Archive for the 'dumb things' Category

An outstanding dumb moment this morning from BMI, flight BD081

On Weds I flew out to Belfast from Heathrow in row 6. I was only allowed to check in on a middle seat even though there the plane was half empty. As it turned out the window seat next to me was empty and I moved into it once the door closed. I tweeted about why do I need to be made to feel third class, presumably for buying cheap tickets, when there are plenty of seats.

It also reminded me that I don’t like the arbitrary number of cheap seats vs full price economy they display on their website. I’m used to Easyjet and Flybe where its just once price. Yes the price moves up nearer the time, but the whole plane moves up together. The BMI booking shows you you can still book more expensive seats in economy – i.e. they just dont want to sell you the lower price. It riles. Nearly as much as how much money BA are wasting to advertise their USP – being older than anyone else… – do you get that ad? I don’t. Surely a case of an old badge on old clothes.

So now it’s v early Friday morning going back. Same thing at check in, only middle seats allowed. I get row 7. Plane still half full. There’s 3 of us in row 7, ABC and nobody in row 6.

It takes a while to board as the lady on the aisle has to get up for me and then we both have to get up for the guy in the window seat. Why have none of the traditional airlines read the paper that says boarding by letter rather than number is way faster. A & F first, B & E second, C&D last. Families can board together. No one has adopted it.

Now to the dumb stuff. There’s 3 of us stuffed in 7ABC and I need to work. After take off I move forward to an empty row 6. I am approached by the stewardess to tell me I shouldn’t have moved.

“But it’s empty and that one’s full”. Ah but I have crossed an invisible barrier into the front of the plane…..

“The seats are the same, there’s no curtain and, I sat here on the way out”.

“Yes but you’re now in premium economy”.

“Let common sense apply – surely?”

“Well I’ll have to check” …as the steward comes forward. He doesn’t look at me or talk to me, only to his stewardess.

She relays to me that “he’s not happy” as it could be that a passenger in the back could be a premium customer and could see me go forward and could be offended. Presumably premium customers are trained to see the invisible curtain and invisible difference in the seats and know that it moves from Wednesday to Friday!!

Generously, after admonishment, I am allowed to sit and work.

No wonder the Flybe flights are full and the BMI ones half empty.

A classic dumb thing. I wonder if I’ll get told off if I ask to take their photo? OK back to work…

airlines, customer experience, dumb things | 1 Comment

What does it say about a bank when the easiest and least “customer-effort” transaction is closing an account? I’ll leave you to ponder what the right answer to that question should be, and limit myself to telling you the story.

Despite the evidence to the contrary, I continue to believe that companies do actually take notice of the world around them and try to learn from the best of their competitors / peers. I guess that makes me a “glass half full” kind of person. Even so, I should not have been surprised by my recent experience with a UK online bank.

Like everyone else, I am keen to find any kind of reasonable return from my (admittedly modest) savings. This has been tough over the last couple of years with low rates of interest. Like many others, I have been tempted by the special 12 months bonus rate offers and opened such an account in late 2009.

The bank in question was then a new venture from a well-established UK financial institution, perhaps best known for it’s insurance products. When they decided to create an entirely online banking arm,  I am sure they studied the existing providers. After all, Internet banking is hardly a new phenomenon any more.

But, if they did study competitors or best practice, they were not good students because the result was an all-too typically appalling customer experience. The initial account opening process was not too awful, although my memory is of too many things arriving in the post in a rather disjointed fashion. But I cannot be sure that is an entirely fair assessment as I am aware how much negative overlay might have been added by later, worse interactions.

I have only needed to transact on the account three times (it is, after all, for savings) – twice to transfer money in and, a few days ago, to transfer some out. Because of the infrequency of use, I could not remember all of the relevant security information to gain access. I was okay with remembering two of the needed three pieces of information – unique customer ID, online password and PIN – but could never remember all three.

The fail-safe security design meant that the account was blocked after three failed attempts … an action about which I have very mixed feelings. I can understand that  it is a good thing to limit the vulnerability of accounts to being ‘hacked’ – and applaud that. But, at the same time, the risk has to be balanced with how the experience is managed for valid but forgetful customers.

