Archive for the 'dumb things' Category

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 | No Comments

Our business bank account is interesting. There’s usually sufficient balance to keep the bank manager in bonuses and the cheques roll in from well known household names. We’ve never been overdrawn on our business account. Yet nearly every month my HSBC business card gets stopped. Usually at an awkward time like paying for a client’s lunch.  So why do they do it? The rules of course….

The company credit cards have an aggregate and an individual maximum and eventually you may hit one of them. Particularly if business is doing well. But you’re not allowed to  pay any money off mid month to keep the card useful. Against the rules. So it’s useless til month end. 

More business  = more spend = more for the bank you’d think.

So why do they cut you off from doing more business? Because the “product” can’t cope with any flexing. Ah well….. But after regular and irritating calls to the call centres it was time to do something. 

Irritating because they wont talk to our finance person. Irritating because you get ID&V-ed again after transfer. Irritating because security questions like what was the last transaction on the account mean nothing to the average MD of a  SME  company. Irritating because they also cut you off frequently for security checks…… all basic stuff really, but no one is thinking about customer effort they create from these policies and product rules.

So I called the sales call centre to find there was no real alternative. I tried it again for somebody who was bovvered.. Same answer. I tried the man on the end of the newsletter. Lo, there was an answer – a commercial card that you can pay down mid month. So we ordered that. You can guess what happened next…..

Yes, they cut the existing card off. Why because the new one had been sent out. Where? To my PA. I’ll see the new one some day when the post is working again…… dumb things, dumb things, dumb things…… 

What’s the collective name for a bunch of dumb things….. answers on a postcard please (but not til after the postal strike)

HSBC, dumb things | 1 Comment

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

3 examples of possibly genuine companies affecting their brand trust & creating lots of avoidable contact.

I received a letter the other day. It was from a company called PCN Debt Recovery and Prosecution Service. It said I’d had a parking ticket in March at my local station and I owed them £90. Send your bank details and sign here. It smelled like the typical email from a prince in Africa asking me to claim my lottery winnings…… Phishing.

Nevertheless being a conscientious and curious person, I rang the non geographic number for payments several times. Each time it transfered to a foreign ring tone and was never answered. Eventually I rang Southeastern rail enquiries to see if it was a genuine company. They didn’t know of it and knew a company called Meteor run the car parks, not PCN. So it was probably a scam? They’d check it out and come back to me.

Meanwhile I finally got through to PCN so it existed at least. They couldn’t identify themselves as genuine. They had no process for this. They had no data to prove it. DVLA had given them my details based on my car registration number. Interesting who DVLA will give my private data to.

Anyway, they had no record of the ticket anyway and suggested it be dropped but I send them a note so it wouldn’t bite me later.

This morning I got a letter from Dan Westlake at Southeastern confirming nothing. It just referred me to Meteor. They obviously weren’t listening as they got my name wrong and answered a different question to the one I asked.

So is PCN a genuine company or a scam? I still don’t know. Do I trust Southeastern more or less than before?

I’ve had the same thing earlier in the year with a company called Assets Reunited apparently working for Aviva. It even had their logo on it. Their “phishing” letter said they were working for Aviva and had found £3000 that Aviva owed me. Just fill in your bank details and sign here.  Hmmmm – would you? It has a number but a professional phisher would. I tried 2 routes to prove their id. I sent an email from the Aviva website form. They never replied. I emailed a contact in Aviva Life. They didn’t reply.

Is Assets Reunited a genuine company or a scam? I still don’t know. Do I trust Aviva more or less than before?

But the third example is different. HMRC sent me a letter saying we had our own business address wrong – doh talk about a dumb letter. It asked for all my details including bank accounts and a signature. Hmmm phishing? I phoned the number, got through and asked the lady to ID&V HMRC. Not in the least thrown by the question, she answered my address and last payments questions and we sorted it out. I asked my standard question of “what would you do if I gave you feedback?”. Instead of the usual “derrrrr” or “we don’t do that, send it to the website” she said she had a process with her team leader and would pass on my comments about looking like a phishing letter.

Do I trust HMRC more or less than before?

All are great examples of avoidable contact but let’s not start on that just now? Would your company pass an ID&V test? Would your outsourcers pass your ID&V test? Let me know your thoughts….

Customer satisfaction, customer experience, data protection, dumb things, phishing | 1 Comment

… the “smart thing” won by several days, even though it gave the “dumb thing” several days head start.

I hope that hasn’t spoiled it for you, knowing the result right at the beginning! Truth be told, it was never going to be much of a race – but I didn’t know that at the beginning.

Recently, I was told a story a company, a large and well-known company, with a recently discovered supply chain issue. The issue had been hidden and overlooked as a result of working in silos; and a process that was designed from the inside-out – without understanding the impact on the overall customer experience. They had set a customer expectation of acknowledging correspondence within five days, and were very pleased to be working to an internal service level of two days.

