Archive for the 'customer experience design' Category

Customer Managed Relationships put the customer in control. Like many of the theories of the last 5 years it builds on the potential that customers now have to tender for services they want, search the web for best deals and control who and how gets to see your personal information. If you want to read more about the theory, Alan Mitchell has been running a website called Right Side Up and the Buyer Centric Forum for a few years now. He spoke at a great Budd networking evening recently.

The point of this is that there is now a new service available from a company called fonolo in Canada that offers two things:

1. You can visually navigate a company’s IVR menu system to access the option you want before dialling. When you’re connected, the system will connect you. The menus have been transcribed by clever speech recognition and a bit of human intervention. That’s great and especially useful in the mobile phone world where listening to menus and pressing buttons are quite hard to do at the same time. Ok, not exactly CMR but perhaps the mapping of menu structure might help some companies to see how complex they make things for the customer and at least lead to simplification. For one, I know that most companies couldn’t tell you exactly what their menu structure actually looks like so that information is highly valuable!
2. The CMR application is the ability to track all your conversations with the company. With my ’stop doing dumb things to customers’ hat on, you should avoid the need for a long series of interactions by fixing issues first time or avoiding them at all. But reality for now means that a customer could find very useful the ability to have a history log of all their interactions, plus a recording of all the conversations.

Here’s a screenshot of the website in action. This is a highly innovative idea and a practical way of putting the customer in control.

What makes this application even more impressive is that the code is all open source and they are encouraging developers to extend the applications. There must be other great examples of CMR coming to life out there with Fast+Simple solutions for customers.

Customer Managed Relationships, IVR, customer experience design, fast+simple, queue, self service | No Comments

So the nice guy at Porsche who does know what’s wrong with the car has rung up and explained it properly. A coherent reason why the car is worn.

It says “Play in O/S/F rack end” and everyone has explained that to be a problem with the steering rack. It isn’t. It’s a problem with the track rod end where it meets the steering rack. The track rod takes a real bashing and knowing the roads where I live I’m not surprised its worn. Nothing wrong with the steering rack as I thought….

So sound explanation. I’ll book it in. That’s all it took

Interesting to write down a journey as it occurs. I’ll look back and see what my personal ethnography says about root causes…..

What do I feel about buying another….back to neutral. Still passionate about the brand, but would I go sell them to my friends. Not at this moment. one of the guys I persuaded to buy one has been on text as I write……

I can already see where it ends though…. you guessed it: “The Best Service is No Service”.

Porsche, customer experience design | No Comments

So the saga runs on with calls back and forth yesterday. In summary the service experience was great because they used it well to get me to really want to upgrade. Exciting stuff. I want to buy another car. So far so good.

But the old car has two faults it shouldn’t have and there’s only a 2 year warranty on it, not 3. They want me to pay, so I say no - that’s the crunch.

Read on…

Yesterday I got a call with the good news and the bad news. They’ll pay for the oil seal but not the worn steering rack. Of course I escalate. Obviously a well worn path to HQ and a nice gentleman who handles my rising frustration well. But using the words “failed part” isn’t going to get me to a point where I expect to pay for German engineering twice. I can’t get a coherent argument about why I should have to pay. All arguments lead back to its not covered by warranty any more. Ok but 2.5 years old.

So what’s the escalation process? There isn’t one. That’s it.

Hmmmm. I’ve mailed the dealer back to get them to pick it up and see what they will do. After all they want to sell me another car. And if they dont I wont buy another Porsche. And I’ll stop “selling” them - I’ve reached 3 from a target of 6 locally. Most of all I’ll feel a right plonker for paying insane amounts of money on a wonderful car that breaks.

As I said to the guy at HQ “this isn’t about the money, its the principle that the steering rack shouldn’t wear”. It angers me. To me this brand is engineering and reliability. No other car can do o-60 in 4.9 seconds, 25 to the gallon every week and be so damn fine to drive at any speed. My 21 year old Porsche doesn’t break. I read stories about how the Le Mans winning 917 was engineered. To say that it’s not their problem that a steering rack wears after 2.5 years is an insult to the brand. I don’t accept it.

