Archive for the 'O2' Category

Posted by: Peter Massey | 22.10.2012

I pulled this together a few weeks ago for someone and thought it may be useful to a wider readership, so posting it here. I don’t claim any analysis here but get in touch if you want to talk about implementing these tools

Webchat

Links to the various vendors here (some are sales oriented, some service, some social):

Liveperson Livechat, Oracle Rightnow, Zendesk, Logmein/Boldchat, Moxie, Who’s On, Netop, Zopim, Comm100, Olark, Velaro, desk.com, Kayako, Zoho,

I have a copy of a 2012 report on the market if you want but the main points are:

a) fast moving, lots of acquisitions

b) divergence between pure play chat and multichannel plays

c) width of functionality varies considerably but all dependent on understanding customer demands and being able to provide relevant data

d) artificial intelligence (understanding context and phrases) is still in early days but advancing

Avatars

Ikea’s is the classic ( as in “been around a while”)  retail FAQ avatar with push pages which really speeds things up – It’s  ”ask Anna” in the top bar. This one was provided by  Artificial Solutions. A good site for briefings on the various aspects of AI and natural language. They also do combined chat and avatar. Another is Creativevirtual who do O2, Virgin Mobile, Asda etc avatars – you can click into the various clients avatars and check them out.

An example of personal avatars on phones – Intel are pushing it.

Multichannel

The avatars can seem pretty rough still at first sight e.g. asked O2′s Lucy “supply iphone5?”, it gives “help with iPhones” link. It looks irrelevant and clicks through to a help page – but the first question there is “can I get the  iPhone 5 with O2?”. And a window popped immediately offering web chat with an O2 Guru. And the link led to relevant FAQ with strong very simple, very clear pages to go thro questions and evident links into forums to get self help ( powered by Lithium one of the leaders in community mgmt – integrates different social media and other channels so get one picture of customer, one set of MI etc) )

There are good ideas here re sales or assistance and applicable more widely. Do get in touch if you want to talk about implementing these tools

Knowledge, O2, customer experience design, reduction in contacts, social media | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 29.07.2009

Being back with O2 on my own phone after leaving Vodafone, it’s interesting to see what’s the same and what’s different. Professionally it’s reputed that 02 is pulling ahead on Netpromoter scores .

I have no inside knowledge on this but the stories suggest they may even be as high as +30, whereas others are between 0 and +10. Can anyone correct me there?

However as a customer I can see great attempts but no real difference. In the first month:

• Apple Store set it up well
• Internet tethering to use my iPhone as a dongle, paid for but not working – in fact the option has “impossibly” disappeared from my iphone
• Complete voice outage last Monday, caused missed work
• Signal outage again this weekend
• First ebill reminder came through – but my user name and password didn’t work, although I knew what they were. The fallback process failed as it had the wrong answer to my reminder question.
• So I had to call. Well done, I got through very quickly on a Sunday afternoon. The agent reset very quickly and told me how to reset back to my desired names. Obviously does this a lot….
• Tried to reset to what I can remember easily, but the choice was restricted. Tried again and it wants me to use my email address – too weak for me and it wouldn’t let me choose the name/password I associate with all my Apple stuff. I gave up so I’ll ring next time.
• Next time will be soon as my first bill is twice what I was expecting.

During all this, for professional interest I tried the website for everything. I couldn’t use the iphone as there was no signal…. Nothing to help in the c2c forum (presented oldest first – why?) and search was very sales orientated. The “announcements” just take you back to the support page with no announcements.

Come on O2, I reckon you can live your brand better. Share whatever your known pain points are with us customers. An open and honest set of announcements about known network problems. Maybe even a proactive text when it’s been fixed. Take part in the c2c forum, keep it up to date. Help make the topics relevant to the top reasons for contact. See, we’d be better connected to each other then.

Send me your views on the best customer forums and on 02

O2, customer forums | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 23.07.2009

I’ve recently made the transition from the Microsoft world to the Apple world. A rich vein for blogging but luckily for you, dear reader, I fell out of the habit of blogging as I twittered succinctly instead. Well now to make up for it….

