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.
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?
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.
C&G sent me a text this morning to welcome me as a new customer. I was only barely aware that I was. I’ve just remortgaged through a broker I’ve used for the last 4 years and now I’m on my third mortgage and third different provider. The only contact I needed with my last provider was to sign the form and then ring them to ask what was the best deal they could offer me at the end of the fixed rate period. It was a smooth process but not a relationship. My relationship clearly exists with the broker who takes all the hassle out of the process and has managed to get me great deals – yes I did check the market and realized that after 2 hours surfing the websites I was wasting my time trying to find a better deal. For me, choosing a mortgage is therefore just a matter of price.
At Budd we’ve talk for a long time about customers not wanting a relationship with their bank, or any financial service provider for that matter. So what can companies do to address this challenge? Still focusing on the basics is a critical factor. Sending a welcome text is not going to change my behavior in 2 years time, especially if they mess up on the straightforward process of processing my new application. In fact, in 2 years time I’ll probably look around for a new mortgage and if they can come close to the same deal I might stay with them. So how can they be competitive on the product? By being competitive on customer service. Reducing unnecessary contact, as we have talked about for a few years, is not just about reducing your costs but improving your service – as Amazon and others are demonstrating with Skyline more and more. Reduce costs to enable more competitive products, then wow me with basic service that works and I might still be a customer in 3, 4 or 5 years time (maybe longer!).
When the phone rings at 9pm and there’s a long pause and lots of crackle before someone says “can I speak with Mr Naylor”, you know it’s an India call centre. There’s an immediate reaction in me that wants me to hang up. Trouble is, when this call is from the fraud department of my bank and they want to let me know my card has been used in a fraudulent transaction, I need to speak to them.
Why has the Indian call centre industry reached this point? I think it’s because customers feel no emotional link with the agent. Efficient processes (when they happen) make the agents appear curt and poor processes make the agents appear incompetent. Either way, agents are frequently accused of not listening to customers and bulldozing their way through the call. It’s a no win situation.
Fixing this is not a quick exercise as it’s a problem that has been compounded by the industry itself over a number of years. I think the best that can be achieved is for customers to feel neutral about the experience of dealing with Indian centres. How long it takes to get to that point is anyones guess.
The web has certainly done its bit to kill off the IFA and I’m as skeptical as anyone about the money you pay them for the service they offer. I must be one of the few people who still has a relationship with an IFA for certain investment products including my pension. My pension is not going to set me up in a style to which I’d like to become accustomed just yet so I guess I’m just expecting the guy to do a periodic review of investment funds and keep me informed of any funds that are about to go down the pan.
I recently changed my pension payment arrangements which the IFA happily helped with but the pension provider completely screwed up - letters from the same department that contradicted each other, cancellation of new direct debits - that sort of thing. I told my IFA that I wasn’t happy about the mess up but in the end I didn’t lose out financially and didn’t really have much to do personally to get the problems fixed. I left that with him.
Today I recevied a letter from the pension provider offering me £100 compensation so long as I didn’t take the matter of ‘poor customer service’ to the Financial Ombudsman Service. The IFA had complained on my behalf and a 2 page letter explaining what went wrong had been the reply. I wonder how far I would have got with a complaint if I had not been working through an IFA? I probably wouldn’t have had the time, and certainly wouldn’t have had the impact of one of the UK’s largest IFA organisations.
I won’t say the value I see in IFAs has increased but I hope that when the time comes to draw down the pension, the amount I receive will be greater than the amount I would have got if I’d tried to manage my investment personally. Trouble is, I’ll never know.
Wonder if I should reject the compensation and hold out for £500. What do y’think?
I had the need to contact my contents insurer yesterday to check whether I could make a claim for my recently damaged camera. Ok, in itself it’s not a situation that creates a lot of emotion in most people, unlike a tree falling on your house or car as we could expect in the gales tomorrow, but to me, my camera is pretty important.
First attempt was quickly answered but after the initial chat I ended up on hold for 2 minutes before the call was unceremoniously dropped. Second attempt was answered by Guy who said “oh yes we have had problems with the phones today”. His attempts to put me through to the Claims team (funny, I thought I’d rung the claims number) failed so he proceeded to take all the details of the claim from me in person. Name, age, occupation, name of your insurer, burglar alarm fitted (“I DROPPED my camera…!”)….on and on.
“Isn’t this all on the system?”
“I don’t have access to the system here”
“So given that I have accidental damage cover, can you confirm that the camera will be covered?”
Silence for a moment… “We are not your insurer, we are only an agent and cannot confirm any details of a claim”.
“But you sold me the policy so you must know what is covered ‘in principle’, I’m asking ‘in principle’ ”.
More silence while a more empathetic response was considered. Then… “We are not your insurer, we are only an agent and cannot confirm any details of a claim”.
It’s absolutely true that we buy on price but wouldn’t it be great if insurers were willing to participate in an independent claims service rating? I’ve just begun this process so I’ll let you know how I get on. If I hear the word ‘sorry’ or ‘I understand’ at any point in the process I’m making a note!
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