Archive for the 'the best service is no service' Category

Posted by: tonyw | 29.09.2011

“Unfortunately, there are still [water] companies that are letting customers down when it comes to service. We are pressing these companies to make further improvements to reduce complaints from their customers.” – Consumer Council for Water, 2011

Confusing bills, charging disputes, metering issues – it could be any of the utilities, it just so happens that the recent  Consumer Council for Water report on complaint handling identifies these as the most common source of customer complaints in the water industry.  Why?  The results could have been predicted long before the report was published and I wouldn’t mind betting it’ll be the same issues that top the league table next year and the year after that.  Whilst some companies are reducing the overall number of complaints, others are going backwards.  Add to the mix that there is a general mistrust of utilities and the typical “flooding in winter followed by a hosepipe ban in the summer” scenario, and it’s not hard to see why the water industry has a lot to do to improve customer perceptions.  But, why would they bother?  Are they really serious about improving the customer experience and reducing customer effort when they operate in a monopoly?  Sure, the regulator will ensure that they meet some basic, minimum standards through the service incentive mechanism (SIM) but that’s a world away from a competitive environment where the option to churn is the ultimate sanction.

Well, perhaps one way of getting a better deal for customers is to focus on reducing operating costs.  Groan…that must mean an even worse deal for customers.  Not so, because eliminating unnecessary contact and reducing operating costs by a benchmark 20% comes with the handy benefit of reducing customer effort and improving the customer experience.  After all, most of us don’t want to be spending our time contacting our water company.  You know the stuff.  If you really had the time you’d call them and give them “what for” about the injustice of leaky taps, water meters and the millions of gallons of water lost due to poor water mains,  not to mention the traffic jam caused by them digging up the road on the school run.  But…can I really be bothered…and anyway, it shouldn’t be happening in the first place!

So how is that achieved?  At Budd, our passion is to help companies to stop doing dumb things to their customers and employees.  We work with our clients to implement our proven The Best Service Is No Service processes, decision flows and toolset to eliminate unnecessary and avoidable contact. 

If you’d like more information on The Best Service Is No Service, take a look at the web site or contact Peter Massey on 07802 793515.

the best service is no service | 1 Comment

Posted by: Peter Massey | 30.05.2011

In order to optimise self service or channel shift, there are a couple of simple places to start in a “Best Service Is No Service” solution: a) identify the customers’ need in the customer language and b) just test the journey and its variations.

A good example yesterday, phoning my insurer to add a car. The web site was not simple but I could eventually find the tiny “already a customer” area amongst all the sales messages. There was then a specific option for “adding a car to an existing policy” with a specific number to use. So far so good – I think I’m getting somewhere.

Then I hit the the IVR on that number. Long standard message that’s unnecessary, followed by choice which is evidently the main menu off the main number: sales, service, claim. A complete waste of my time finding and using the option against my need.

I pick the option for an existing customer. I then get the long standard message repeated again ( so there probably used to be a routing from that number I was given to this point – now wrongly routed obviously). I then choose the one for existing customer over new quote pending and something else I don’t recall. I then choose the add a car option.

So the IVR was well enough designed, few levels, obvious choices. Hopeless standard messages.

I get answered by someone in customer services who eventually says he cant add vehicles and I need to ring the sales line and gives me an 800 number to try. I’ve used it not long ago and know they don’t like doing anything but new sales ( spot the incentive scheme in overdrive).

So I go round again with the “direct” number. I end up in the same place, this time with an offer of a transfer to sales. I question them – “so to get to the place to add a car to an existing policy I need to deny I’m a customer?” – “yes, that’s correct”. No other comment – he’s obviously numb. So I do it again( surely I pressed something wrong) and this time take the transfer and start the add a car process ( which finishes some 90 mins later – another story).

The moral of the story is whether direct lines, IVRs or a combination, you have to travel and test the journeys and fix the details. Otherwise its dumb. Good start on web site, no facility to do online, wrong number, ok IVR design, wrong routing, 3 calls and 1 very long experience at the end of it. A LOT of customer effort, and a lot of cost to that business. No wonder the price was incredibly steep at the end of it and the twitterati are slagging them off.

