Archive for the 'complaint' Category

Posted by: Peter Massey | 14.07.2011

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

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 | 1 Comment

Posted by: admin | 15.10.2009

For many companies, customer complaints are an irritation – they would rather not get them and they handle them grudgingly. There is no effort in getting complaints, they seem to arise naturally from everyday operations and find their way to you; and dealing with the ‘noise’ they create is considered a necessary chore, and simply part of doing business.

But, is that enough? The vast majority (90+%) of dissatisfied customers do not complain – they are the silent majority. How do you incorporate their voice into your business strategy? And what is the impact of focusing on complainants and trying to convert them to be loyal customers – whilst ignoring the others who do not engage with the company?

A new article on Budd Life this month explores these issues and offers guidance on how to engage successfully with this disengaged part of your customer base. It concludes as follows:

“ Wholehearted and sincere customer care is an absolute priority for all organisations in today’s hyper-connected, and hyper-competitive, world. You must care, and you must treat dissatisfaction seriously, because it hits both the top and bottom line.  ….

Customer retention may well be critical to survival, and excellence in maintaining loyalty may be a significant competitive differentiator. If so, the quiet voices of the silent majority customers who are dissatisfied with their experience but do not complain are the key to success.”

Let’s hear it for from the silent majority!

Customer satisfaction, Strategy, Voice of the Customer, brilliant basics, complaint, customer experience, dumb things, feedback, success factors | No Comments

Posted by: admin | 29.07.2009

My heart sank as I entered the check-in hall at Luton airport – a massive queue for the Dortmund flight desks. Not sure why I was surprised as I have had this experience before, but I was. Also a bit angry at the anticipated waste of time. And waste of time it almost was.

Standing in the queue, brain in neutral, I was idly thinking that I hadn’t looked at Twitter for several days, and I pulled out my phone to check the latest messages. Somehow, the trivial nature of Twitter content seemed a soothing prospect.

Naturally, my frustration with standing in the queue led to a tweet: “easyJet check-in queue not moving at all”. To be completely truthful, it took two tweets as the predictive text on my phone managed to put ‘doping’ instead of ‘moving’ the first time. I later discovered that the input language was set to German – I guess we will never know if it was my mistake, or over-eagerness by a super-intelligent phone, as I stood queuing for a flight to Germany!

I felt no better having sent the message and so resorted to talking to those around me, who were equally unhappy at the mystifying delay. I finally checked in after a one hour wait and the rest of the journey was completed perfectly satisfactorily.

At some point, it occurred to me that I had heard someone from easyJet was active on Twitter and so the next morning, with a few minutes to spare before a meeting, I opened up my laptop and logged back in.

Sure enough, there was a reply from @easyJetCare: “easyJetCare @imptwo I will pass your feedback on to Liz our airport manager for Luton. Usually they move pretty quickly. Hope you had a good flight ^PH”.

A Wow! moment. Direct customer engagement from easyJet, I was genuinely impressed. I had to test how far this would go and so responded: “imptwo @easyJetCare thanks for replying – others around me were unhappy with the 1 hour wait too. It’s raining here – can u fix that too? ”.

Again a reply – in a couple of hours: “easyJetCare@imptwo I will follow up, it is essential that you are informed about your delays. I wish I could fix the rain but I’m not that good ^PH”. This exchange now had a real human feel about it, and, curiously, just getting a response did make me feel better.

Nothing had actually changed and I am pretty sure the experience will be repeated. And the defence that a low-prices means low standards only goes so far; there are minimum standards of treatment and respect to which everyone is entitled.

But, a simple human contact (albeit technology-mediated), tempered with a little humour and I am prepared to forgive – which I guess makes me the very epitome of a loyal easyJet customer. Do you think I should worry about myself?

What it does demonstrate is the powerful principle that delivering a service of any kind is a person-to-person transaction, and don’t ever forget it when designing customer experiences. Now, if only easyJet were to send me a “you said, we did” message to let me know what has changed as a result of my feedback, that would be a great end to the story ….