Not just Microsoft was to be left behind. I moved from the rest of the world, as I got rid of Nokia and Dell at the same time. No offence to the Nokia world, I loved my old Nokia engine that only did simple things simply – but a waiter in Kashmir is dining out on the proceeds of our cash, phones and ipods stolen from the hotel rooms on our “LimeBridge goes trekking” global get together in June.

Digressing for a moment….did I tell you about seeing a snow leopard! Here it is! I’ll come back to that later

Any offence to Dell? I don’t know, I never tried to get help for daily crashes or a battery on their machine that struggled to make the 1 hour  journey into London. Or a shoulder ache from the weight. Ok, when my last machine gave up the ghost in the middle of a seriously hot project in the Cabinet Office I had to rush out and buy the highest spec machine I could. So its my fault I bought a dog. It’s my fault I should have read the blogs in more detail, I only got as far as Dell delivery delays but found a high spec, very reasonably priced one in PC World in a hurry.

But I didnt try to contact Dell or read a Dell site. Interesting.

I did try to contact the PC World site abut the battery and the crashing but they didn’t return their nicely formatted emails. I could have gone to the store but I’d got better things to do.

I did try making sure I had the latest updates from MS and I tried their forums but crashes just seem to be an expectation with Vista. 2 or 3 times a day was becoming unbearable. Put that with slow performance on a high spec machine and the loss of an hour a day isnt tenable. Just opening the machine could take me two train stops in the morning. You could make the tea, whilst saving a 2003 compatible file. I blame MS – whether or not it’s their fault I don’t know.

The other reason MS get the blame is what they did to their standard office products in upgrading from 2003 to 2007, the other “upgrade” I experienced, alongside Vista. No new functionality, is just you cant find any of it !!! After 3 months, I’ve got used to it. But why did they do that?

When I looked at my daughter’s Mac, I realised. They were training me to think Mac!!

So back to Kashmir and the stolen phone and ipod. I’ll save the insurance story for another blog, but of course I asked my PA on the emergency call to get them to redirect voice mail (can’t do that..) and get a new phone, sim and dongle. Now call me old fashioned but every bit of customer experience work we did with telcos in the 90s said the key churn point was a lost phone.  So I kinda expected this to be a slick process.

Whoops not at Vodafone. Call centre says you need a letters in writing to take to the shop. Shop says you didn’t need that letter for the phone. Whilst I’m there, can they replace my stolen dongle. Not without a written letter. But its £2 of plastic memory stick. No. I’m thinking of moving all our business account away. No. Very well then.

Off I go to the Apple store to replace my ipod. And that’s where it got expensive. Greeted as I entered by enthusiastic Apple fans, shown the tempting wares, I walked out with a ipod touch, the thing I came for. And a MacBook Air with no moving hard drive, endless  battery life and the sexiest touch this side of …….well anyway. And no Microsoft stuff to crash. To date a month in, it hasn’t crashed.

The only reason I didnt walk out with an iPhone was that they can’t sell a business account, only to individuals. So off I trot to the O2 store.

Then I meet the very ordinary environment and endless queue and the business prevention officers again. Everything in writing in triplicate bla bla. I give up.

And walk back to the Apple store and buy an iphone privately there. A very chatty lady from Oklahoma configured it and set it up and showed me all about it. In fairness to O2, I bought another iphone for daughter no.3 who was out of contract this weekend in Maidstone and they’re trying very hard to copy the Apple model. Much better, but no emotion.

So you get I’m an Apple fan now? Thoroughly

You get I’m a Vodafone, O2, PC World, Dell ‘neutral’. You get I’m a Microsoft ‘detractor’ -  or rather a Windows detractor. in fact I like Microsoft – they have great people, great ethos – just a lousy product that doesn’t work and they forgot the user interface was a key asset.

