Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

Posted by: Katie | 1.02.2012

We are delighted to announce this years Stop Doing Dumb Things Unconference!

At Budd, we feel customer and employee experiences are connected, so we invite you to join us at the Stop Doing Dumb

This unconference has been design to transform how your people treat these connections and what is great is that because we are an unconference you can leave and join discussions as you wish and tailor the day to fit your businesses needs.

Visit our SDDT Website for more information or dive right in and book your tickets here.

We look forward to welcoming you!

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Posted by: Katie | 5.01.2012

Happy 2012 to one and all!!  We hope you have all had a good rest over the festive season.

We have had a busy start to the year already and with two newbies there is lots of change in Budd-land!

To those of you who received one of our lovely 2012 calendars we hope you are enjoying it! If you haven’t got one yet drop Katie an email katie.player@budd.uk.com and she’ll pop one in the post!

We thought that you’d like a little intro to our “Budd-ing” newbies so you can get to know them a little:

• Becca’s experience is very customer focused. She previously worked at a large concierge service looking after their most high net worth clients and as a result has a very good understanding of just how demanding a customer’s needs can be. Her role at Budd will be mostly based in Marketing and spreading the word of ‘Budd’ (as well as those cartoons) in order to reach more people.

• Katie was also working with Rebecca at the concierge service however, she traditionally comes from a more administrative background. Having worked with MP’s and in event organisation for a national children’s charity.  She will be focusing on supporting the Budd team, the marketing and anything else in between.

And with the above information we bid you a farewell for now and look forward to working with all our clients both existing and future ones!

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Posted by: Jo Sparkes | 16.11.2011

I was lucky enough to have to attend this year’s CCA event as Peter was in France and we had to have someone to give the Budd sponsored award of ‘Best Customer Experience Centre’

This task fell to me do, with the winner of the award this year being MBNA

 

However, it wasn’t just the Gala event and awards that made the two day session one to remember (although seeing a lookalike Lady Gaga sing live at the awards ceremony did make being in a rainy Glasgow seem not too bad!) but the quality of the presentations in the preceding 1 ½ days and some of the key messages that came out really made me think.

The challenges that face customer service are getting more complicated as each year go by, but they are also making it a far more exciting place to be, with increasing opportunities to get it right for the customer and the business.

Problem is it also seems that we are still not getting some of the basics right.

Social media is now a force to be recognised, but very few companies (and I am talking single figure % here) have a clear and aligned strategy as to how to maximise learning and deliver effective service.  Some of the speakers seemed to think that Social was the only way of capturing the Voice of the customer (VoC), but I think that’s a bit too simplistic.

We did hear from Dave Carroll, the chap whose guitar was so kindly damaged by United Airways (look at his YouTube videos, United Broke My guitar). His was a classic case of being not listened to, and then fobbed off as not having followed their rules in reporting the incident in time.

From a silly mistake it escalated into a costly PR problem.

What United, and probably many other companies do not expect, is the sheer volume of view responses to YouTube videos.

In a week Dave had in excess of 1,000,000 hits.

Another case of social driving embarrassing messages was Lily Allen complaining about her BT Internet. In this case BT reacted quickly, maybe a lesson for United? (although as a BT customer I felt a little frustrated at not receiving the same response when my internet went down, but I accept I cannot sing)
It shows how powerful one voice can be if it uses the existing social channels to best effect. Albeit, these are professional entertainers and have more of the public ear, but still salutatory messages.

We also need to consider how we use both web and social media when targeting or creating service channels.

Ipsos – Mori advised us that 40% of females over 65 do  not have access to the internet, they then went on to say that in the majority of cases women are the main decision maker when buying certain high value goods, such as cars. So balancing your marketing and servicing channels becomes even more complex    

Emails have been around for a while, but apparently we are still not recognising that we need to respond quickly or analyses content to help understand VoC in more detail.

On a more positive note research carried out by the CCA has found that the majority (60% plus)of customer still want to talk to someone rather than use self-serve.

So Call Centres are here to stay for a while and the skills to deliver service and capture VoC are still high on most peoples agenda.

Ian Morton

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Posted by: Peter Massey | 16.09.2011

I just noticed that I hadn’t blogged for 47 days – OMG. Still those of you who follow me on Twitter will not have gone hungry at least.

Great service, useless service – the difference grows bigger all the time. Having travelled in the US and Europe over the summer, it focuses the mind on the state of UK plc and its relationship to customer and people experience. So let’s take a quick romp through high and low lights…. The message: the best are getting better and the rest just don’t notice.

Food – the high points: Service at the Hinds Head at Bray, one of Heston Blumenthal’s haunts. Whatever you think of him, his food is to die for. Triple cooked roast potatoes…. The best thing is you can just go in for a pint – but if you do have a scotch egg with it – you will not regret it! Service on the brilliant side, not surprising as it is Michelin’s pub of the year 2011. And, what a plus, my daughters paid what was a very reasonable bill considering the quality.

