Archive for the 'customer experience' Category

For 4 years now, Budd has been championing the cause, developed at Amazon, of “The Best Service is No Service”.

With our passion for “How do we stop doing dumb things to our customers and people?” we remain focused on how companies can drastically improve their customer experiences by reducing contact by 20%+ per annum, with its consequent impact on operating budgets.
But, and there is a but, many companies appear to be adopting the strategy of saving 20% of their operating costs without a good understanding of what it takes to avoid inflicting pain on their customers.

So - your strategy is to reduce unnecessary contact by 20% in 2008 - but how much damage or how much good will you do for your customers?

The most common problems are:
— A focus on cost not the experience. The focus must be on the experience first with cost savings as a consequence
— Starting projects to fix the problem. It’s about implementing proven, sustainable processes that constantly take out unnecessary contact. Projects rarely sustain the behaviours required over years
— Trying to do too much too fast. The first wins are critical but they need to be part of a coherent approach
— Leaving out the frontline staff. Regardless of new tools to gather data, tapping into what the frontline staff know and their engagement is key to sustainable success
— Doing again what worked a year or two ago but lapsed as soon as the next focus appeared

Budd brings proven processes that can be embedded to make the savings year on year. Our top clients are saving 80% of their operating budgets now.

On a £100m operating budget, you’d be saving £20m per annum in the first year. That’s £1.67m per month, £400k per week. If it’s done well you’ll be a hero. If its done badly it will cost another £100m to regain your brand’s reputation. Do you feel lucky? Or do you need to get it right first time?

Contact us if you’d like to talk through your ideas - peter.massey@budd.uk.com

contact rate, customer experience, dumb things | No Comments

I thought it was all sorted but no….. The Porsche dealer phoned to pay the whole thing. Common sense prevails. I just have to get the car there now for 2 days. No one has come back to try and give me a better price for my car in order to buy another

So where am I emotionally 5 weeks after all the excitement of wanting to buy a “new motor”.

At 3 weeks I’d moved from raving fan to neutral at best. At 5 weeks I’ve had time with the car again. An empty road down to the coast at dawn. A few beers with local fans who’ve bought them and I’m back in the fold. But….

But they have generated the desire to change car. They wanted to prise me from something special and get me into something even more special. But they weren’t able to close on it. So now I have mentally detached but not attached to the next thing. They have put me in mind to switch.

So I’m out trying new motors…. But no calls coming from Porsche whilst I’m prospecting. Aston Martin? Went to see round the factory last year – drool!! Drop dead gorgeous but no way to drive it everyday, more fragile than a china cup in field of bulls, and half the fuel consumption. It might be British Racing Green, but its certainly not environmentally green and a pain to keep filling up. An Alfa Romeo like the one we hired and burned across Europe in. A steal for such good looks and a great drive, even if the diesel is the one to go for. Or a Mini like my daughter’s or the Cooper S I drove when the tyres were being changed on my car. Totally impressive to drive even in basic form, the Cooper S is a barrel of laughs and I’d have to give it away to make it depreciate as far as the Porsche.

Will I sell my dearly beloved? Maybe. Will I buy another new Porsche, unlikely. Am I a raving fan again….getting there

Porsche, customer experience | No Comments

As I sat on a train heading out of London Waterloo today I knew we were in for few problems with emergency engineering work on the line ahead and the departure boards looking decidedly void of useful information. Past the departure time the Guard announces that the train will not stop at 3 of the usual stations, including mine. As we hurry off the train clutching coats and laptops we meet the said Guard and naturally bombard him with questions. With a very uninterested look on his face he lifts his arms and answers “don’t know” to all the questions. “Go and ask someone” he says, pointing back to the harassed looking team on the station information desk.

You get the picture. Accountability is something we all need to take responsibility for. The customer experience we design, so carefully and at great cost, is not worth the investment of effort if it all falls apart when something goes wrong. When the areas of the business which cause the problems fail to learn from them, the frontline start to pass the blame. When the frontline pass the blame, the reputation of the whole organisation and trust of customers is damaged. In day to day operations, everyone needs to take a shared accountability for delivering the best customer experience whether things go right or wrong. But this will only happen if the business take accountability for fixing the root causes of problems.

accountability, customer experience, train | No Comments

Remember the old movies when a guy taking a picture used to say ‘watch the birdie’ and everyone promptly stared at the stuffed bird held in the photographer’s hand?
Usually it was only for a very short time, then with a bang and a flash it was all over and hey presto you had a beautiful picture (well something in sepia anyway) to keep the customers happy

I sometimes wish delivering customer service could be so visual and dramatic, where you could wave a magic wand and it would be fixed instantaneously to the customers delight. How different it is in real life

Normally it is down to the detail of how you respond to, and manage, peoples expectations, being able to meet changing demands and thinking on your feet

A small event happened to me this week that emphasised the need to keep an eye on your customer at all times and remember that the customer is the primary reason we are here (they hold the money after all)