And of course, there’s another problem. The resale offer on mine is mildly offensive so far. Let’s see where it goes next.

I really want to buy another one, but I’d be a double plonker to buy one if they don’t respect their own product. So far that’s what they seem to be saying the sales arguments about depreciation and engineering don’t really apply when it’s down to them.

Watch this space….. I have every faith that Porsche will come through.

Porsche, customer experience design | No Comments

Ok, I’ll own up - its a Porsche 911 2S that I’ve had since July 05 and now has 38k miles on it.

So did the service experience with my beloved car live up to the expectations set by the product and brand? Or did it dent the love of a petrolhead? Read on…..

Well, I’m left with complex emotions….. so let me look at it in terms of dissatisfiers (”dissat”) and the big satisfiers or “vsat”.

The vsat moments:

• Being called ahead of the service booking to be offered a test drive in a 4S, including some time on an airfield. This changed my expectations from “will they screw up the car?” to “wow, I’m looking forward to that!”
• Nothing was too much trouble for the dealership. From me being on conference calls to lifts to a client site, leaving bags, free coffee and kit kats etc. Everyone very smiley and helpful.
• “Any chance I could test drive the 911 Turbo this afternoon when I come back to pick my car up” - no problem
• And of course getting chance to see just how fast a 4 wheel drive 911 will go round a 90 degree corner in safety (very fast indeed) and what happens when the car starts to slide (beautiful….folllowed by very helpful electronics !)

So at this point it’s looking like a good day….

And of course this works a treat for them. The perfect sales opportunity. Done very well indeed. At the perfect time when I have to go in anyway - bear in mind this is in Swindon and I live in Kent.

The dissatisfiers:

• After going to all that trouble, why wouldn’t someone have worked out in advance what my car is worth. OK it needs checking on the day but….. How else would you close the deal having created all that emotional desire? I got a call later with a “lowest price, but we may be able to do better”, but then there’s little chance for a serious close. But by then there are 2 other reasons for not buying to consider:
• The lowest price offered is somewhat insulting. Compared to what anyone expects, that is always going to be a tricky problem. But compared to what cars are being sold at, there’s evidently more to it. “We’re not buying cars now til January” - yet their ad to buy cars is in the Sunday Times today. What they really mean is we’re not buying cars with your mileage - that’s pretty clear when you look on the website.
• The service guys have found a rear main oil seal that has perished and a worn rack end on my steering. Strange that - the car feels great and there’s no oil leaks on the drive or need to top up. Now my daughters 7 year old Clio doesn’t have these kind of “wear” problems and I certainly don’t expect it from some ultra expensive German engineering.
• And of course, this is where you find out that it’s only a 2 year warranty, not 3 as on most other cars. No one tried to sell on a warranty extension at the 2 year point. They want me to pay for faults in the car. Hmmmmm, this isn’t looking so good. At this point I find it a bit of a joke but I can feel a rumbling inside if they don’t cough up and fix these problems. A call is expected next week after they talk to the maufacturer.

But these faults reminded me why I set this blog going last week - why I felt trepidacious at the thought of the service visit.

My 21 year old Porsche has done 130k miles. At 63k miles the Porsche dealer in Kent said it wouldn’t do another 1000 miles on the clutch. It’s done rather more, thank you, and is still going strong.

A Boxster I owned had it engine seals done 3 times by the Kent dealer , all under warranty. There were some very red faces when I retold them the story they’d told me about redesigned parts and “impossible to happen again” after the second replacement. They obviously hadn’t remembered how many times they did it already.

And the final straw had been when the brake discs needed replacing at under 3 years - “worn out”. I challenged this and got Porsche GB to check the discs. “20% worn - no problem”. Then the Kent dealer insisted I should still pay for the new disks, eventually offering to charge only at cost. You can imagine where that conversation went.