Other organisations providing secure commercial online transactions have long ago figured out how to help customers recover their security information via self-service. This not only allows the customer to complete the interactions quickly and efficiently, it also reduces the workload on customer services staff. Indeed Amazon has had this cracked for about ten years now. (As a n aside, I am not sure that ‘cracked’ is a good choice of word in this context …)

But, in the case of this bank, no such luck. Hope was raised initially with a ‘Forgotten your password?’ hyperlink, but dashed when clicking this link only produced this onscreen message:

“Please contact our Customer Services Team for assistance on 0845 xxx xxxx  (our opening hours are: Mon, Tue, Thurs, Fri 08:00-18:00 Wed 10:00-18:00).”

Now, that was doubly frustrating. Not only could I not help myself, but I could not get help at all at that time (Saturday afternoon). And they all have a nice lie-in on Wednesdays! Actually, given the way I felt at that point, I could understand that their agents are probably exhausted and stressed-out having to deal with irate customers all day. So much for making banking accessible 24 x 7 on the Internet.

By Monday morning, my anger had escalated to the extent that I had decided not to transfer some money any more, but rather to transfer all of the money and close the account (but you knew that was coming already, didn’t you?). I mentally steeled myself for the inevitable conversation with the customer retentions team and dialled. Only three options on the IVR (good!), of which one was to close an account. After choosing that option, and while I waited to be answered, I mused on the possible reasons why the closure option had such prominence. Part of me hoped  it was in order to get defecting customers to the specialist recovery team as quickly as possible, but my suspicion was that the decision was more prosaic – it was simply happening a lot.

Still, I anticipated some attempt to retain my business; even if only to offer me the current ‘special deal’ for new customers. But no. Nothing. Not even a question as to why I wanted to close the account. In fact, the whole call – from dialling, through holding on for a reply, to having confirmation of the balance being transferred and the date it would get to the  bank – took less time than it has taken you to read this blog post! Super efficient, but a super-wasted opportunity to hear my  perspective on the dumb things being done by this company to their customers.

Photos: courtesy of EpSos.de and Martin Kingsley

customer experience, customer experience design, dumb things, the best service is no service | 1 Comment

I use airports a lot. Many seem to be plastered with HSBC red lines, pretty pictures and slogans. Like the one above ” our belief is what we learn from one customer will help us to better serve another”. Of course that makes me wonder how they learn from each customer. Before giving any company feedback I always ask “what would you do if I gave you some feedback?”. From the response you can always tell whether there is an organised way of doing this. And you can tell whether the member of staff believes in it and so tries to get feedback. Or whether they know its a waste of time, turn defensive and try not to take anything on.

Today I had the latter experience with HSBC. Again. Why was I trying to give feedback?

The security on their business bank account is a dumb process with dumb questions. I told them that back in April and before. The security process involved me

• guessing if we have an overdraft facility – we’ve never asked for one, but I certainly don’t know if they gave us one and with a 50/50 chance of being right, I’d hardly call it a security question
• going online, opening the account and reading back the last transaction.

Talking to them today just took me straight back to the multiple run ins with security and my card being cut off whilst trying to get back from Sweden during the ash cloud problem (see blog ). Each time I try to give them feedback but I know I’m wasting my breath by the way it’s rebutted.

Why did I have to call the call centre today anyway? I don’t deal with the banking after all. Months and months of trying to change a name on the account. I was asked to call the call centre by the branch because the paperwork we sent in weeks ago had come through but wasn’t correct. The call centre say it is correct, so it was a complete waste of my time anyway. I asked my PA to call the guy in the branch back to confirm – but she can’t. You can’t call a branch. So much unnecessary customer effort around what should have been a simple change months & months ago.

In April I got so fed up with the way HSBC business accounts work that I tried to move our business bank account. I couldn’t get anyone who would recommend their banking supplier and all the forums were poorly rating everyone. So we took the second best in the consumer world ie Co-Op but the effort involved stopped us eventually. You had to join the Federation of Small Businesses for a fee. They insisted on coming to see you even through you didn’t want to see them. The account opening team screwed up the names and addresses – so we stopped at that point.

So much unnecessary customer effort around what should surely be the simplest process – winning a customer.

So some questions for HSBC:

• When oh when will first direct, clearly the best in the consumer world, open a business account so something sensible can be offered in the SME market.
• What has HSBC done, since spending millions on advertising, to fulfil the slogan ”what we learn from one customer will help us to better serve another”. What have they done to make it practical and true?
• What did marketing think when they made that slogan?

If anyone at HSBC is listening – please reply? I’d love to talk

Customer effort, HSBC, Marketing promise, customer experience, dumb things, financial services, first direct | No Comments

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 | 1 Comment

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

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