Customer satisfaction, complaint, customer experience, customer experience design, fast+simple, feedback, humour, listening | No Comments

Posted by: admin | 16.07.2009

The insurance industry is a perennial favourite for generating stories about bad customer experiences. Particularly car insurance, and especially policy renewal.My wife’s car insurance is currently up for renewal. For many years we, like lots of others, had used and trusted a broker to secure us a ‘good deal’. This despite the fact that we moved 100 miles away from them more than 20 years ago!Again like lots of others, the Internet has now replaced the broker for our research, or at least to find confirmation that the renewal quotation we have received from the current provider is competitive. As a I work within customer experience, I naturally offered to do the work, and surf the web. As a marketer, I am also observant of smart advertising – and went straight to a price comparison website. On this occasion, comparethemarket.com.The process of entering all our details into the many pages was straightforward and I quickly got lots of quotes! A number of them were significantly cheaper than our current provider and I chose one that seemed particularly appropriate for our needs – by no means the cheapest but offering the better overall value.Satisfied with the experience, I was surprised to receive a phone call a few minutes later resulting from my visit to the website. The agent calling offered me the possibility of an even better deal, as a result of one insurer wanting to speak directly with me.My reaction to the opening part of the call was a mixture of shock and anger. Shock that what I understood to be the source of the best deals (the website) might not be – completely undermining the comparethemarket.com proposition. At that moment, the first reputation died.The anger resulted from feeling hoodwinked. I realised that somewhere along the way I would have agreed to being contacted – but it had not been obvious. And the speed at which it had happened so soon after visiting the website only compounded the sense of somehow being betrayed. The information is actually on the home page, only in very small font at the very bottom.Back to our story. The agent checked some details that I had entered in the web forms and then offered to put me through to this particular company that was so keen to have my business that it wanted to speak to me immediately. I declined when the name of the company was mentioned, as they have a poor reputation in my mind.Incredibly, and by an amazing coincidence, there was a second firm also ready and waiting to talk to me – Allen and Allen (I presume The A&A Group Ltd). By now, professional curiosity had kicked in and I was keen to see how the whole process would be concluded, and so I agreed. It was explained that there was no ‘cheesy’ or irritating hold music, but there was a long silence before a new voice came on the line.The silence was broken and news was not good. What the agent actually said was that no-one was available and  could they call back later? But what I heard was the death rattle of a second reputation. Incredible! Here I was, a living, breathing prospect on the point of purchase (a perfect opportunity you would have thought) and no-one was available? Except of course the guy who spoke to me no-one was available … only he couldn’t sell me insurance!Our passion is to help clients stop doing ‘dumb’ things to their customers – and believe me I was, by now, very very passionate … just not in a good way.When reflecting on the call, I realised that the original agent had not identified the company that they were calling from – I had assumed it was comparethemarket.com but a little more digging on the Internet suggests that it was probably LeadX Ltd (a comparethemarket.com trusted partner). Frankly, based on my experience, I wouldn’t trust them. Others seem to view them in the same negative light – a third reputation bites the dust.I realise that I am only a single customer and it is very unlikely that any of the companies are interested in my feedback,  but if anyone from comparethemarket.com wants to talk to me about this, then please get in touch. I know you know my phone number.  Killing three reputations in single phone call really is quite an achievement.17/7/09 update – just received a follow-up call from LeadX, so they obviously have not read this blog!

