The Budd Blog

Posted by: Peter Massey | 3.06.2008

A journalist asked me why businesses are poor on email responses. The thought that went through my head was “why should they be?”

-          Generation  Y consumers don’t use much email so why develop it further

-          It’s too late now! We’ve been trained, as consumers, that email doesnt work well when you send it most companies. Even if they respond at all, you don’t get any answers

-          email is very good for getting things wrong, it’s a poor 2 way conversation. So it’s better to phone back. Seldom happens but a great wow if a company does.

-          c2c communities are much more useful – insightful and supportive – if companies know how to foster them without interfering they are a great source of insight and support (Innocent is a good example) . Get in touch  (peter.massey@budd.uk.com) if you want to talk more about how you can develop communities in c2c or b2b.

More fundamentally email off cues from websites are usually a substitute for really giving customers the answers they want, how they want them and where they want them. That’s because most companies:

• Don’t have metrics that show them what contact they have in other channels because their websites dont help
• When customers get in touch they don’t ask for feedback on why they had to get in touch
• They can’t act on the feedback they have, let alone more complex feedback like that if they got it
• They don’t have fast pubishing processes that can get changes made in minutes rather than weeks

Read about how Amazon does some of these processes in the Skyline and “what our customers are saying” sections of our site or take a look at some of the papers in the library

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Posted by: Jo Sparkes | 23.05.2008

On Sunday 25th May, Penny Hicks of Budd and Elspeth Ryan will run hard and hopefully complete the Edinburgh marathon. At the same time they are raising money for the British Red Cross, helping people in crisis all over the world. The British Red Cross has launched an appeal to help tens of thousands of people affected by the major earthquake in China.

The following is an account of the earthquake that has been sent to us from someone teaching in Chengdu:

“I have been living in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, for a year and a half now. Sichuan, a comparatively poor and densely populated province in Western China, whose mountains slowly rise to join the Tibetan Plateau. Sichuan has a reputation for delicious food and a relaxed and leisurely attitude to life, and I’ve really enjoyed living here. The students I’ve taught at primary and middle schools, as well as at university have all impressed me deeply with their friendliness, intelligence and hard-working nature. So you can imagine the deep sorrow I feel when I think of all those bright young students cruelly robbed of their futures when their school buildings and lives collapsed down on top of them. A loss of any one of these children is a loss to us all.

I was at University teaching when the earthquake happened. At first I thought it was a plane or large truck going past. That might explain the crashing, banging and rumbling. I looked at the words on the projector screen jumping around. Then a student stood up and shouted ‘earthquake!’. We all ran out of the building. We didn’t   know that’s not what you’re supposed to do; none of us had experienced an earthquake before. Fortunately we were lucky. Cracks appeared in buildings but very few fell down. At a friends school, two dormitory buildings collapsed (most students in China board at their schools) but the students were in class at the time. It wasn’t until I returned to my swaying 9th floor flat on Monday evening that the full horror of the situation emerged. The next day was awful; the heavy rain was non-stop and wall-to-wall TV coverage of silent, crushed bodies and wailing students clinging on to life was harrowing. The worst thought was that there were thousands more at that point that had yet to be reached by rescue teams. I couldn’t stop shaking, and I was never sure if it was the ground of me. In fact, nothing seems certain or sure anymore. In Chengdu, people are still so frightened that they are sleeping on the streets, sometimes with just a bamboo mat to keep themselves clean. Any open area or patch of grass currently resembles a campsite.