Customer effort, IVR, customer experience design, insurance, self service, success factors, the best service is no service | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 7.03.2011

Today I renewed my passport at Victoria. Nightmare or? Read on…

I was impressed. In fact I can’t remember when I was more impressed. It was better service than any such service I have had for quite a while. It had pretty much the least customer effort as it could have had.

It was a really impressive, well designed multi-channel journey.

Here’s the journey:

• Passport coming up for renewal but don’t get many gaps when I don’t need it. Go to directgov and all the options are laid out in detail. Sometimes repetitive, rightly, of the major points.

• The quickest method is to take it to a regional office, all the details are there including maps etc and instructions what do to do, what to take, how to do it.

• I ring the 0300 number to make an appointment. The IVR isn’t too long winded and gives me the obvious option, I go straight through. He checks all the right conditions exist: – it is a renewal, I understand how it works, when to be where and what to bring with me, what it costs. And he gives me a code to bring. I think he asked me if I want a form and I say no I’ll down load one.

• Without being asked, a letter comes through the post confirming the same information again and giving me the code to be sure. It had a leaflet with the same information about what to do as the website.

• This weekend I hit the only snag. I go to the directgov site again to download the application form to go with my fresh, well new at least, photos. Can I find the renewal form? Lots of other forms but not that one and nowhere does it say it doesn’t exist on the site. The only option is for it to be posted to me.

• There is however a feedback slot at the bottom of each page. It explains that they wont respond, but that the feedback is to improve what’s on the site. So I tell them, unsure of whether it will do any good. We hot foot it to a friendly post office on Sunday morning and persuade them to unlock the forms and hand one over. Well two in case I get it wrong !

• This morning I go nice and early for my 930 for 945 appointment. Walking round from Victoria station, there are big signs sticking out so I can see immediately I’m going to the right place. Each different purpose has a different entrance.

• I walk in and the first thing I see is “ You said, we did” posters about how feedback had changed things. I am v impressed – so simple but so good to see. I am greeted by smiling security ( ex guerkhas to a man) and have my coat and bag scanned simply.

• Before I can get my coat on again a lady is asking what name ( so much nicer than what number ) and I’m given a ticket to go to the second floor. Before I can tweet my delight at “you said, we did” my number is called and I spend 2 mins at the counter whilst a genetleman ticks all the boxes on a form to say my paperwork is correct. He gives me a sheet of paper with a bar code and price and I walk to the cashier and pay my not inconsiderable £129 – £50ish more than standard renewal from memory. As per the website, the phone call, the letter he confirms it will be ready to collect in 4 hours.

• This evening I go back to the separately marked exit and join a queue. Uh oh… but no, all they do is take receipts and hand over passports, so the whole thing took 6 minutes despite the queue.

So is this perfect? Not quite but heh its close enough. It’s all basic stuff but a wow to find someone doing the basics right.

It’s very simple and impressive and a great example of designing, delivering and reinforcing a “Best Service Is No Service” journey where knowledge and operations follow quite clearly a common path: I want to renew my passport”.

What could be better?

• They could have picked up that I said I’d get a form off the site and told me on the call (and on the website) I need to go to a post office to get a renewal form. And why.
• They could still come back later saying “you said, we did” when they fix this.
• They could have asked for suggestions in person whilst I was there – I really hope they don’t spoil this experience by sending a rubbish feedback survey out afterwards.
• They could charge me less for doing it all – but frankly the time saved and de-risking of lost documents was worth the extra £50 given that it was done so effortlessly.
• The guy ticking the form and the lady handing over the passport could have been as cheerful as the security and cashiers – but heh, I don’t really need that.

Everything they did was simple, obvious, but evidently well thought through and done in a way to make it as fast and simple as possible. They had baked in the removal of error upstream in the process so errors would not occur on the visit and ruin the result or the experience. All of the information was consistent, whether on the website, phone, leaflet, form, in the building. They had a means to get feedback which was open to me, not a tick box, and it was evidently used.