You can probably guess my 1-10 Netpromoter scores. Yes, a 9 for Apple and 3 or 4 for the others, I bet I can guess the companies’ Netpromoter scores, without knowing them.

But wait, it’s not that simple. I bet you can’t guess how many problems Ive had with the Mac and the iphone. Just as many as I had with the Dell and more than with my old phone. In fact the Mac wont sync with the mail server so I can’t use it fully. I can only get my old email history across if I give them both my machines for 48 hours. It turns out the solution is a mod to the operating system in September called, wait for it….. snow leopard! The bluetooth worked but now it doesn’t and the internet link option to the Mac has, impossibly, disappeared from the iphone. The gurus in store don’t know everything so refer to the c2c site (which is good) and although the call centre answers the phone, it’s very average.

Yet I’m still a raving fan – why? As a consumer, I haven’t worked it out.  But as a professional what I know is it’s crucial to understand the calibration of the drivers of netpromoter scores. Brand, price, product, service relative to segment. These are all elements of the ‘customer experience’ that are being scored. And what drives each element in detail is relevant if one wants to change the promotional activity by customers on customers. And this is a really interesting example.

An example, other companies cannot simply copy parts of, without understanding the whole. The Apple experience design.

So combining my consumer and professional hats, here are a few thoughts on why I’m an actual promoter despite what has happened

1. Brand
I was pretty neutral about the brand. Loved how my classic ipod made my music accessible, loved the New York store where I bought it ( blogged Aug 07). Loved the London store on the odd occasion I’d been in professionally examining. But really, was I a geek or a media person or a designer…..not as cool as that I’m afraid.

2. Price
Had looked before and decided it was very expensive compared to laptops, despite what fans said. Would have to buy more MS software on top because at work we only have licences for PCS.

3. Product
Yes they looked sexy, but once I’d played with the iTouch, the iPhone Mac Air I was wowed. This is what did it in conjunction with parts of the other factors. The swish of your fingers to do things….. Dont ask me why. Let me try harder to look:
a.  It’s very thin and very light – practicality. And the power lead is very light with light cable too so the total effect is a bag you don’t have to hump around.
b. Because there’s no moving hard drive, there’s v little heat to cool, so no fans, less power consumption and so endless battery – 7 hours showing at the moment.
c. Switching it on and off. It takes less than 2 secs to sleep and 1 second to be available when you open the lid. I just timed it mid sentence! This changes stuff. You can look up stuff on internet whenever you want. You can work on a tube. You can do the little things when you think of them, rather than putting them on a bit of paper.
d. The design is fab. The finish and surfaces are so great, the tiny magnetic power connector, the closing lid to the ports. The way the mouse pad feels
e. The touch functionaility. If I tap once, twice, three times, different things happen. I f I tap or swipe with two fingers. If I swipe up or down or across with four fingers, everything on screen whoooshes around so I can see them. If I press f8, I can see my 4 spaces – I have four screens to put different projects in so my desktop is huge. And the most basic thing, the keys are lovely.
f. The applications stay open when you ‘close’ them so they’re back in a jiff if you need them
g. The compatibility so far has been very high for files brought across or sent- the key thing I checked with other ‘promoters’ – Mac users. In fact, all bar one, all users were promoters.
h. The functionality of the core programmes is great and actually only took a few hours of playing with every function to learn. Having been in ‘confused’ mode with MS2007 must have helped. I would certainly have found it harder had I still been using the 2003 formats I know so well. Its certainly not perfect with about 3 controls needed to switch a bullet point off and on. I struggle to control the presentations full screen. Even when I use my iPhone as a remote control – so cool! But I bet there’s a control somewhere I haven’t learned yet.
i. Most of all, it just doesn’t stall, crash, or need a reboot. I have managed  to fox the USB port a couple of times by extracting without ejecting!
So yes the product itself is a big bit of my promoter score.