So I sold the car and vowed not to touch Porsche again. Still fuming some months later, a Porsche mailer came through and I emailed the marketing director’s name on the bottom of it to say stop mailing me, as it reminded me how I ‘d been treated. To my complete surprise 15 minutes later my phone rang and it was the marketing director. He apologised for what had happened and said the mailings would stop. Wow, someone cared! It didnt make me rush out and buy another then but it meant Porsche weren’t on my “never again” list like Audi are (but that’s another story). That made me happy - when you’ve a brand loyalty you dont want it trashed by unscrupulous people.

So now what do I think is happening?

• The oil seal is suspiciously like the previous rip off to my mind.
• A worn steering rack is certainly not something you expect, let alone expect to pay for.
• Given attitudes so far, I completely expect the dealer to sort both out either way whatever the warranty says. So I am discounting these things in my mind and thinking I will buy another. Of course that can switch easily
• I’m left waiting to see what offer they come up with on my car and find out if I own a pup or a great investment…..

Interestingly, raising the emotional bar, by making me want a better still car, may backfire if my own car. The product I loved to bits one week ago could turn from a supercar to a depreciating lemon in the space of one visit.

So product versus the service? It started 1-0, now its 1-1. The service experience was great, helped by the sales experience. But doubts about the product have been planted. How the service experience finishes will be interesting as will the sales experience. But will it end product nil, experience nil or will it be 2-2 ?

Watch this space to see what happens next….

customer experience design | No Comments

customer experience design | No Comments

I’ve had a lot of feedback about the HSBC and first direct credit card blog “1 contact vs 23 contacts“

When I tried to use the HSBC card on Tuesday night to buy some tube tickets for the Chief Customer Officers’ trip across town, as I suspected it wasn’t over yet. It didn’t work.

When I came to pay the bill for the excellent dinner at “Dans Le Noir” it bounced. Now if you saw the size of the bill you wouldn’t be surprised. I did wonder whether I’d bust my limit.

Wednesday I thought ‘one more try’ and tried to top up my Oyster card with it and it bounced.

The following day was a busy one and so on ThursdayI checked with our finance lady and it seemed ok. I called the number on my card to be answered very quickly by a lady of impeccable manners. Strangely she called me Peter before I had given her any details. Clearly they were on my case! The only marker she had was for ‘payment requested over the limit’. The helpful lady suggested that I probably hadn’t bust my limit but had probably bust the aggregate limit on my card.

I accepted the point and talked to finance to sort it out.

So far so good but something didn’t smell right. The first payment that was declined was only for £16. It wasn’t enough to break a limit. Whatever, life’s too short, move on.

Then Friday night I got a text from my colleague. “You’ll never believe it, but I’ve had a call from the HSBC fraud people asking for you to ring them”.

As per the last story, obviously they still had my colleague’s names and details attached to my card and were ringing him.

So I rang the number on the card on Saturday. And went through security. Card number, date of birth and any two consecutive letters from my favourite word. At least they stopped asking me for my postcode and then telling me it was wrong. But I havent given them a special word. “It could be your mothers maiden name” the helpful lady suggested. It was. I realised she obviously had the whole of my mothers maiden name on screen and that the lady a few days before had done the same thing with the same helpful suggestion. Is that security?

Nothing wrong with the balance. No flag on the account. Eventually I got transferred offshore to the fraud department. Just before I hung up after waiting 2 minutes 25 seconds on hold.

She asked had I tried to make a payment in Steam. Avoiding all jokes about trains, I didnt recognise it - but we moved on before I answered yes or no (afterward I remembered the beers late in the night in the Steam bar….). Had I tried to make a payment at Hilton. No, but I had stayed there this week. And not paid anything on my credit card. All cash. Had I paid anything on SE Trains earlier - yes.