Ignore for a moment the potential cost implication of resourcing to deliver a service level significantly better than the customer expectation or whether a customer would think five days turnaround a great service in these days of ‘instant’ messaging, and consider how pleased with themselves they were at exceeding the expectations on a routine basis.

Sadly, the customers were not so pleased as the correspondence was not being received even in five days, much less two! And what was the root cause? Well, the “dumb thing” was a contract with an outsourced fulfilment company which included a seven day service level for despatch of correspondence – ouch!

Bill Price and David Jaffe in their book The Best Service Is No Service talk about the idea of ‘stapling’ yourself to an issue when looking at customer journeys. Actually following the route through the (extended) organisation to fully understand the end-to-end customer experience. Clearly, this had not been done when this process was designed.

That story started last week and the poor customer is probably still waiting for their acknowledgement!

Contrast that with a phone call today to Axa Sun Life today. I needed a form to report the loss of a policy document. I got through immediately, was transferred promptly after the initial triage of my call and was answered immediately again!

The agent immediately understood what was needed and offered, yes offered, to email the form to me – and it arrived promptly. The whole experience took about five minutes.

Simple, well-designed, smart service – a winner every time!

brilliant basics, customer experience, dumb things, financial services | No Comments

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

A quick one for a Friday morning.

Halifax have come up with a great way to retain customers and propsects. Make it impossible to unsubscribe from their marketing. Ok, it might be a glitch but as I went through the double confirmation process to unsubscribe from their share dealing marketing material – yes I know the tax year is about to end and no I don’t want your ISA – I was presented with this screen…

 Nice one Halifax. Let’s hope the rest of your online experience is superior to this.

broken websites, dumb things, fast+simple, financial services, junk mail | No Comments

Hi Lynn – not sure what to say. My inbox is already filling with industry people who feel misrepresented – yet again. There’s so much good stuff in the industry, so many people trying very hard to fix what’s broken. Ok Paul made that stance at the start but it wasn’t explored.

I feel particularly disappointed at the editing. The juxtaposition of customer comments with extracts from conversations eg the American “have a nice day” with a first direct agent – it so misrepresents what first direct do.

It looked like “which clips can we use to illustrate the point we want to make” rather than any insightful journey.

dumb things, first direct | No Comments

That was the response I had from Carphone Warehouse this morning.

I’m on month 14 of an 18 month contract and yes, I know what a contract means – but over the last few months, having missed some important emails when out and about, I thought I might move up in the world to a Blackberry or XDA. Blackberry have just brought out a girly pink Pearl and since I have girly pink laptop, thought this would do very nicely.

However, even when I offered to consider a penalty, upgrade to a contract more than double the monthly value and lock myself in to them for a further 18 months – the computer said “No”. You can only upgrade when there’s only two months left on the contract.

So if I’m very desperate for a pink Blackberry, or to prove a point, I’ll now have to go and get a contract with someone else and end my contract with Carphone in 3 months time. It must make some good business sense to someone at Carphone – but sending your customers to another supplier when they say “Hello, I’d like to spend more money, for much longer than I intended to” - has never been top of my list of things to do!

Customer satisfaction, dumb things | 1 Comment

I’m not planning to take the stock market by storm but thought it was about time I signed up a share dealing account. I’ve been an interested, occasional reader of the Interactive Investor website (www.iii.co.uk)  for many years and use it to track a few funds I signed up to at the height of the dotcom era. Needless to say I could have done better by stuffing the money in an old sock.

Give I was already registered I thought that I’d use iii for stock trading but you have to go through another registration process first. I can handle that but can’t handle the stuff that demonstrates this established online company hasn’t even got the basics right fills me with doubt that I’ll ever trade with them. Here are a few of the more frustrating things:

1. Debt card issue number – No matter what I did it would not accept ‘3′ as the issue number. I changed and checked everything time and time again. Every time it just came back and said ‘invalid issue number’. I then discovered i needed to enter it as ‘03′. Of course, my mistake.

2. Terms and Conditions. I never read them. Do you? On this occasion I thought I would. I also had to do the usual, tick the box, to show I’d read them. So I clicked the link. Broken. I ticked the box anyway.

3. So I recevied my confirmation email and thought I’d reply to let them know the link was broken. The email is pictured below. Notice anything contradictory? Who sent the mail, who should I contact, what does it say at the bottom?

 How many people must sign up to this account each week? Why must these little things continue to happen?

I’ll be sending the email to the address given with a link to this blog. Perhaps if Interactive Investor followed the lead of other stock trading companies like Wasabe I’d be straight on the phone to the CEO. Read the news article on this in Business Week. You might say that only small companies can do this. Well Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon is reading customer feedback daily. You can hear how he listens to customers on this BBC radio programme. The bigger you are, the more you need to listen. Don’t you think?

Amazon, CCO, broken websites, dumb things, feedback, financial services, the best service is no service | No Comments