WOCAS, complaint, customer experience, dumb things, insurance | No Comments

Posted by: admin | 9.04.2009

Gill Montia, reporting recently in an Insurance Daily article, discusses a worrying trend – that the handling of consumer complaints is actually getting worse, with the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) reporting increasing numbers of consumers getting “dismal” treatment. The FOS suggests that this is a symptom of “weary cynicism” on the part of firms in the financial services industry. Well, in my experience, many organisations – across all industries – want to ignore complaints, and consider them a necessary evil; giving them scant consideration and overlooking the huge intrinsic value in listening to customers. So this is not a new phenomenon.From the ombudsman’s perspective, there is increasing evidence of regulated firms not properly assessing cases – resulting in increased, and inappropriate, referrals. This is a worrying trend given the emphasis over recent years on Treating Customers Fairly. Whilst it is true to say that financial organisations are facing massive business problems, that is no reason to ignore customers – retention must be a priority in the current economic circumstances with new customers hard to find.Plans by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) to publish league tables of individual firm’s performance and the recent statements around closer and more intrusive regulation, give hope that the interests of complainants may (forcibly) become central to firms’ customer strategies. But if history is anything to go by, with the majority of firms it is only a very faint hope …. competitive differentiation through excellence in customer experience (including complaint management) may never have been easier!illustration courtesy of Whotheheckareyou.

complaint, customer experience, financial services | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 23.06.2008

A customer on my train spent 50 minutes this morning arguing with the guard. The guard’s credit card machine had taken his transaction twice according to the receipts. The guard “knew” it hadn’t because it made this error before.

The customer wanted confirmation that it hadn’t taken his money twice. The guard couldn’t do that but asked the customer to write in. Naturally the customer did not want to waste his time when it wasn’t his fault. Both were locked in an impasse.

The supervisor was called by phone. The conversation was not understood by the supervisor. Several times the customer asked the supervisor not to talk over him. He eventually told him (“Jim”) that he did not believe that Jim “understood what I’m saying” since he hadn’t listened to him.

My point isn’t better training for the ticket man or the supervisor. It’s two questions:

Why didn’t the machine get fixed when the conductor knew it was broken?

How much time was wasted and how much damage done to SouthEastern’s brand?

Uncategorized, complaint, customer experience, the best service is no service, train | No Comments

Posted by: admin | 8.11.2007

Whatever you do, if you talk to my Dad this week, don’t mention Marks and Spencers.

His church has recently had a lovely new extension, including a cafe and bar facilities. They were looking to furnish it with some good value but contemporary chairs and discovered that M&S were offering a £16 discount on a set of four dining chairs, an online offer of the month. Bargain – they ordered 6 sets (24 chairs). An email confirming the order was received immediately. Two days later, notification of despatch and an estimated delivery period was given. Brilliant – they’d all be there in time for the first hall booking, a 70th birthday party three days after the end of the delivery period – or would they…

Not having received any communication from a carrier by mid-day on the last day of the delivery period my Dad rang customer services to ascertain progress. That was apparently the wrong number to ring, he was given another number that dealt with furniture deliveries. On calling this number the agent couldn’t trace his order and Dad was given the name of the transport company. They did their best to help but could find no record of his order. This agent talked to her supervisor who informed her that they didn’t actually deliver furniture for M&S.

I could sense just a tiny bit of frustration in Dad’s voice as he called the furniture section of M&S again, only to be redirected to the first number he had called. On talking to a different agent on the customer services orderline number she again tried to redirect him to furniture. When he pointed out that he was now embarking on the same cycle of five phone calls that he’d just completed she promised to look into the problem and call back. To be fair she came back quite quickly but only to say that the items were out of stock and not expected to be in until the 4th November. No-one had any idea why he had an email telling him they’d already been despatched. Dad wasn’t exactly pleased but didn’t have much option but to accept it. Who needs chairs at a birthday party anyway?

Imagine his surprise at 7.00 the same evening when he had a call from HDN (Home Delivery Network – if you google that the results are also very revealing) informing him that they had his chairs and would deliver them three days later. Dad asked them why they couldn’t be delivered in the original time period and they said “Well, that’s only an estimate.”

Three days later the carrier turned up… with four out of the six packs of chairs!

The whole cycle of phone calls was repeated yet again. One agent was so insistent that he should speak to someone in furniture and not the customer services orderline that she transferred him mid-protestation. Dad’s had enough – 3 hours in total on the telephone and a letter to Customer Correspondence which hasn’t been replied to 14 days later. In actual fact it’s probably the carrier that let M&S down but at no point could an agent find out what had happened to the order or take control of the query.

Today someone at church just asked Dad to order two more packs…….

