Archive for the 'customer experience' Category

Posted by: Ian Morton | 1.09.2008

How many of us now rely on being able to use the Internet to pay bills, book holidays or raise questions to a whole range of different service providers, from the gas company to travel services. I do most of my payments and booking fairly late at night, normally around 10 pm as this is for me, like many of us, the only time when I have time during the week from the routine of working  / travelling / feeding / sleeping. It’s been a very pleasant surprise for me to experience over the last few years how easy and customer focused so many of these sites have become, but there are always exceptions. I tried to book a flight for four adults to the South of France in mid November. After a bit of research I found the best flight was Easy Jet out of Gatwick to Nice.

Booking was simple, apart from the fact that you had to say ‘no’ rather than ‘yes’ to additional services and if you were not careful they were automatically added on to the final cost. The web design leads you to sign up for services you probably don’t require unless you book really carefully. 

But that was not the main problem; it was when I came to pay. I entered all my details using my maestro card, (paying a £1.75 charge!) to be routed to a secure payment process asking me to re-enter details from my card and home postcode, which I duly did, only to be rejected.

Tried again, waited, rejected. Went back to beginning of whole booking process, entered everything again, rejected. Telephone number given in case of difficulties, tried to call, message tells me office hours are 8 am to 9 pm – what use is that to me at, by now, 11.30 at night! Overall an extremely frustrating experience but from which some simple messages are clear for Easy Jet to take on board (no pun intended) 

• Web sites should show charges for services clearly and simply. Design that can confuse gives a low value experience and create cynical customers with low loyalty
• Present the true cost of booking. Show charges simply and clearly. Being told that by paying in a certain method it’s going to cost more is annoying. From my perspective if the cost had been bundled into the overall flight charge I would not have noticed        
• Think of your customer experience when using your site. Offering help, then not being able to get it, e.g. no 24 hour cover, is extremely frustrating. It’s great having total security but not when it drives customers away to an easier to access competitor

I finally managed to sort the payment out the following day, but not without a lot of hassle.  Is it me? or have others experienced the same problems?  I’d be interested in anyone who has experienced similar frustrations on airline web sites, not just Easy Jet. As the travel market gets tougher what makes you, as a customer, really frustrated about how the service providers are reacting? What do you think as customers should be happening? If you have the time, please blog our web site with details of your experiences and I’ll collate these for publication.  You never know it just might make the airlines interested enough to listen.

 

airlines, customer experience | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 31.07.2008

The contrast in use of tax payers resources, the politics and the bigger system and the good news….

Is my tax £ being well spent?

I love Jeremy Clarkson’s idea that the police shouldn’t be allowed to fine you for car parking until they return your stolen goods!I was struck by the contrasting use of resources around Soho Square as I walked into work yesterday. In Greek St, there was a police cordon around a bar. Uh oh must have been a murder. Two officers, once taking photos of the scene. At the opposite end of the square, parked opposite Soho St, was a Smart car with CCTV on the roof. It was aimed up the one way street from the wrong end. Presumably to catch cyclists going the wrong way up the street, since cars cant turn into the street the wrong way easily given the shape of the traffic islands on Oxford St - itself a street only for buses and taxis so unlikely to generate much “driving” crime. There were two guys sat in the Smart car reading the Sun.

The contrasting focus of manpower is striking in a time of newspaper headlines about knife crime, rising prices and taxes.

The wider system

Not only do cameras everywhere make me feel less safe, but they make me aware of government. It strikes me that everything that is government charged, privatised and vaguely regulated (and I use the two words specifically), or is an effective monopoly is just going through the roof. Parking fines rising to £120, gas going up 35%, my station car parking going up 17%, fuel rising to £1.34 - but more noticeably the gap between unleaded and diesel jumping from circa 6p to 14p. Yet the money raised doesnt seem to make any difference to the services offered.

It seems that an economic downturn is a great excuse to screw customers. Does the government thing that people don’t see the connection between the way government governs and regulates, the way business works and the way investors invest. 

Maybe Mr Brown would be better trying to make the adjustments in pricing happen in the stockmarket, not in the high street. Centrica and British Gas is a great case in point. Poor old British Gas has to hike prices whilst Centrica raises its dividend to shareholders, claiming poor old pensioners need the money from their pension funds. Doesnt matter, its still the customers who fork out more to investors via a business and weak regualtion/competition. It feels like we are just paying for the fact that the government sold all the family silver years ago and can no longer control large multinational players, many foreign owned, who will do what they need to do to keep their shareholders happy overseas as funding gets harder to raise.