I made the mistake of driving to Gatwick Airport and trying to park in the short term car park. This is always very busy, irrespective of time of day, and has a row of automatic barriers where you take your ticket, the barrier machine waits for a period of time, obviously doing some detailed electronic analysis of you, your car, number plates, painting it’s electronic nails etc and then lets you in to the hallowed sanctuary of the car park

Well on Monday one of the barriers had broken and the attendant was trying to fix the machine. A lady in her mini was stuck at the barrier entrance as the bar would not lift, and the weight of traffic rapidly built up so she could not reverse. The traffic then got so bad it started to block the entrance road. Chaos and tooting horns, very embarrassed lady (not her fault) grumpy commuters going to miss the Gatwick express to London and general travellers lost at the start of their journey. (It’s amazing how bad tempered we become when something gets in the way of our routine commute)

But back to the attendant, who at that time represented NCP. Did he let the lady through? Did he try and manage the traffic? Did he call for assistance?

No. He did the very human thing of doing what he was most comfortable with, trying to fix the machine, then as the pressure got worse, carried on trying to fix the machine and ignored the increasing chaos around him. It was much safer with the machine than trying to calm a load of frustrated customers of NCP!

Simple message, but get it right it’s a powerful one, train and enable your staff to look after the customers first, not the machine or the process. You can (normally) fix them afterwards. Think of the positive impression that attendant could have created if he had taken control of the situation and kept the traffic flowing. Those people involved would have praised NCP, not muttered some of the comments I heard!

customer experience, dumb things | 1 Comment

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

The Budd team celebrated the arrival of our new addition Vicky ( new PA) to our Budd family with a celebration lunch at a nearby Spainish Tapas restaurant.
Peter ordered a recommended selection from their extensive menu, as the six of us sat down expectantly, ravonously hungry and generally joining in the lovely chatty hulabaloo that circled our table.
The good old restaurant must have thought that we looked like the type of customer who needed a little team building and initiative test, free of charge of course, because they sent out most of the dishes with only 4 items in each pot! So how do you divide 4 pieces of squid into 6???
Please don`t send answers on a postcard because there is no prize! But equally we wont be giving the restaurant a prize for making their customers experience one of simplicity and calmness! But I must say the bite sized chunks were delicious!
Just a thought about a lack of thought
Sue

customer experience | No Comments

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

Processes have their proper their place, but why do companies stick so rigidly to their internal procedures that they fail to take seriously what the customer is telling them? A recent trip to the dry cleaners illustrates - although I also recollect similarly exasperating experiences with my computer, bank, telco and electricity suppliers where I’ve just wished someone would apply a bit of common sense to the process. Recently, I went to pick up a skirt from the dry-cleaners (just before it closed for the day), handed over the ticket and watched as the assistant searched along the pristine ranks, searching not once, but twice. Shake of the head, “Sorry, its not here”. He had his hand on what looked like the right item. “That’s it,” I said, recognising the shape and colour of my skirt. But looking up at the ticket said: “No, sorry, it’s definitely not here”. Driven by desperation, I managed to get him to allow me the other side of the counter to look, went straight to the item I recognised as mine. Indeed, it was mine, but the numbers didn’t match the one on the ticket I had given him. Turns out his colleague had given me the wrong ticket. (Well, that’s not surprising because he was chatting on the phone when he served me, but that’s another blog!) But if the assistant had listened, we’d have been done in double quick time - and then he wouldn’t have missed his usual train home - for which he blamed his customer!

customer experience | No Comments

Today was very dissappointing for me for two reasons. The first, I had arranged a birthday party for my husband on Saturday at a local pub and THEY(READ A VERY ANGRY THEY),the new owners of the pub,telephoned ( Wednesday)to say the pub was now shut, big,big blow but not the biggest - the most enormous frustration was that the new owners of the pub just didnt care that their potential customers and 30 local friends would be extremely upset. What is the matter with business`s today, do they not realise that there are consequences to the completely unbelievably dumb things they do to their customers - do you think any of us will ever go to that pub again and I bet you already know how many people we will tell ( well a few more now that I ve just joined the blogging brigade!)BUT “am I bothered!Do I look bothered” “NO” because now I`ve found a smashing, couldnt be more helpful, equally local substitute and how many people am I going to tell about that!!!!!!

customer experience | No Comments

When the phone rings at 9pm and there’s a long pause and lots of crackle before someone says “can I speak with Mr Naylor”, you know it’s an India call centre. There’s an immediate reaction in me that wants me to hang up. Trouble is, when this call is from the fraud department of my bank and they want to let me know my card has been used in a fraudulent transaction, I need to speak to them.

Why has the Indian call centre industry reached this point? I think it’s because customers feel no emotional link with the agent. Efficient processes (when they happen) make the agents appear curt and poor processes make the agents appear incompetent. Either way, agents are frequently accused of not listening to customers and bulldozing their way through the call. It’s a no win situation.

Fixing this is not a quick exercise as it’s a problem that has been compounded by the industry itself over a number of years. I think the best that can be achieved is for customers to feel neutral about the experience of dealing with Indian centres. How long it takes to get to that point is anyones guess.

India, customer experience, financial services | No Comments