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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
Why is it that when we try and fix problems we tend to forget it’s the little things that make a difference between good and bad customers experience.
Customers will put up with a lot when asked to, and trains break down. That’s part of life (well a commuters one anyway). It’s when people are confused or kept in the dark (and rain!) that it becomes a problem. And at that point people always remember the bad, not the good.
So come on Southern, get your communications plan in place and staff trained and supported in handling adverse situations. Then we can all focus on how well you have done, rather than on the occasional failure.
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
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.
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!
My daughter has an O2 phone. She’s been waiting for the 12 months to end for the last few months to get a new phone.
Its finally out of contract so we called to try and get renewed with the phone she wants.
After simple security q&a (see more later), the best the sales agent could do was to increase her contract in money and length to get a free phone.
I try for the best deal I can get – which isn’t any deal, so we decide to go elsewhere
My daughter looks on the various websites and we find various better deals ( she wants more text) but she doesn’t want to be without service and I don’t want more paperwork
We then find the same phone on the O2 website, free on a 12 month contract, so we try to do that, but of course that means a fresh contract and we therefore need to go back and cancel the old contract. We might as well try for a “common sense” saving of effort (for both of us and O2) whereby we don’t cancel and they just give us the online deal
We phone again, abandoned once on the “thinking of cancelling” option. Eventually got thro and then get transferred to the “right” person. She wants to know our security question, not the security answer, the question. Well 12 months have passed….you know where this is going. She says it’s a DPA regulation – I tell her its not. Its more than my bank (first direct) want. Slowly we negotiate different questions. The tariff we’re on. Its on the bill. Well it isn’t. (subsequently find a second page of a bill later with it on). Eventually we spend several minutes debating info before I find a bank file and give her bank details instead. I’m very wound up by now to say the least !
She cant do the common sense deal. So we need to cancel to buy again. She can’t cancel us, so she transfers us to “retentions” not cancellations.
I explain why we want to cancel. Cancel and not buy again, since the whole experience has been so dumb and annoying.
We now get the offer we wanted to start with – a free phone, a 12 month contract. And we get a load of free texts. No paperwork.
So we get to where we needed to be.
A waste of my time and the four agents we spoke to. And O2 are giving away money. 4 contacts and a give away. Expensive way to renew. That’s ok, they’ll say - we were retained.
We were churned, we were retained, we cost money in time and giveaways, in brand damage.
I asked both the last 2 agents if they could take customer suggestions about how to improve. The first said no, I’d have to speak to customer services. The second said yes she would. I wonder what it woudl say if you could see what she captured compared to what I offered as feedback.
Anyone at O2 there?
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