This was only outdone by an experience at Pebble Beach golf club near Carmel where they play the US Open. Imagine doing this at Wentworth or the like…. We were cycling past, shorts, helmet, red faces – you get the picture. We decide to nip in the back gate on our bikes and take a look. Feeling very naughty as we bike through the main courtyard in front of the club house, the door man in plus 4s shouts at us! “Come in and have lunch, I’ll get rid of the bikes for you!” Five minutes later we’re on the terrace in front of the 18th green eating slap up nosh.

Low points – Utilities: I’ve tweeted recently about the utilties’ lowly position in the different industries and experience league tables. What a shame because there are so many good people doing good work on service there now. But this is a typical sequence:

I’m switched to online billing without noticing

I receive email alert for my bill and attempt to go in and look at it. Cant pass the security so give up – its not one of my regualar passwords, and being an infrequent user I have no memory of what it might be. Must be a non standard ( to me)  structure. I give up and get on with my life

A month later I see a 90% increase in my direct debit on my bank account

I go back to last email alert and try to log on. I cant. I try the password reset. It asks me to answer a key question before it will reset. I fail the question – pardon me. but I do know my mothers maiden name.

I go to the contact page, which pushes me through useless FAQs – FAQs dont help when ” I can’t access my online bill/failed security” is the need. I email them and its says 10 days to respond. So obviously I phone them.

No IVR routing just an everyone’s busy message interrupting silence. After 10 minutes, music on hold steps in. My cue to give up the queue.

I expect all their operators are busy answering questions about how to access their accounts.

Root causes:

1) Non standard password formats

2) Over zealous security on resets

3) A policy of raiding bank accounts to improve cashflow

Is it any wonder that utilities get a bad press.

Video – a highlight: On a brighter note here’s something to sharpen your wits and make you realise what you could be doing with your data at work. It’s awesome but skip the middle of the Johnny Cash art if thats not your bag: Aaron Koblin on data visualisation

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Posted by: Peter Massey | 26.07.2011

Do you go in and test your own website, every page and link, every day?

Is that ridiculous or an obvious thing to do?

I just tried comparing Eurostar with P&O Ferries for a booking later this week. Eurostar went straight through in a very few clicks and gave me the answer. P&O’s pop up for cars over a certain height stopped me in a my tracks and wouldn’t go away – neither cancel or ok being effective. I tried again and got past it by not being over a certain height and then amending it later. I got through the process only to get the message the site was down

Guess who gets the business?

So maybe worth testing all those links everyday for usability and functionality isn’t an expensive overhead.

And …ouch – I ‘m sure we have a few glitches on our site

PS end of day – so far first direct’s iphone app and British Airways sites have both failed today

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Posted by: Peter Massey | 6.06.2011

This astounded me.  You should read it as an email chain, starting at the bottom. Is a machine error or just a crass process? What a waste of everyone’s time!

“Hello

Thanks for your email.

The characters from the security answer you’ve given in your email aren’t quite right. We need the 2nd and 3rd characters of the answer to your security question. It’s the question we ask you when you call us (e.g your mother’s maiden name, your pet’s name or the first school you went to).

If you can’t remember that, please reply with the date you got your last bill and how much it was for.

We’ll be able to help you as soon as we get the right details.

Regards

XX Customer Service

Original Message Follows:

————————

Cheers – have been trying stores, call centre, web chat to find out what

my options are for the past 3 months since my iphone went into reboot on

any long conference calls

Appreciate my contract is up next week

What I want is the next iphone and I believe its not due for a few

months – so I don’t want a long term contract.

What are my options apart from leaving you?

Can you give me my usage data profile against tariff proposed so I can

get the right tariff? I’m always paying extra for 08 numbers – which is

conference calls. I know I use circa 1 gig a month data and that my

texts and voice is perhaps way under the limit

Peter

On 6 Jun 2011, at 13:42, xxxxx wrote:

Hi peter

This is an email from XXX to let you know that you are a Platinum customer and I am your account manager, I am here to help with any queries that you may have as well as to let you know about the great ways that XXX could be saving you money. If you want to find out more then call 402 from your handset or email me back and I will be happy to help you,

There is a link below to let you know of all the great benefits of being an XXX Platinum customer. You also now have my email address so if there is anything at all I can help you with just let me know.

http://www.XXX.co.uk/explore

Thanks

vanessa’

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Posted by: Peter Massey | 12.04.2011

Is “the business case for systems thinking” oxymoronic?

Depends what you mean by systems thinking…. If you mean what Senge and the whole systems thinking community mean by systems thinking in its widest sense then maybe. It’s a bit like saying “what’s the business case for thinking”. Now that’d make a great philosophy exam question. And a great retort.

Why should we think – let’s weigh it up.