A week later, and people are still living in fear, even in Chengdu. The aftershocks happen nearly everyday, reminding people that this still isn’t over. Rumours bounce around the city in minutes. “The water is contaminated” and sure enough, minutes later in the shops, the bottled water and milk is disappearing fast. Irate customers are shouting at the sales girls that they need all that they’re buying. “There will be a big aftershock in 20 minutes: run outside!” My friends moan that it’s raining, its rumour, but we all still feel nervous and unsettled. Last night we receive another rumour - “in the next 3 days, there will be an earthquake of 6 to 7 magnitude; it was on the news”. We listen to the streets fill with cars beeping at each other, in a race to get out of the city. We think it’s another rumour, but we turn on the TV anyway. I’m surprised, there is a government warning of another big aftershock. The panic and fear infects me, and I cycle through the gridlocked streets to join my friends in the park. I takes me half an hour to find them among the thousands of other’s bedded down there. We give a mattress to a solitary elderly lady, sitting on a small chair in the mud. Dawn breaks, it’s all OK. But all of the schools are closed for another week. The banks shut at random times. Hundreds of people are queuing to buy tents, because it will rain tonight and people don’t dare to stay indoors. Even in Chengdu, life is not back to normal. But for those living in the refugee camps, in the mountains and near devastated towns, there is no hope of normality for months and probably years.

My students tell me of their hometowns. They say that where there were two mountains, there is now only one; whole villages have been buried by the landslides. Towns the size of Newbury have lost 3-5000 souls. Those that survived are now homeless (there are an estimated 5 million who now have no place to live), the children, orphaned. There are many tales of heroism and hope however. Those of us in Chengdu are organising donations of cash and supplies that are immediately sent out to the affected areas; many of my university students are volunteering in local hospitals and in the disaster zone. However, given the scale of the destruction, more help is still needed. Basics like rubber gloves for medics are in short supply; children’s shoes and other essentials like camp beds are urgently required, as well as basic medicines, tents and food and drink. The people of Sichuan have always been incredibly generous and warm-hearted in welcoming me into their lives. They now need others to show the same generosity to help them rebuild their lives and their futures.”

To help Penny and Elspeth raise money for the Red Cross please visit their justgiving page:

http://www.justgiving.com/elspethryan

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Posted by: Peter Massey | 16.05.2008

I feel like I’ve been a blog free zone this last month – travelling and conferences taking up the slack between work and play. So here are some highlights, in chronological order, that you might find useful from the last 3 weeks… Tell me which you’d like more on and I’ll write more.

1) LimeBridge’s 12th global gathering in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We missed the tornado a few miles south in Texas, but managed a European shopping competition since everything is so cheap. As Frederic said at the car hire desk (adopt cheesy french accent here…) “Surely we should take a driver with ze car at this price!” Given how cheap things are we did start a serious discussion about offshoring to America – it’s maybe not as daft as it sounds, at least in US brands or B2B.

We spent lots of talking about the book “The Best Service Is No Service” whch has now sold out in Australia and judging by the orders of 100+ at a time, will soon be in its second print run. Not bad after a month and a half.

But what shall we focus on in “book 2”? Suggestions on a postcard please. We’re thinking about “The complete systems model of how the customer experience and contact points drive economics in a business model” – maybe with a shorter title!

2) GOC – the Global Operating Council, alias the US CCO Forum, but focused on outsourcing and offshoring since that’s the biggest part of the US model. This was also the 12th meeting they’d had and ably hosted at the Avis centre in Tulsa. We giggled at the sign on the door saying “No fireams or dangerous weapons allowed on these premises” but apparently people sometimes forget and bring them in…… We had an excellent visit to Direct TV (think the US version of Sky) as well. The big take aways?

• The Philippines are already as saturated as India for voice. Some very interesting insights shared on which outsourcers are performing or not.
• Performance management, environment, coaching , work force management and lifestyle are still underutilized weapons of mass employment in the US. These were good companies but you’d be sacked in the UK for the lowest of the attrition levels being achieved

3) From the US it was straight into the Professional Planning Forum Annual Conference in Manchester. Apart from the best way to run a packed conference of 350 people in many streams and have a party too, there were fabulous shared case studies from all the Award finalists. The final Innovation award went to EDF for their work on contact elimination. We launched the 2008 F+S Research, which was carried out in conjunction with PPF. You can download the paper from our library. Another blog is called for on this striking work!

4) Madrid was the next stop for an in-house conference, a format that many of our clients use. Whilst we have designed and facilitated some, this one was just the key note speaker role again. With countries from all over Europe represented, it is noticeable how similar the issues are and how enormous are the opportunities to avoid reinventing wheels by learning from each other.