So Mr Brown - go find a better lever to pull - talk to the analysts and investors. Unless they expect and accept that profits will suffer as markets restructure, without sacking CEOs or ransacking share prices, the CEOs will continue to pump customers for short term gain.

But what about the good news?

The good news is that there are richer pickings for CEOs and government to be made from removing waste than even pumping customers for money they dont want to give. The Cabinet Office agenda is to save 50% of “avoidable contact” with citizens from every goverement department. Not to sack people and save money, but to free people up to do more valuable things (than catching cyclists….). Now this I get. If CEOs set the same challenge to remove 50% of unncessary contact then there would be real change in the customer experience. At the moment there’s a lot of pussyfooting around with cost savings, not fundamental change.

Why is contact rate so important to the experience and the economics? Take for example, last week I had to get my divorce papers done. I really dont like paperwork, but 8 years hanging around is ridiculous. But heh it’s easy - I managed the hard bits easily with only 2 contacts. (Dont let that give you ideas!).

A visit to directgov led to all the forms and how to fill them in. A copy of the marriage certificate within 24 hours all done online. The only contact was to check the fee to pay - it looked like the figure it was, but it didnt say “divorce” on it, so I called to check - all details being quickly available to do that too. The other contact? Meet with the ex to sign the forms too, of course. Job nearly done. A great experience, very little work for me or anyone else, for a complex task.

Then there was splitting a pension. I shall keep the innocent unnamed since they were very helpful. But suffice to say, after looking at the website and even starting with a personal contact, it took several people to get involved to clearly establish what needed to happen. No action has been taken yet, but I can see why their SLA is 4 months to act! I havent counted the calls or emails but it must have been a dozen. Must have cost them a fortune.

So maybe the goverment’s transformation agenda is working better than we notice. Maybe private business can learn a thing or two. Certainly government is giving The Best Service Is No Service serious attention. And we’re going to try and help with an event on the 29th September - a goverment summit we’re running with Contact Centre Clinic in Liverpool. The Cabinet Office will be speaking along with several top public and private companies. But mainly we’ll be causing people to talk to each other and take back specific actions they can take in their government department, police force, NHS body or local authority. And of course private companies are welcome to learn too. Get in touch with joanne.sparkes@budd.uk.com for more details. PS and its £250 - good experiences are always less expensive to give than dumb ones!

Government, Healthcare, Uncategorized, contact rate, customer experience, the best service is no service | 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: David Naylor | 9.05.2008

This is just a straight forward example of service recovery.

I ordered a black toner cartridge last week which was delivered as expected. Unfortunately they sent a blue one.

I emailed the company www.cartridgesave.co.uk and had a reply within 20 minutes from Danielle (who provided a direct email address - in my book, the right thing to do). “A black one will be on its way today and we’ll collect the blue one”. A bit of a  hassle returning the blue one I thought but their problem.

10 minutes later another email:

“Unfortunately we are unable to despatch the correct Remanufactured Samsung Black Toner Cartridge as stated in my previous email since this item is currently out of stock until the 20th May. So that we do not inconvenience you any further I will be despatching you today a Genuine Samsung Black Toner instead and Cartridge Save will cover the difference in cost. Additionally we would like you to keep the incorrect blue cartridge that you have received.”

Almost perfect recovery, except for the unnecessary first email that could have been avoided by checking stock first. Not bad for a low value consumer product. Here I am telling you all about it. That’s worth it isn’t it?

brilliant basics, customer experience, fast+simple, word of mouth | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 6.04.2008

The book of “The Best Service Is No Service” is already up to 12th on Amazon’s best seller list and people such as Guy Kawasaki are blogging it.

The FT ran an article on it on March 27th

It’s going to be big…. More importantly the idea that its not ok to do dumb things to cause your customers to contact you is even bigger.

Amazon, contact rate, customer experience, fast+simple, the best service is no service | No Comments

Posted by: Jo Sparkes | 18.02.2008

Now that the Royal Mail has implemented its ‘Revenue Loss Prevention’ handling charges on any all odd sized, over heavy, under stamped post, it must have stopped quite a few people getting it wrong.

But of course people still make mistakes. Last week we received a note in the mail bundle saying a letter was being held at central post office due to lack of correct postage and no-one in to pay excess. I actually took the mail bundle (we share offices with 6 or 7 other businesses) from the postman that day, and guess what? no mention of excess to pay on any letter.