So well done whoever you are – do step forward and take a bow at the Passport Office.

Seen any multi channel examples as good? Email me if you do

Customer effort, brilliant basics, customer experience design, fast+simple, the best service is no service | 1 Comment

Posted by: Ian Mapp | 22.12.2010

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

Posted by: Peter Massey | 11.11.2010

We’ve been doing a lot of thinking about communities and the future of business this last 2 weeks. Well someone has to. Serious head scratching, some desk learning, asking the best people ( thanks Heather, Tim particularly, our advisory board members).

We met the guys from giffgaff this week who epitomise the good example of what’s possible with social business- v inspiring:)

It made me realise that we are very rich in community building experience that once understood, we can liberate further:

1) Today I had an inspiring day: helping 4 companies as a result of our  client communities helping each other.

2) Last night we had a v fine time talking about apps with people we work with, some regularly, some from time to time.

3) Tuesday I learned what an unconference was and that we invented it first in LimeBridge.

Just 3 examples of the communities we’re in and have helped to generate.

The most significant step in learning for me this week was that social business is not about social media, it’s about being social. It’s about your values. And it’s not new. If your values bring people together and they include being transparent, honest and sharing then you can build social businesses using today’s tools.

Social businesses can build and grow fast on a popular sentiment: that companies don’t work for their customers and their employees. Amazon, eBay, first direct, Innocent are not new businesses but they are businesses that grew fast and strong because they are social businesses with very strong values and ethics.

I’m going to invent a word for it: being an “uncompany”.

I think Budd from now on will be an uncompany. LimeBridge already was, we just didn’t know it.

Next year we want to generate another community of people who share our passion and are trying to make “The Best Service Is No Service” processes work in their businesses. That’s why we’re thinking hard. Maybe our manifesto should just be that passion: “How do we stop doing dumb things to our customers and our people?”

Let me know if you want to take part

Right, off to bed – should we be an uncompany providing nano-consulting?  See you – same time, same place, tomorrow’s thinking

Uncategorized, passion, social media, the best service is no service | 3 Comments

Posted by: Ian Mapp | 15.10.2009

One of the core Best Service Is No Service principles is that a company should be proactive in its dealings with customers – taking the initiative as a strategy to prevent problems and unnecessary contacts; thus improving the customer experience.

Well, it happened to me today and I have to say I was very, very impressed – not least because it was totally unexpected.

I am currently spending a lot of time on a client site and using taxis regularly to travel between hotel, airport and two client office locations. A taxi had been booked to take me from the hotel to the office that is my ‘base’ in the morning and another one to return me back to the hotel at the end of the day.

Due to the schedule of meetings, I changed the morning journey to drop me (and two colleagues) at the other office. Whilst we were still en-route, the taxi firm(Edinburgh City Private Hire) called to check whether they should alter the return journey to be a pickup from the second office.

Wow!

Simple, but powerful.

Common sense and obvious you might say, but certainly not a common experience. This kind of joined-up thinking is all too rare – so well done to them.  If you find yourself in Edinburgh, I recommend you call 0131 477 4000 when you need a taxi – and tell them a happy customer sent you.

Now, if they only had online bookings – they could deflect a whole lot of calls to self-service!

brilliant basics, customer experience, customer experience design, fast+simple, good things, taxis, the best service is no service | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 22.02.2009

I was asked 3 questions about contact centres for a website recently and I thought I’d share them with you:

1)         What was the biggest challenge facing the contact centre industry in the last 12 months and how did they overcome it?

Whilst there are sexy new things we’re doing like customer help customer, analytics and new ways of knowledge sharing, its really about  the same old challenges to brilliant operating basics that should be the focus for managers who are making big strides.

TOP OF THE LONG LIST OF INTERACTING BASICS ARE :

• a) Why customers have to contact you at all
• b) How the business model changes to focus on removing unnecessary contact, driving excellence in self service and engaging the whole business in removing root causes of frustrations and listening to feedback and intelligence from the contact points
• c) Operating effectively to meet demand
• d) Understanding what knowledge the website and staff need to answer customer needs
• e) the role of contact centres in providing feedback and intelligence to the rest of the business; and how to get the mountains of customer feedback gathered around the business to be useful

 2)         What are the key issues you expect the industry to be tackling in the next 12-18 months?