5) Finally to this week’s ECMW conference in London with about 500 in the audience and Richard Branson headlining. In fact the interview with him was rather tame, yet intriguing. Chairing so many conferences, one starts to feel like there are no new things out there. And at the same time so many things to learn.

The highlight for me was Daniel Pink, an author and former speech writer for Al Gore. Before his “green” film that would have not have been something you’d talk about. Anyway, he got my best speaker rating, and I loved his use of “levity, brevity and repetition” to get his messages across. What was the message? That Abundance, Asia and Automation are taking over. And in that environment its really important to develop right brain creative skills to compete.

Given he followed one of the most painful speakers I’ve seen in a long while – and I see a few – arguing for lots of maths and analysis, he was on a winner from the start. His technique was “scream, preach and shout” – and nope it didn’t work.

Other highlights? Fred Reicheld was masterful in his arguments for how he developed the Netpromoter scoring system after listening to very simple work at Enterprise (car hire not space ships) and Ritz Carlton and others. They had all talked about the Golden Rule – do to others what you’d like to have done to you – and from this came the referral question. Personally I still think saying you intend to recommend when asked is verydifferent from having recommended but lots not lose sight of the bigger prize – getting the board to balance finance and customer issues.

Willie Walsh of BA getting the best airline results but not taking his fat bonus in light of the debacle at Terminal 5 is a good case of recognising when the balance isn’t right.

 Let me know your thoughts and what you want more on at peter.massey@budd.uk.com

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Posted by: David Naylor | 9.05.2008

This is just a straight forward example of service recovery.

I ordered a black toner cartridge last week which was delivered as expected. Unfortunately they sent a blue one.

I emailed the company www.cartridgesave.co.uk and had a reply within 20 minutes from Danielle (who provided a direct email address - in my book, the right thing to do). “A black one will be on its way today and we’ll collect the blue one”. A bit of a  hassle returning the blue one I thought but their problem.

10 minutes later another email:

“Unfortunately we are unable to despatch the correct Remanufactured Samsung Black Toner Cartridge as stated in my previous email since this item is currently out of stock until the 20th May. So that we do not inconvenience you any further I will be despatching you today a Genuine Samsung Black Toner instead and Cartridge Save will cover the difference in cost. Additionally we would like you to keep the incorrect blue cartridge that you have received.”

Almost perfect recovery, except for the unnecessary first email that could have been avoided by checking stock first. Not bad for a low value consumer product. Here I am telling you all about it. That’s worth it isn’t it?

brilliant basics, customer experience, fast+simple, word of mouth | 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

Posted by: Peter Massey | 18.04.2008

Gareth Kirkwood and David Noyes at BA made the papers in a way that any operations or customer services director would prefer not to. Terminal 5’s launch may have been a disaster, but could it have been avoided? What could they have done differently?

Yes, listen to what your staff are saying – according to the papers.

It appears that many staff were saying they weren’t trained, rehearsed or just plain didn’t know their way round. And they had told management so. Then with a feeling of lack of transparency growing, customers and the newspapers went to town on the issues.

Backed up by word of mouth, a whirlwind developed. I only know 2 people who got held up or lost bags or both. But interestingly my daughter said there was nowhere to sit, too many shops (and that’s a first for her…) and many shops didn’t have stock – that being 2 weeks after launch.

As a customer, evidently it isn’t part of BA’s culture to listen. I’ve tried giving feedback a couple of times at the airport. The staff direct you to the website. When I say I don’t get a response that way, they have no options or alternatives.

And if you’re from Virgin, don’t feel smug. They’ll take the feedback but it doesn’t change anything e.g. the staffing of desks for self service check in or premium economy haven’t changed over time.

So the incoming replacements may want to consider how they can implement systematic listening as a process…..cue what our customers are saying

BA, Virgin, WOCAS, airlines | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 6.04.2008

The book of “The Best Service Is No Service” is already up to 12th on Amazon’s best seller list and people such as Guy Kawasaki are blogging it.

