Archive for the 'feedback' Category

Yet again the 8.51 National Express from Peterborough to Kings Cross evades me. Not that I was late. The car park that is supposed to open to non-season ticket holders at 8.45, yet again fails to open until 8.50 as the train is making its way into the station with one of those ‘I’m on time’ smiles across the face of the driver (I imagine).

The story of the new car parking system is one that any regular will talk to you about. It’s a blog or ten in itself. I know it’s no use complaining about the whole system but decide to test the customer service response about the car park opening.“We’ve asked for a new part but been told we can’t have it” says the customer service representative on the station.

“We go out there every morning usually to reset the clock but you can’t do it before 8.30, and sometimes we forget” he continues.“Most times” I add. “To be fair, yes”, he says

“So when do you expect it to be replaced” I continue. “Not sure, as I say we not able to get the part” he repeats with a broad smile and friendly open hand guesture that says ‘love to but…not my problem’

So I leave with a sideswipe at the whole car parking system. “Rip the whole lot out while you’re at it” - which gets a hearty laugh of agreement. I walk away feeling I’ve lost the battle. (Is it a war?)

I use the next 35 minutes before the next train arrives to write this blog. I then use my 3G datacard to post it before getting on the train. Why is the on-train WiFi free? Because it never bloody works!I feel better…until tomorrow morning at 8.45.

National Express, accountability, feedback, train | No Comments

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

A piece on unified communications caught my attention today. Findings from research commissioned by Siemens Communications Inc. was reported byTMCnet, its focus was on the techie side of unified systems, workflows, and communication process in customer-facing enterprises. Unsurprisingly, the findings show that large organisations waste a huge amount of money compensating for poor communications between staff. Eg enterprise of 1,000 people with average 62% in customer service and sales could be losing as much as $13million every year in lost productivity and avoidable expenses. Whilst all this is relevant and measurable, there is another waste going on in customer-facing organisations which often goes completely unnoticed. Namely, great nuggets of wisdom piling up on the frontline - I’m talking all those bits of realtime, qualitative feedback from customers via front line agents that if consistently collected, analysed - and then something done about them by the business - would enable companies to truly begin delighting their customers and bringing in revenues - not just plugging the leaks. Of course, you need a process and tools in place to do that - but often that’s not as complex as you think. Sometimes, it just requires managers to reassess what ‘thinking customer’ means in terms of sustaining feedback from the frontline - and start panning for gold. That way companies will get to hear what customers are really telling them, not just findings of a post call IVR survey - which rarely ask the type of questions that fundamentally make the difference to us, the customers.

Voice of the Customer, feedback, frontline agents | No Comments