Marks and Spencers, complaint, customer experience | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 8.11.2007

I’ve been struck lately by the correlation between 2 things:

• The people who return (or have returned for them) their phone calls and their emails
• The type of experience given to customers in those same businesses

One of our Chief Customer Officers, who is excellent with his personal communications despite being very busy, told an interesting story of Marks and Spencers.

He had a bed ordered to be delivered on a particular day in a new house, because he had guest coming to stay. It didn’t get delivered when it should have been so he escalated it of course only to be told it couldn’t now be delivered and that, no, there was no one he could raise it with.

Not happy. Our man isn’t one to take that lying down (joke, oh do keep up !!). He was going to go through all the various folk needed to get what he wanted. Ultimately the fruitless trail led all the way to the customer service director. He was told the customer service director does not speak to customers! Imagine his fury and his vehement retelling of this story. Of course he, the story teller, does speak to customers. It’s part of his job to be responsible in person. And it keeps him real. Maybe that’s why he returns his calls. Because he cares even when he’s busy.

M&S came up again in our weekly meeting – interesting things that have happened this week. Jo’s dad spent Saturday afternoon on the phone to M&S….. I expect the customer service director at M&S is a nice guy or lady. They’d probably cringe at the thought that they “don’t talk to customers”.

To quote one of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos sayings: “Be very afraid of our customers. They’re the ones who have the money”. Perhaps the customer service director was very afraid…

So who is in charge of representing the customer at M&S. I took at look at their board. It isn’t clear that there is anyone. Lots of product and logistics and so on. Now that can be a great thing – the customer is everywhere. Or it can be a bad thing – no chief customer officer to listen to, aggregate and prioritise what customers want done across the business and represent doing the right things for customers.

I know, I’ll mail this to Stuart Rose. Now he does talk to people. He even responds to mailshots to say no thank you. That’s the kind of eye for detail, care of your brand and personal responsibility that makes great companies great. I bet he returns his calls or has them returned.

One cannot expect great customer experiences from your company unless one represents that ethos personally.

CCO, Marks and Spencers, complaint, customer experience | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 28.08.2007

Apparently Dave is the most common name of Orange customers, but I suspect Andrew is the most common victim…. let me explain

I got home early tonight, eager for a beer and a catch up with my girlfriend, Sylvie. Alas she was chained to the phone. She’d already invested 30 minutes in the queue at Orange to stop them taking money out of her bank account. She wasnt going to let go now!! Why?

Orange had texted her a week or two ago to apologise for billing her the wrong amount on her international calls, She’d kinda guessed that when her bill went from £35 to £180, but it was at least honest to admit it.

So you’d think they’d be ready for the barrage of people asking what the real bill was. You’d think they’d have some procedure for saying sorry, what happens next. They might wait til the bill is correct before taking the money

Nope, they take the money from your bank account anyway and cause untold strife

And when you phone……there’s a lot of people phoning.

Anyway so what’s this got to do with me? Well I got to her house to find her on her third such company just today, about ready to rip, and not ready to go for a hard earned glass of wine. So I took the phone, to just hold on whilst she was being transferred to “complaints”. Whilst she was having a makeover and a change of clothes. Apparently complaints was the only thing to do

Alas the queue to complaints was less than the 15 minutes it takes a lady to dress and so I ended up speaking to Andrew in complaints

Quite thrown by the surprise of getting through, I engaged in polite banter, aka research, to see what was happening in Geordie land.

No he couldn’t say what the real bill was. Yes, all he could do was offer an address to write to. No there was no email address. No his supervisor was busy, already taking escalated calls. No, he didnt have the ability to email people in Orange. And yes there were lots and lots of people he couldnt help. I explained a system whereby he could inform management that he was about to give up the ghost because so many customers were so fed up and he thought that’d be great. But he didnt have that system. In fact all he could do was offer an address to write to. Yeah right….. that’ll really happen

Dumb things

A waste of Andrew’s life. A waste of Sylvie’s life. Is there a better way?

Orange, complaint, customer experience | No Comments