal before the phone was answered, and my heart began to sink, but once through my order was handled quickly an efficiently.

Whilst on the phone, I took the opportunity to cancel my wine plan subscription. The adviser asked why I was leaving and tried to retain my business – without being pushy about it. I was left with the feeling of an efficiently executed process and confidence that everything had been done. As an aside, also a professional recognition of good practice in capturing reasons for defection! Happy, I thought that would be the end of the story.

Imagine my surprise when I received a letter a little while later. A letter signed by a senior wine buyer (fascinating choice of job role to author such a letter) expressing his regret that I had decided to cancel and reminding me of all the other ways that I could continue to buy from them. Enclosed with the letter was a card folder with a cartoon on the front, including the words “wish you were here” and a person holding a glass of wine. Inside was a voucher for £10 as an additional incentive – in their words “to nudge me” back in their direction.

The tone of the letter and the lightness of touch hint at a thoroughly well thought-through customer journey and a deep attention to detail. The voucher, a random act of generosity, suggests a genuine desire to retain my business.

Well done Laithwaites (who are the organisation behind the Sunday Times branding)! Now, have you sorted out that website glitch on processing vouchers yet?

brilliant basics, broken websites, customer experience, customer experience design, fast+simple, quality, self service | 2 Comments

Why do so many websites not work? Eurostar’s never seems to work. You have to phone up, ask them not to charge you £5 for the privilege of buying a ticket from them because their site won’t take a booking for free.

Here’s a good one – it asks you to fill in the origin of the journey, but the box for that is missing.

The staff are obviously used to the web site not working, because they don’t ask what the problem is, or remotely suggest that they are interested in getting it fixed (that’s one for the WOCAS process www.budd.uk.com/wocas.html ). Feedback from customers and agents, so powerful but so few companies are geared up to use it – fast+systematically.

Still at least it was simple to find the Eurostar phone number under customer support.

Unlike Virgin Trains which couldn’t accept my postcode ( I assure you I do live at my home address! ) and so I couldn’t buy a ticket. No easy opt out to get help, but heh, no choice so why do they care. Unless I opted to go by air, using up all my “green” creds, I’d have to buy at the station anyway.

But it doesn’t get any better by plane. I haven’t been able to get onto the BA site to check in in the last hour. Seems like the site is down completely.

BA, Eurostar, Virgin, broken websites | 2 Comments