OK, she would reinstate my card. It was just a fraud check she said, nothing to do with balances. I didn’t argue because I don’t want to go through 23 contacts again to get a new card.

So the questions that I am left with are:
1) Will they ever get me attached to my phone number and details, not my colleague?
2) Why did my card bounce for £16 when that wouldn’t break the limit? Was it in fact a fraud check?
3) Who tried to take money off my card at the Hilton?
4 ) Why was my card reinstated when there could have been a risk? It was my fault - I just wanted my card working and I need to find out what was going on at the Hilton. I think I know so I took the risk.

I got the outcome I wanted, my card working again. This time in only 7 contacts (me to finance, me to bank, me to finance, finance to me, bank to colleague, colleague to me, me to bank).

But shouldn’t the first 2 contacts have sorted it and left no questions open:

• Bounce at the tube, be it fraud check or balance problem
• Text or call to me (not my colleague)
• I call the bank and we agree it’s real or they tell me I have a balance problem so I dont try and use the card to embarass myself in front of 15 of the top customer experience people in the country

If you’re reading this - do get in touch with your observations at peter.massey@budd.uk.com

HSBC, customer experience design, process improvement | No Comments

I was driving home today and broke into a broad grin. OK I’m an unashamed petrol head but after two and half years with my car, should I still be grinning to myself just for going round a corner or two? I just loooove my car!

customer experience design | No Comments

I’ve been an Egg credit card customer for many years. I also loved the brand so much I bought shares in Egg when it was floated several years ago. I’d seen what Mike Harris had done at first direct and bought into that as a great customer experience and could see the same future for Egg. Not the best reason to buy shares I know, but companies that think about the customer experience think about their staff as well and that makes a big difference to delivering that customer experience! In fact when it was launched back in 1998 Egg had the stated purpose of “revolutionise the customers experience of financial services driven through unleashing the power of people.”

In an article in MyCustomer.com in November 2006, John Jennick, Head of Customer Experience and Action at Egg said “Strategically Egg has set out since 1998 to be a bit different. We try to have our customers at the heart of everything that we do.”

As a credit card customer I admit that I am probably just ‘too good’. When I was OFFERED the option to pay off my balance monthly by Egg, I took up that option. I probably took credit increases as well, but managed my card too well, so rarely needed them. I have several other cards in my wallet but when I wanted to use a card, I used the Egg card.

My renewal was due last month and I discovered, when trying to use the old card, I hadn’t received my replacement. I rang Egg to chase it up, only to be told that my account had been reviewed by the Renewals Team and that I had been switched to a ‘repayment only account’. When asked what this meant I was told that I could only make repayments of balances not purchases.

“So you’re closing my account you mean?” I questioned. The response was “no, just changing it to a repayment only account which you don’t need a card for”. That’s the same thing in my book!

Now I know Citigroup as the new owners of Egg want to make something out of this business and have a few subprime mortgage problems to deal with. So ‘good’ customers who pay off their balances, are not going to set the profits racing. But they didn’t even have the courtesy to contact me - NO LETTER, EMAIL or CALL. Just NO CARD! It would have been nice to add an Egg card back into my wallet alongside the 4 other Citibank accounts I hold. But clearly, I’d be asking too much for that them to notice that little fact.

The MyCustomer.com article provides a lot of detail about the new survey tools that had been implemented at Egg. I wish I had been asked to be surveyed today after my call. The lack of empathy and explanation was astounding. “We normally do write to customers to tell you” I was told. My emotional state was easy to read (ie angry!) but the agent still failed to adapt to the situation. We finished the call with no resolution but an offer from the agent - “Is there anything else I can help you with today”. The fate of my relationship with Egg was sealed.

There could have been a positive outcome for Egg if it did think I’m not being profitable enough. A call or email to ask me to use the card more, selling me the benefits of the card, the low rate, the cashback… Instead I’ve told 10 people already what has happened since I discovered the situation today, plus all the people who overheard me on the train this morning. In terms of wallet share from me and my family, Egg has just blown it. Glad I got rid of the Egg insurance last year as well.