• a) Embedding new business wide processes that remove at least 20% of unit costs every year  by using feedback and what front line staff know to drive change
• b) The move to customer help customer model causing the role of contact centres to change rapidly
• c) The same ones as before on brilliant basics of running contact centres and self service channels

 3)         Could you give us some insights on how companies can stop doing stupid things to their customers and the benefits it is bringing to their organisations?

Our mission is “How do we stop doing dumb things to our customers and our people?” so we have lots to say on this topic. If I can paraphrase the question – the most successful businesses are removing things systematically by installing and embedding new company-wide management processes based on a different kind of data. The least successful businesses keep kicking off analysis and then generating projects to fix things: we call this “it’s raining projects”. The least successful businesses are swamped with the feedback they request from customers, but don’t act on. For more contact peter.massey@budd.uk.com or take a look at www.budd.uk.com

Customer satisfaction, Voice of the Customer, customer experience, feedback, listening, mission, self service, the best service is no service | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 31.07.2008

The contrast in use of tax payers resources, the politics and the bigger system and the good news….

Is my tax £ being well spent?

I love Jeremy Clarkson’s idea that the police shouldn’t be allowed to fine you for car parking until they return your stolen goods!I was struck by the contrasting use of resources around Soho Square as I walked into work yesterday. In Greek St, there was a police cordon around a bar. Uh oh must have been a murder. Two officers, once taking photos of the scene. At the opposite end of the square, parked opposite Soho St, was a Smart car with CCTV on the roof. It was aimed up the one way street from the wrong end. Presumably to catch cyclists going the wrong way up the street, since cars cant turn into the street the wrong way easily given the shape of the traffic islands on Oxford St – itself a street only for buses and taxis so unlikely to generate much “driving” crime. There were two guys sat in the Smart car reading the Sun.

The contrasting focus of manpower is striking in a time of newspaper headlines about knife crime, rising prices and taxes.

The wider system

Not only do cameras everywhere make me feel less safe, but they make me aware of government. It strikes me that everything that is government charged, privatised and vaguely regulated (and I use the two words specifically), or is an effective monopoly is just going through the roof. Parking fines rising to £120, gas going up 35%, my station car parking going up 17%, fuel rising to £1.34 – but more noticeably the gap between unleaded and diesel jumping from circa 6p to 14p. Yet the money raised doesnt seem to make any difference to the services offered.

It seems that an economic downturn is a great excuse to screw customers. Does the government thing that people don’t see the connection between the way government governs and regulates, the way business works and the way investors invest. 

Maybe Mr Brown would be better trying to make the adjustments in pricing happen in the stockmarket, not in the high street. Centrica and British Gas is a great case in point. Poor old British Gas has to hike prices whilst Centrica raises its dividend to shareholders, claiming poor old pensioners need the money from their pension funds. Doesnt matter, its still the customers who fork out more to investors via a business and weak regualtion/competition. It feels like we are just paying for the fact that the government sold all the family silver years ago and can no longer control large multinational players, many foreign owned, who will do what they need to do to keep their shareholders happy overseas as funding gets harder to raise.

So Mr Brown – go find a better lever to pull – talk to the analysts and investors. Unless they expect and accept that profits will suffer as markets restructure, without sacking CEOs or ransacking share prices, the CEOs will continue to pump customers for short term gain.

But what about the good news?

The good news is that there are richer pickings for CEOs and government to be made from removing waste than even pumping customers for money they dont want to give. The Cabinet Office agenda is to save 50% of “avoidable contact” with citizens from every goverement department. Not to sack people and save money, but to free people up to do more valuable things (than catching cyclists….). Now this I get. If CEOs set the same challenge to remove 50% of unncessary contact then there would be real change in the customer experience. At the moment there’s a lot of pussyfooting around with cost savings, not fundamental change.