So I walk to the post office address advised on the form, hand the form over and wait for results. The chap behind the counter had evidently had a bad day. I tried smiling, did not work, tried chatting, did not work. Oh well can’t have everything. Hand over the form, off he goes and comes back with letter. That’s £1.24 he says. I look in my wallet; see I have only a £20 note left. In typically British style I hand it over, apologising that it is all that I have got. The chap behind the counter eyed it dubiously. “Can’t take that, would take all my change, you’ll have to come back tomorrow” with strong undertones of ‘how can you be so stupid as to try and palm off a £20 note, do you think we are running a public service here! So being British, I slink off.

Next day it was back to the post office with lots of loose change in my pocket. Obviously a better day, as really nice cheerful man goes to find the letter. “What security do you need?” I ask. “Just something with your name on it” comes the reply. But the letter is addressed to our business with no mention of my name on it. “Oh that’s OK as we accept anything with a name on it if you are paying excess.

So with thoughts of security rattling through my mind I go back to my office and open the letter. And now comes the real reason for writing this blog –

It was a direct marketing campaign from Monster on line recruitment and they had conveniently forgotten to frank the envelope

So I had wasted at least 1½ hours going to and fro from the post office, it had cost me £1.24 (it’s the principle of the thing) to get a letter that went straight into the recycling box! Miffed, definitely 

So come on Post Office, get your processes right, and make your staff more focused on looking after your customers

And Monster, how many other people have had to pay for your marketing campaigns, is it a ploy to keep your costs down? Not very conducive to make me use your services if you cannot get a mailing right.

Customer satisfaction, customer experience, dumb things | 1 Comment

Posted by: Peter Massey | 11.02.2008

This cartoon from the front of our 2008 calendar has struck a chord with so many people. Lots of people have been downloading it and the others from the library at our website.

Tonight (31.1.08) it happened exactly as in the cartoon. The AA lost out and M&S benefited. If you cannot make renewal simple, what can you do !!

Here’s the potted story…..
Renewal notice for building insurance with quote arrives some time ago. I carry it around in my bag along with 2 others (M&S travel and one of the cars with NFU). Due today so have to make the time. Daughter gets little attention on one of her nights with me as I spend about an hour sorting it all out. That upsets me.

First stop is an aggregator to check the price is in range since it feels steep compared to last year. I go thro all the forms on Moneysupermarket.com and find AA is one of the cheapest, But £100 less than the quote they gave me.

So I try to save them and me a lot of work by calling the renewal hotline on the notice to ask them to meet the price. I go through the IVR and talk to the agent. He can’t just match the price. He explains the difference as being not an AA quote but the aggregator’s quote and questions if it’ll really be there. He says the cover will have different parameters. He cannot look at last year’s parameters on which his renewal notice was based. So he cannot bring it up to date with my parameters (and he cannot get that I know them best!). No he cannot give me any discount to get near the price. I give up.

I go thro the aggregator’s link to the AA page to try and get the lower price. It’s blank so I have to fill in all the data again.

The last item on the list is to add previous claims. I press and it blanks all the data I added. Sugar! Luckily it comes back when I press the button again. I try again. Nope. So I pretend I have no claims to get past it and proceed to the next page. I have to give my previous contents insurer but there’s no option for “self insured” and anyway it’s not relevant to buildings only. I have to give my previous buildings insurer, but the AA isn’t an option. There are no “other” categories. So I give in! I cannot proceed.

So I ring the 800 number on the page to look for web help.

This time I get IVR routing and IVR security digits to enter from my renewal letter, my postcode and birth date. You’ve guessed it..when I get through the agent asks for the postcode and birth date. On protest she blames system issues.

I try for blind help with the web site functionality, but the notes are obviously good and she spots I just came through before. So I have to go back down the story. The same track. No result.

In vain I try to ask for web help. Can’t do. Got a number for web help? No. Can you get one? Nice but no? Can I speak to your supervisor? I give up waiting on hold and start again.

In fairness someone phoned back later, but I was on the other phone getting through my third call to the AA. No one had it in their job to spot the problems and get the root causes reported. No interest at all.

So now practiced in AA processes, I go thro the 800 number IVR and ignore the fact I’m a customer. Much simpler, I get to a good agent. A modicum of interest. A tiny bit, but not nothing. I go thro the new business process and get a fresh quote. It’s £100 more than the renewal letter!! But at least she does have the ability to go through the criteria and we tweak them til we get back to the exact sum in the renewal notice. And on a tiny push she can give discounts and I get a further £50 off, so I’m halfway between the AA price on the aggregator and the original renewal letter.