If we think about the other person, we might not do dumb things to them. If we think before we speak, we might say salient things. If we think before we act, we might do the right thing. Obviously thinking is a good idea. But no we need a business case…..

If we count up all the damage we do, when we don’t think –  is it more than the cost of the thinking time? Well maybe. But we cant remove the 100m bits of thinking time cos they don’t add up to one member of staff in one place. So it doesn’t count.

And so it goes….

If we mean “systems thinking” in the Vanguard sense – a specific approach. Well it depends if it works, when it works and how much it works.  But if you’re asking “what’s the business case?”, it hasn’t worked. QED or chicken and egg? You decide.

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Posted by: Peter Massey | 8.04.2011

I was googling for this saying by Henry Royce and my own blog came up from 2007. Amazing what you forget…. A story prompted by co-presenting with Alan Hinckes who has climbed every mountain over 8000m and lived to tell the tale. Read it here.

“What have you done that’s world class?” and tales of Everest coincided with a conversation this week with a guy called George who wants to rebuild a 1920s plane and recreate the first flight over Everest. That’s passion!

Which brings me to why I was trying to find the saying. I want to recognise some people that we work with for their passion, stamina and energy. So I wanted to use this quote. Because the people who are passionate are also very conscientious, not in a noisy way. Details matter to them. Whether it’s returning a phone call, spelling things correctly ( uh oh, I’d better check this post…) or saying good morning.

It takes a lot to stay brave and bold in a cynical world of work where executives say one thing and do another, or politicians deny what’s happening. Keeping your head down, avoiding mistakes brings more promotion than getting out there and trying in those kind of organisations. But being brave is essential when something is “not ok for customers”.

“Doing the right thing” is what matters. I always remember colleague Bill Price’s story about how Amazon decided to pay the extra to mail every pre-order Harry Potter book to arrive on a Saturday launch day so people wouldn’t have to wait til Monday. They didn’t do a calculation, they just did the right thing.

I was recently in a board meeting of a company at which I’m a non-exec. There had been a particular technical problem that was probably caused by a customer being brutal with a door. But they will go back and modify all such fittings at no cost to customers just to make sure it doesn’t happen again. That’s “doing the right thing”.

Of course that’s easy if all colleagues feel the same way – shared values are so vital in successful companies. It’s harder when leaders don’t share your values and you have to be brave, stand up and say “that’s not ok for customers”. Honesty is the only way.

To finish, that brings me to another lovely post on the “uncompany” from last year. I retweeted it this week from friend and advisor Tim Kitchin. It sums up the problems with business with amazing clarity. Read it here.

So what is your personal Everest? Maybe just standing up in a cycnical meeting, saying “that’s not ok for customers” and getting people to do the right thing. Go on…. don’t hesitate…. you know it’ll make your day and everyone else’s different.

Peter

PS Here’s the opening from Tim’s post:

“……today’s organisations run, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, on institutional cynicism. ‘Everybody’ knows that current structures, processes and management systems don’t work.  They don’t prevent bad decisions, and they don’t manage positive outcomes and they don’t make people happy.

Because organisations have no conviction, they have no courage.

Because they have no honesty, they build no trust.

Because they are disjointed, they cannot improve.

Because they are too complex, there can be no accountability

This will only get worse……

I suspect:

That (almost) all organisations underestimate the role of emotion and human inertia in innovation and transformation.

That (almost) all organisations are driven by what they feel compelled to do, rather than what they are inspired to do.

That (almost) all organisations fail to anticipate their own irrelevance/obsolescence.

That (almost) all individuals in any corporation are operating way below their personal potential.

That (almost) all organisations underestimate the importance of delivery to generate customer loyalty.

These frictions in the deep structure of the organisations create a tangible loss of opportunities and profit, through productivity-erosion, customer disloyalty, and regulatory handcuffs.   These are the outwardly visible signs of a fundamental internal conflict between extrinsic goals and intrinsic capabilities.”

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Posted by: Peter Massey | 22.03.2011

I’m on a panel session tomorrow at the ICS conference (Institute of Customer Service) named “What keeps you awake at night?”. The topics are being created on little cards during day 1 today  ( wot no twitter…?). So I thought I’d write up a few things that keep me awake at night…

1) Too much measurement, not enough listening and action

2) Too busy to listen to the front line – executives who waste the free intelligence in their company

3) Change = projects. It should be a different BAU or experience for staff and customers

Let’s see what comes up tomorrow….

Postscript: After the panel.
A big problem appears to be people’s faith in their bosses and colleagues – How do I persuade and influence when I am not in charge. Lots of wondering about social. Strong bias towards people engagement to execute any customer strategy.

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Posted by: Peter Massey | 2.02.2011

This complaint letter (click here to read) had me in stitches. Happily the guilty party has restored faith to the customer concerned after this letter went to the CEO. With many thanks to Angela for letting us publish her work of art!

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