Why is contact rate so important to the experience and the economics? Take for example, last week I had to get my divorce papers done. I really dont like paperwork, but 8 years hanging around is ridiculous. But heh it’s easy – I managed the hard bits easily with only 2 contacts. (Dont let that give you ideas!).

A visit to directgov led to all the forms and how to fill them in. A copy of the marriage certificate within 24 hours all done online. The only contact was to check the fee to pay – it looked like the figure it was, but it didnt say “divorce” on it, so I called to check – all details being quickly available to do that too. The other contact? Meet with the ex to sign the forms too, of course. Job nearly done. A great experience, very little work for me or anyone else, for a complex task.

Then there was splitting a pension. I shall keep the innocent unnamed since they were very helpful. But suffice to say, after looking at the website and even starting with a personal contact, it took several people to get involved to clearly establish what needed to happen. No action has been taken yet, but I can see why their SLA is 4 months to act! I havent counted the calls or emails but it must have been a dozen. Must have cost them a fortune.

So maybe the goverment’s transformation agenda is working better than we notice. Maybe private business can learn a thing or two. Certainly government is giving The Best Service Is No Service serious attention. And we’re going to try and help with an event on the 29th September – a goverment summit we’re running with Contact Centre Clinic in Liverpool. The Cabinet Office will be speaking along with several top public and private companies. But mainly we’ll be causing people to talk to each other and take back specific actions they can take in their government department, police force, NHS body or local authority. And of course private companies are welcome to learn too. Get in touch with joanne.sparkes@budd.uk.com for more details. PS and its £250 – good experiences are always less expensive to give than dumb ones!

Government, Healthcare, Uncategorized, contact rate, customer experience, the best service is no service | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 23.06.2008

A customer on my train spent 50 minutes this morning arguing with the guard. The guard’s credit card machine had taken his transaction twice according to the receipts. The guard “knew” it hadn’t because it made this error before.

The customer wanted confirmation that it hadn’t taken his money twice. The guard couldn’t do that but asked the customer to write in. Naturally the customer did not want to waste his time when it wasn’t his fault. Both were locked in an impasse.

The supervisor was called by phone. The conversation was not understood by the supervisor. Several times the customer asked the supervisor not to talk over him. He eventually told him (“Jim”) that he did not believe that Jim “understood what I’m saying” since he hadn’t listened to him.

My point isn’t better training for the ticket man or the supervisor. It’s two questions:

Why didn’t the machine get fixed when the conductor knew it was broken?

How much time was wasted and how much damage done to SouthEastern’s brand?

Uncategorized, complaint, customer experience, the best service is no service, train | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 23.04.2008

Having a great time in Tulsa. Tornado warnings apart. Apparently they can suck you out of your cellar if the doors aren’t strong enough. The locals take them seriously!

As they do their guns – a lovely sign on the main entrance to Avis’ call centre asks you politely not to bring guns in. We had a little joke about it, but our host said with a straight face “we’re hunting people and sometimes we forget…”. Maybe she said “hunting-people” but who knows.

Service is of course prompt, peremptory and American. We’ve had t-shirts made up saying “yes we are ok, and no we dont need anything since you last asked 63 seconds ago”. And sweatshirts saying “please turn the aircon off”.

On the upside, Delta Airlines now has service before and on its flights. New planes but no seat back TVs or headrests that keep your head up yet, but heh it was cheap. Hotels, shops and restaurants all have assistants who try to help and heh it’s really cheap. And the TV is plastered with democratic primaries and heh they’re really not cheap.

LimeBridge colleagues are all in great form at our 12th global gathering. Integrated voice of customer is the next big thing (ask me peter.massey@budd.uk.com ) and it’s great to see just how far the book has come – Amazon stock being sold out if a hot topic.

Tomorrow is our US Forum with 25 major companies – can’t wait. What a way to spend St George’s Day. Must fish out that Henry V quote – it’s also Shakespeare’s 444th birthday.

Not many people in Tulsa know that. Still, only 24 hours til…..it’s over (A small joke for music fiends!)

airlines, the best service is no service | No Comments