So what happens when customers are just too good? Businesses try to get too clever with segmentation, get hung up on numbers, loose sight of the customer and do dumb things to them.

If this is a broken process then maybe the survey tools Egg are using could pick it up. One thing’s for sure, that agent knows how much frustration I feel about the situation and needs a way of getting the feedback back into the business it not for my sake, for his, so he can avoid another Monday morning like the one he had today.

We have put in continuous closed loop improvement processes at other banks that have taken 80% of the contact and loads of these dumb things out of the business. Amazon.com did this (77% in 3 years) with processes like Skyline and WOCAS that track contact, engage the frontline in telling the business what’s not working for customers and make sure the right things get fixed. They save money and give the customer more time to work out what to buy next from you.

So if John or anyone from Egg wants to investigate this situation and reassure me that this is an isolated case then I’m happy to hear from them (david.naylor@budd.uk.com). Perhaps the 1998 goal of “revolutionisng the customer experience” in the right way can yet be achieved.

Egg, brilliant basics, customer experience design, dumb things, financial services | 2 Comments

C&G sent me a text this morning to welcome me as a new customer. I was only barely aware that I was. I’ve just remortgaged through a broker I’ve used for the last 4 years and now I’m on my third mortgage and third different provider. The only contact I needed with my last provider was to sign the form and then ring them to ask what was the best deal they could offer me at the end of the fixed rate period. It was a smooth process but not a relationship. My relationship clearly exists with the broker who takes all the hassle out of the process and has managed to get me great deals – yes I did check the market and realized that after 2 hours surfing the websites I was wasting my time trying to find a better deal. For me, choosing a mortgage is therefore just a matter of price.

At Budd we’ve talk for a long time about customers not wanting a relationship with their bank, or any financial service provider for that matter. So what can companies do to address this challenge? Still focusing on the basics is a critical factor. Sending a welcome text is not going to change my behavior in 2 years time, especially if they mess up on the straightforward process of processing my new application. In fact, in 2 years time I’ll probably look around for a new mortgage and if they can come close to the same deal I might stay with them. So how can they be competitive on the product? By being competitive on customer service. Reducing unnecessary contact, as we have talked about for a few years, is not just about reducing your costs but improving your service – as Amazon and others are demonstrating with Skyline more and more. Reduce costs to enable more competitive products, then wow me with basic service that works and I might still be a customer in 3, 4 or 5 years time (maybe longer!).

Skyline, brilliant basics, contact rate, customer experience design, financial services | No Comments

ISPs frustrate me. First, the IT support process requires you to quote usernames and passwords (which are a non-configurable jumble of letters and numbers) in every email you send to them. Why would I want to contact Fasthosts if they weren’t my service provider? I think 99.9999% of us have better things to do than get assistance from another ISP - which is bound to be technically flawed anyway.

Second, several of us in Budd are now using Blackberry’s and judging by the numbers of people sending email on the train this morning, so is half the business world. So why does Fasthost insist on not supporting them? My support question this morning asked why they didn’t, when they would and should I take my business elsewhere? The response was pilot but completely missed the point. “We have no plans to support Blackberry but contact us if you need anything else”. No I don’t need anything else, I want Blackberry support!!!

This sensitivity to the situation is often missing from the customer experience process. How often do you end up being told “sorry we can’t do that here, you’ll have to call another number” or similar, and then be asked “but is there anything else I can help you with today?”, is a ludicrous and blindingly stupid approach to the customer experience.

Awareness of and sensitivity towards the customer frustrations have been squeezed out of many call centres by performance management approaches. We see this more and more as we implement WOCAS and train the front line. We spend more time on the awareness part than we do on using the tools and need to support for them for some time afterwards to embed the habit of spotting the frustrations (and logging them).

As ever, changing behaviours is far more critical than just changing the process or tools.

WOCAS, customer experience design, success factors | No Comments