Archive for the 'fast+simple' Category

Customer Managed Relationships put the customer in control. Like many of the theories of the last 5 years it builds on the potential that customers now have to tender for services they want, search the web for best deals and control who and how gets to see your personal information. If you want to read more about the theory, Alan Mitchell has been running a website called Right Side Up and the Buyer Centric Forum for a few years now. He spoke at a great Budd networking evening recently.

The point of this is that there is now a new service available from a company called fonolo in Canada that offers two things:

1. You can visually navigate a company’s IVR menu system to access the option you want before dialling. When you’re connected, the system will connect you. The menus have been transcribed by clever speech recognition and a bit of human intervention. That’s great and especially useful in the mobile phone world where listening to menus and pressing buttons are quite hard to do at the same time. Ok, not exactly CMR but perhaps the mapping of menu structure might help some companies to see how complex they make things for the customer and at least lead to simplification. For one, I know that most companies couldn’t tell you exactly what their menu structure actually looks like so that information is highly valuable!
2. The CMR application is the ability to track all your conversations with the company. With my ’stop doing dumb things to customers’ hat on, you should avoid the need for a long series of interactions by fixing issues first time or avoiding them at all. But reality for now means that a customer could find very useful the ability to have a history log of all their interactions, plus a recording of all the conversations.

Here’s a screenshot of the website in action. This is a highly innovative idea and a practical way of putting the customer in control.

What makes this application even more impressive is that the code is all open source and they are encouraging developers to extend the applications. There must be other great examples of CMR coming to life out there with Fast+Simple solutions for customers.

Customer Managed Relationships, IVR, customer experience design, fast+simple, queue, self service | No Comments

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

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

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

I stood in the pouring rain on tuesday evening at the railway station car park waiting to pay for ticket. Nothing unusual about that other than the fact that 2 weeks ago I wouldn’t have had to do it - stand in the rain that is. In their infinte wisdom, GNER have installed new paystations. All three of these are positioned low for disabled use with keypads and screens angled so that 99% of people have to bend right down to see where the card goes and read the screen. Of course, there should be disabled access machines but do we need 3? Probably, since there’s a good chance that 2 will be frequently out of order.

As a result of this and the PIN checking process, the average time to pay for your car park ticket has doubled and the receipt is now the length of one you’re likely to get at Tescos the week before Christmas so they quickly fill up your wallet (when the machine hasn’t run out of paper that is).

Ok, so I sound like a grumpy old man. Well, call me that if you wish but I just thought technology should be here to make our lives easier. Barclays are introducing their new OnePulse card for cashless transactions of £10 - simply wave the card. GNER have introduced new chip and PIN machines to make paying £10 harder and slower.

Who’s getting it right??

Barclays, GNER, brilliant basics, fast+simple | No Comments

Finally gave in (again) to the mid life crisis and bought an iPod. Apple’s Regent St store wins hands down for a shopping experience.

It’s got loads of room, loads of demo items, loads of staff who know what they’re doing. Easy therefore to get the right thing for my daughter and for me!

Loads of queues for the till though. But a little magic means the staff spot the predicament and join you in the queue to take your order and bring you the goodies. So you leave before you even move down the queue.

Final touch: no paper receipts, just one waiting in your inbox along side the csat scoring request.

Fast+Simple shopping done simply well.

fast+simple | No Comments

Jonathan Wilson is moving from our advisory board (see www.budd.uk.com/people.html) to lead Budd’s executive coaching and change management. He reminded me the other day about the Gallup data on the 12 key questions to ask your staff ( and yourself !) if you want to know what happy bunnies they are.

I won’t fire them all at you, but the first four are an interesting self test. Try them:
1 Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2 Do I have the right materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3 At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4 In the last 7 days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?

Let us know what you find…. Email us - peter.massey@budd.uk.com

I started to find the 12 questions by Googling but, as is too often the case these days with Google, lots of intermediaries are top of the list. Luckily Amazon was one of them. I pressed one click to go to the book that contains them “First, break all the rules”. I pressed one click to add it to my basket, one click to check out and one click to confirm. Approximately 20 seconds. That was Thursday and the book arrived today Saturday. That’s what we call fast+simple.

Had any similar experiences? Email us with them - peter.massey@budd.uk.com

Amazon, fast+simple, people | No Comments