4. The service – design first and then experience
The key element of design has been putting the face to face retail experience at the heart of things. And recognising that face to face retail experience is drab to non existent in most places, or posh and snotty in others. Either way it puts you off. Retail seems to be at the heart of getting the brand passion across. It starts in the store design and completes by having  more than enough people all the time. All the stores I’ve visited are fully staffed with enthusiasts. People who really love Apple products and love working for Apple. You get approached for help in most stores, and even when its busy you can get help. The genius bar is available to book on line and get lessons or support as you wish. Just going back to the store, or different stores, a few times, you start to feel part of it.  When geniuses consult each other for help you feel part of the conversation. You learn how to get the most out of the Mac and iPhone and as a result you engage emotionally with it. The c2c site seems to be at the heart of what geniuses and the web support is about – again its being part of something. Less said about the call centres in comparison, it feels like a.n.other company.

The service experience is challenging. I’ve always seen that resolution is the the top driver of satisfaction, followed by helpful, knowledgeable staff. In this case I still lack a lot of resolution for certain things but haven’t (yet) become dissatisfied. I can’t yet give away my Dell until I see if Snow leopard stops my exchange sync. Check back in Septemeber and see….

Meanwhile, I’ll start to plot more scientifically the drivers tree for netpromotion.

Get in touch, if you want to share your thoughts on how Apple’s netpromotion works and how you’re calibrating spend against netpromotion, emotional engagement and the design of the experience.

Apple, Dell, O2, customer experience, netpromoter, vodafone | 2 Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 9.12.2008

I’m on the phone to an agent whilst I’m online. They are trying to help; I cant access any info about my daughter’s phone bills ( in my name) , only a general explanation of how to view a bill. But that’s just part of the story that’s been very familiar with my daughter’s phone over the past few years.

Story so far…Phoned yesterday because the bill is never the £35 that the tariff is supposed to be since we upgraded.

I was told the systems were down and to call back.

Called tonight and got thro options 1 and 4 to billing (not bad by IVR standards!) where I could hardly hear the agent for the background noise, specifically other colleagues talking. (It was Ventura: I asked and she said she’d had complaints today about noise). She couldn’t explain why my daughter’s bill is always higher than the £35 tariff, although identified extras were on the account.

She put me thro to retentions (after a long wait on hold) where he could explain more ie that a free extra granted 2 phones ago had started to be charged for automatically without request or permission. Not happy. A hole in the trust in any company that does that.  They’ve taken the extras off but he can’t backdate the overcharges so I’m now on hold (a very long hold) waiting for customer services so they can backdate the problem.

He’s come back just now and has sorted it with customer services by getting that colleague to fill in the form. Apparently that 3rd colleague will send a text in a day or two to confirm what they’re doing about it. 

He also found why I can’t see my bill online. It is because although it logged me in and accepted me, it hasn’t actually logged me in (useful !). He’s just reset ( changed) the password and username just in case, as it’s a common problem. Now I have to go back in and change it back to what it was, since that’s what I and my daughter have saved in different places.

Now we’re at the point of where I started. What’s the right tariff for my daughter since she’s using a small fraction of what we pay for, despite the fact the bill is higher than the tariff. He’s been able to take us to a lower tariff that meets the need better. Am I confident her bill’s will come through at the tariffed amount? Am I confident that we’ll not get hooked to another 12 months contract?

My other original reason to call was to get home internet changed over as my other daughter has been very pleased with it. I don’t know how long I’d been on the phone (c 30 minutes I think), but I wasn’t going to bother asking another question. And I’m very much less inclined to move our business account to O2 – something I’d asked my PA to look at since our current provider’s network seems to be crumbling (failed calls and connections, “error in connection” being very common; voicemails coming through 24 hours late). It’s such a shame since O2’s word of mouth from my daughter had got them to the top of my list.

Come on O2, you know you want to give your customers the ability to answer the common questions themselves ( I don’t understand my bill, What’s the best tariff for me? ) and staff, outsourced or not, the ability to answer these common queries in one place and take action. I blog this in the hope that it helps you justify some changes because of the business you just lost.

Customer satisfaction, O2 | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 12.07.2007

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?

O2, dumb things | No Comments