By now how do I feel? She was good, but she did what the first guy should have been able to do, half an hour before. That’s a waste of my time and I’m not renewing unless they are last resort. I ask for a number to get back to her, but she can only offer to call me back. 7.15? Good technique to try and make me delay my decision until after I get other quotes. Incidentally she didn’t call and I went out at 7.25 - perhaps by then she read the notes and gave up on me. Still she said 7.15. Obviously didn’t want my business either.

I need a rest so I try renewing my M&S Money travel insurance. The figure is close to last year. I am NOT going to try looking around after all that…… I phone the number on the renewal letter. Just renew it. They just renew it.

Do you do buildings insurance? No.

I’m thinking I know they do…..

But I can transfer you. Phew ! Ring ring etc and eventually I’m through.

By now I can give the answers to the next three questions in the exact insurance language before the questions are asked. How old is the house? Pre 1851, brick, tile roof, detached. French windows? Yes, security locks at the top but not at the bottom, all other windows have locks, burglar alarm but not that Nas standard thingie. It’s a bit like the 2 Ronnies doing Mastermind!

The price is where the AA price was on the aggregator web site. Done deal. It’s that price because I was asked what excess I wanted and given options. Simple stuff. I took a bigger excess. That’s probably why the AA aggregator price was where it was. If I’d been offered the higher excess by the first man or the last lady from the AA, they’d still have got the business.

So if you recognise the cartoon, give us a call……

AA, customer experience | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 11.02.2008

Sorry for radio silence. As you can see we have a new site going live and the blogs will now resume!

Call me sad, but I found a dumb thing at first direct at last! I have given them the feedback - it’s worth it because I believe they will act on it.

Unlike the guys at Swindon station today after I trod on a loose flagstone outside the front door of the station. It had a huge puddle under it that went straight up my legs. At least I was too wet to look like I wet myself!

Telling the ticket clerk, it was clear she had no way of dealing with what customers say. “Tell that guy in the orange jacket over there”. I didn’t bother.

So what did first direct do? A classic in the web site. Click on mortgage sales and it asks you to log in if you’re an existing customer. You log in and click on mortgages. It asks you to proceed to log out and look at mortgages. Back where you started! ! Tee hee.

The other dumb thing is quite interesting. And another classic. Marketing versus operations.

Marketing obviously made their mortgage offer way too good. Not only couldn’t I be put thro now, they couldnt call me back until Monday as they were booked solid!. It’s the classic oversell or underpricing that generates more demand than can’t be handled. Even assuming the forecasts were notified. The customer experience - frustrated. Being a fan I’ll wait. But it doesnt reflect well.

Bet operations are getting it in the neck not marketing.

I asked “Could I do it myself on the web?”. The answer ”We’ve taken it down because of the demand….” !!

Trying again a week later, the same problem. But the agent said “I’ll keep an eye on the queue for you through next week and call you back personally”.

customer experience, first direct | 1 Comment

Posted by: Peter Massey | 23.01.2008

Blogging now resumed as we switch to a new site and a lot has happened in 3 weeks!  The urge to buy a car overcame me and I bought a Land Rover Defender last week - a diesel of course. So cute. And practical where I live out in the country - yes it has real mud from a real field. And with so many advocates locally that I ended up testing one.

 The 911 is up for sale ( call me if you want to benefit from the low low price I can get from a dealer! ) and a Mini Cooper S beckons next if it goes. If it doesn’t fetch a proper price then I won’t be sad to keep it. Just unlikely to upgrade based on depreciation. But that’s not really fair - I’ve suffered far worse with other cars eg an Audi A8 that lost 28k in 12 months!

So from passionate advocate to neutral seller? Not really - still a mad fan as I have the 22 year old one to fall back on. But no longer an advocate. Ultimately the service experience has been very good, the product is brilliant. But the sales experience has resulted in the opposite result from that desired. Emotions are funny things but ignore them at your peril !

 Now the Land Rover and the Mini buying experiences…. I’ll save that for tomorrow

Porsche, Uncategorized, customer experience | No Comments

Posted by: David Naylor | 14.01.2008

I got these quotes from a colleague who’s recently been reading Jeanne Bliss’s book on the Chief Customer Officer. I think these can apply in many walks of life, in and out of work.

• “Think small”
• “Worry about being better; bigger will take care of itself”
• “Think one customer at a time, and take care of each one the best way you can.”

How often do we try to build strategies from the top down and without the real customer context, needs and frustrations in mind? Starting at the frontline, listening to staff and listening to the individual customers is such a powerful way of collecting the most meaningful data on what you need to do next.
There will always be someone willing to put forward the next big thing but how will you know it will make a difference to the little things?

CCO, Strategy, Voice of the Customer, customer experience, listening | No Comments