The FT ran an article on it on March 27th

It’s going to be big…. More importantly the idea that its not ok to do dumb things to cause your customers to contact you is even bigger.

Amazon, contact rate, customer experience, fast+simple, the best service is no service | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 4.04.2008

first direct’s withdrawal of mortgages to new customers took the news by storm yesterday. It wasn’t a surprise. As we reported on the 11th of Feb blog entry, it was evident the product was selling “too well”.

 So how come it took til now to do something? Why did it have to reach crisis point? I wonder who’s getting what blame?

But they did get brave and do the right thing. Look after the existing customers and the ones who already applied and stop taking more business that couldn’t be handled properly.

Bravo!

Listening to customers it must have been evident it had to happen. I wonder why they didnt just up the rates a bit in February and take more business at a higher margin, avoiding the negative publicity and “first rock” factor?

It’s interesting that there’s now a BBC Today programme on Saturdays that’s designed to do exactly this. Pick up the stories from the customers before the journalists can.

What our customers are saying is in the public domain. Shouldn’t you be picking it up in your business first?

Talk to us about the “what our customers are saying” process

Uncategorized, WOCAS, first direct, listening, word of mouth | No Comments

Posted by: David Naylor | 28.03.2008

A quick one for a Friday morning.

Halifax have come up with a great way to retain customers and propsects. Make it impossible to unsubscribe from their marketing. Ok, it might be a glitch but as I went through the double confirmation process to unsubscribe from their share dealing marketing material - yes I know the tax year is about to end and no I don’t want your ISA - I was presented with this screen…

 Nice one Halifax. Let’s hope the rest of your online experience is superior to this.

broken websites, dumb things, fast+simple, financial services, junk mail | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 18.03.2008

After a fascinating few days chairing Contact Centre Week in Dublin, one always reflects on what new insights to share with colleagues on returning to the ranch.

Yes I loved BT’s Nicola Millard’s entertaining style  - futurology and all that stuff. But I would because it’s the same stuff we already do today. It’s more today than tomorrow to be looking at new customer behaviours, blogs and wikis and new operating models for business with feedback built in.

I always love hearing more about first direct, Virgin and any company that bases its customer approach on how it treats its people, on its values. The basics of recognising people as people, and treating them accordingly, just shine through time and again.

But one thing struck a large note of curiosity and that was Virgin talking about generation Y and how they are different to work with. They had a great list of aspirations that went deeper than just what Virgin do, dressing down or dressing up.

So I did a bit of digging – take a look at some of the research into the 3 generations at work today – baby boomers, generation X and generation Y. And how it’s changing work as we know it into “Work 2.0”. Actually the trends just seem to be what we’d all want and reflect what many good businesses have done before anyway. Less patience with poor management or poor development is a good thing. Wanting more gyms and sabbaticals is hardly new.

Perhaps being prepared to stand up and take more risk to get it, this is where the difference lies with generation Y. I can’t help but admire the “balls” of gen Y to go out and get what they want. Well most of them. And not put up with something less, preferring to keep searching rather than do something less than what they want. That’s great if you got an education. And a disaster if you didn’t.

I’ll put away my UK crystal ball at this point as it’s gone a bit dark and nasty. In China and India every gen Y person and their gen X parents or baby boomer parents and grandparents want one thing – the best education you can get.

In some ways th gen Y behaviours are no surprise. I use my daughters as examples of this new generation at every opportunity when talking about customer behaviours. If you’re a student, you don’t knock next door to see who’s going for a drink, you IM them. What’s email when you can talk to several people in real time. If I can’t update my Bebo pages, how will people know that I’m alive?

Of course it left me very confused - being a perennial 18 year old, I can see all 3 sets of behaviours in what I do…..but I didn’t see how I recognise the 3 generations differently at work and manage their motivations differently. So I will look harder in future. Once I’ve understood the differences between men and women, this should be a piece of cake!

Generation Y, Virgin, future, managing | No Comments