Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
Posted by: admin | 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
Ian Morton presents MBNA with award for Best Customer Experience Centre 2011
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’
Customer effort, Uncategorized, customer experience | No Comments
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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Posted by: Peter Massey | 17.01.2011
This is a long detailed blog for people in the insurance industry – health warning: you’ll be bored otherwise. The messages are:
1) Customer effort, both physical and emotional, is in the detail of the journey, hence I’m sharing this as feedback not criticism.
2) It may be complex to do but marketing promise has to be met with operational detail that makes it simple for customers.
3) Sales and service go hand in hand when buying decisions are made.
4) In this category, you can’t make up for the price of the product with so-so service. And no one in this category offers Amazon like service.
5) Most of the customer effort is systematic to the company rather than the workforce.
Please share your thoughts & comments. I must see if we can do one of our self serve audits on this sector this quarter
Stardate 15111. Trying to give someone my insurance business through last week – multiple cars by 17th Jan. Should it be so hard?
I’m only fishing because NFU are incompetent at claims handling. 1 year later, a car park prang which witnesses reported is not resolved – the issue being a very poor lack of process. Made worse by duplicate, uncoordinated process with legal cover company DAS. So I don’t feel I should reward their excellent sales office by being loyal. Not after their initial quote was way over the odds – seemed like a try on, but was actually just poor details. It came down by 40% on asking. Still 40% over the price of a competitor quote.
I know Aviva have started doing multi car so I tried their site. There’s a discount, but no website process so I moved on. Too hard to do one car at a time.
Admiral are known for introducing multi car and have a website that handles multi car so I tried that. Entry was easy. Alas it didn’t work completely so I had to call earlier in the week. I got a handsome quote but the office was shutting at 9pm so he couldn’t close the deal. Good follow up email linking me back to my quote. But next day the website didn’t work again. So I called. I learned it doesn’t show you details of the quote anyway eg what the excess is. The agent couldnt access my quote because the last person hadnt logged out if it. Long hold whilst supervisor is asked to get other person out of it. No success. We give up – he cant do anything. They follow up by phone next day, I’m busy. I try website again – still doesnt work. I phone. Last agent didnt log out – I wait, I hang up. So I’m still looking. Can I bear ringing them again?
Stardate 14111. OK its Friday so I better sort it out. I mailed my concierge service the request on Weds as they have a great broker they rate – no contact centres they say. I call the broker contact – on voice mail. No response so I’d better start looking.
So I thought of people I know. LV have a good reputation for low contact rate and low customer effort inside the industry. I went to the website and there’s no multi-car function so rather than enter all the cars one at a time and then see if they could link them I phoned. Very short IVR routing, straight to the point. Very poor, long winded regulatory message to follow. Here’s the conversation:
“How can I help?” “Your web site doesnt seem to have a multi car function?”
“No but I can help – what car do you want to insure?” “As I said its multi car.”
“Sorry yes. We don’t do muti car. (Silence) “. I give up.
Very low effort. No business prevention officer. Speedy. Must get onto the next caller who may want to buy something. Doh !
Ok, next – Just tried the RAC site. No multi car process. Good FAQ showed me I can insure more than one car but one policy each. So that would be 4 quotes and 4 sets of paperwork. Looked for phone to call anyway but can’t find one.
OK, next – try the Meerkats – Comparethemarket.com – It will only take me into a single car quote and there’s no search function to see if they do anything else. Not so simples.
Ok, run out of people I know well, so I google “multi car insurance”. Looks like DirectLine and Moneysupermarket are the next stops. The Directline link page explains a discount but the site looks like a one car process. Ah well I’ll try. Start with the first car. Apart from not letting me say my phone number is a mobile ( it has to be day/evening/ talk type) the input is pretty slick. What’s different is they have a claim category for outstanding no fault claims which is handy. But then….What’s this you have to have a tracking device otherwise you cant get a quote. I give up. Haven’t even started on the other cars. Why didn’t you say that at the start!! Not so “direct” and no chance of carrying that route on.
Ok, next – Moneysupermarket from Google. The google link page explains multi car but has no facility for doing it!! I go to the car insurance page and start. Different – car first. No multi car process. I start but it tells me to enter a valid reg number – I have derrrr. I try again with capitals and spaces and it works. Scarily it tells me my car valuation – which is rubbishly low. 10 mins later and I’ve got the single quote done but there is no feature for multiquote in the process and all I get is back where I started – LV is the lowest quote. And I am really low energy now and not going to work though this for 3 more cars.
In this middlle of all this an Alex Vantwout of DAS calls to talk about the outstanding claim they’re just picking up after 6 months. He gets an ear bashing as he can’t hear feedback and it reminds me why I’m bothering to look around and not just defaulting to NFU.
Come on Peter – sort it now – busy weekend and week ahead so there wont be time to sort it out.
So on the saga ran in the car through the afternoon – whoops that reminds me, I forgot to try Saga. The broker goes through all the details by phone. Tries to reach me, the concierge tries to reach me. I eventually get back to them but they still dont have a quote but say they can get one Monday afternoon – but insurance runs out at noon Monday so I suggest earlier.
I tried Admiral again from the car. I guess & press 1, 1, to avoid endless messages and it works. The quote isn’t locked out this time and I get the answers to questions I wanted swiftly and a follow up email so I can conclude over the weekend if I want. Well handled Lisa Chapman. I ring my daughter as she’s used Admiral and she says they’re pretty good.
Stardate 17111.First thing this morning I need to resolve. I go to Lisa’s email from Admiral but there’s no web link to conclude on after all. I try and old link and the website doesn’t work again.Work, as in real work, needs to be done so I leave it til much later, as I know it’ll be hard yards on the phone – obviously their preferred channel as the number’s on the email twice..
Later I call the NFU sale office to give them the last chance to keep the business. In a meeting and wont be out for an hour – that’ll be too late. But he does call straight back, we compare and email, he rings back. Reading my earlier text, I’m wondering why I let them try again. It’s the thought of more paperwork for a new supplier. Just shows how much a good sales person could do in the branch network. And how much the thought of hanging on to a call centre can put you off. They tried, called back and couldn’t get near the Admiral price. The broker didn’t ring back this morning. The di is cast.
I try the Admiral quote and the website still doesn’t work, so I call, press 1,1 and guess what – the quotes not been logged out and he has to get help to access it. Groooan. I hang on and it’s sorted mercifully quickly. Prad goes over the details again as I glaze over to a welsh accent heavy enough to give Indian call centres a good name. We complete and he sets me up for the possible customer survey.
Job done? I doubt it and wait to see how well the paperwork rattles through the system next.
All I wanted was a “best service is no service” renewal or purchase for some high value business. I was quite happy to do the work myself. Nobody could do that.
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Posted by: Peter Massey | 9.12.2010
It must be the cold weather. I’m churning a lot of my regular domestic suppliers, many of whom I’ve been with for a very long time.
Why? With all the snow, I’ve some spare laptop time which I never usually have. I have just enough time to put in the customer effort required. And with some that’s considerable.
So who are the losers and why?
EDF, 20 years – For over estimating bills and then being hard to deal with. See an earlier blog on customer effort with all the details of how they generated churn.
Friends Provident, 15 years – For not sharing risk in an insurance product and being so painful to deal with – both to try and buy from and to try and cancel with. I resorted to cancelling my direct debit rather than go through their cancellation process. If anyone at FP wants a full blog on the numerous dumb contacts, do get in touch.
BT, 30+ years – For overselling BTVision and damaging the already weak broadband service back to the world of the 1990s. And then requiring me to lock into a further contract. My replacement will be no better, but to get any progress BT wanted me to lock in to new a term contract rather than doing what they could to provide the service I was paying for.
Southern Counties Fuels have just been added to the list ( 6.5 years) – for making an exceptional £150 charge if you want fuel in the next 3 weeks before Xmas. Blatant exploitation of the cold spell. In addition they over charged on the last bill. After years of faultless low effort business, it smells like they must have had a change of management?
All are trying for “bad profits”, as Don Peppers would call them. The policy decisions may be made far from the front line, but it’s clear to those people on the front line that these are not policies that customers appreciate.
But the effort in moving supplier results in lethargy and policy makers rely on it. I shouldn’t be so lethargic or else I encourage companies to keep doing dumb things to customers.
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