The Budd Blog

Posted by: Peter Massey | 14.07.2011

This isn’t a complaint ( it will be if Avis take money from my credit card). It’s feedback to help Avis improve

It relates to this Tuesday 12th July Belfast City Airport

Buying
a) I tried to book a same day before I left for the airport ( a last minute flight to spend a short surprise evening for my better half’s birthday !!) – the website froze when getting to the car choice/before offering prices. You could click on the car but nothing would happen. Tried several ways and couldn’t get past it. It was either a technical problem or the agent later suggested it was because it was a same day booking which the website cant do – if so then please add that message rather than just “hanging” on me!

b) During this and other recent searches I was getting frequent webchat prompts – its really annoying. If you are doing this during “dwell” times – why not spend the time improving the layout and presentation of your website as a better avoidance of the need for service, rather than adding an additional customer effort and cost to you. If you are going to offer webchat why not put a clear button on the pages so I can choose when to use it ( and a clear phone offer button too)

c) When I did use the webchat the agent told me I’d have to phone as he couldn’t book – surely if the chat is there to improve conversion you need to give them that function? He (“James”)  gave me the number and then “hung up” on me – ie he closed the conversation before I could ask anything else. I suggest you improve your training on conversation etiquette

d) I phoned on the way to the airport and got straight through. The agent had trouble hearing me – mobiles aren’t ideal – but considerably hindered by the background noise in the call centre. It didn’t sound like Manchester or Barcelona – have you outsourced?

e) I made the booking including my wizard number and credit card – he handled it quickly and well ( it seemed…)

Pick up
f) First off the flight and straight through – only one guy in front of me at the desk but it must have been a complex one and there was only one member of staff. A couple of guys behind the screen behind the desk as I walked up were perhaps going off shift as it was 3.47 and a bank holiday in Belfast. I know the time as I texted as I walked up and checked it ten mins later when I saw the stop watches on the counter saying £20 voucher if you wait more than 3 minutes – I didn’t bother picking one up and I never got offered a £20 voucher

g) The lady ( Sandra) apologised for delay when she’d finished ( about 5 past 4) and said she’d not been able to have keys ready as my credit card had failed. I asked the digits and they weren’t recognisable. She said that was what was recorded with my wizard number when I first registered it online – I said it couldn’t be. (Mystery solved later). We used my credit card – all fine. Signed the bits and went to car.

h) Off to car park and found car. Doh – scratches not marked on the sheet. This happens a lot. Avis car park cabin isn’t occupied – drat. Wondering whether to bother going back to the terminal when I notice the paperwork is not in my name – ah that explains the credit card issue. It’s a booking for 5 days, not 14 hours, so I can start to imagine the future credit card bill I’ll no doubt get to sort out. I look for a phone number on the paperwork to ring the desk – not there, so off I trek back to the terminal

i) No queue and we sort out the credit card and another car in short order.  The car has 5 dings marked on the paperwork – this doesn’t bode well as I’m betting there’s more. Why is that car in service? I ask for a phone number and Sandra offers to ring me in 5 mins to check with me

j) I go back out to the cars and guess what – the car has some dings missing and some additional ones. Final straw is the tank isn’t on the full marker. I’m outta here. Sandra rings and I am not happy. I walk back and insist on her sorting out the credit card here and now as I’m going elsewhere. She can’t – I have to ring…… I ring and hand her my phone while I go the next desk and get a car “with no dings in it please”. It takes 2 mins, is bigger for the same price and has no dings. I retrieve my phone and take the desk phone number and Sandra’s name in case the bill becomes a problem. She’s “not allowed” to give out her surname – what’s that about !  Maybe the sign for disgruntled customers on an Avis call centre door in Oklahoma gives a clue  

Its now an hour after I came to the desk first time. That’s one hour out of an evening and a mood that isn’t fit to take to a birthday surprise visit!!  I take my time on the 30 min drive and wonder why I didn’t just phone a cab

Post event
k) At 5.30 next morning I drop the car back and tweeted a question using #avis . I’ve seen no response

l) Today I’m booking again – shall I use Avis? There isn’t anywhere to give suggestions on your website.  The “we try harder” site now looks corporate rather than a forum to give feedback – I couldn’t find anywhere obvious to post. I can only find the complaints email address.

m) I write this journey down in an email – but haven’t sent it yet. Why go to the effort? Avis used to be a really nice client 10 years ago and I’ve used them ever since. I love Angie Court’s passion – is she being missed in Avis UK?

This example shows a typical multichannel customer journey and I can use it as an example. It’s a useful lesson on how the different channels don’t hang together and how some upstream decisions affect the experience eg car condition policy before fixing them, eg resourcing for staff in car park and at desk to do the job fully eg better sound deadening/ microphones in call centre. In isolation some are minor issues, some major – but the real issue is how they add up. This is typical of what causes complaints – no one thing.

More importantly it shows how customer effort can creep into every step. Avis is normally a great example of “The Best Service Is No Service” with very little customer effort – go online, book, pick up key, drop car.

n) The good news ( so far …) is that Avis haven’t taken anything off my credit card

The bottom line
Avis just lost my two bookings for Italy in August – one cost £700+ and the other cost £300.

Have they lost me forever? It depends what happens next. I wont send by email yet, I’ll tweet this and see what happens.

Customer effort, brilliant basics, broken websites, complaint, customer experience, europcar, feedback, listening | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 20.06.2011

Trust is like … well many things. Think of it in the context of your friends. Try this question: “I only spend time with people who…..?”

“I respect? I like? Are passionate about shopping/football/etc? Are like me? Not like me?”  I expect “who I trust?” must come in up for most people. So why would it be any different for any company/consumer – trust is there, but what does it mean?

If your friend says “I am fantastic” what do you think? Even if he/she is fantastic…. Would you trust them?

If another friend says someone else if fantastic – then it’s different. If you trust that friend, their belief carries to the someone else. Unless that someone else proves to not be fantastic. And then both friends become less trusted.

On the other hand if that someone else backs it up in their actions then you believe it. And you trust the first friend even more.

So to business. Companies stand up and shout “I’m fantastic”. It may or may not be true. If you try them once and they are, you may carry on. If you try their product or service and it’s less than they say – the trust is broken. It may still be excellent, but if isn’t what they promised then the trust is broken.

If companies don’t shout from the rooftops but their customers do, the same applies – when you try it, it’d better be as good as they say. Otherwise trust is broken and trust in their advocates is also broken.

This is why:
a) Advertising only works if something is good. Advertising something that isn’t as good as the promise, results in people finding that out faster. And telling their friends sooner.
b) Advocacy only works if its genuine. False friendship breaks is spotted very quickly and trust is broken.
c) Trust is about what happens when a customer does something. It isn’t marketing. Marketing has to check out what the business is capable of and make the advertising fit the truth. 
d) Trust is every contact in every way – this is why customers value consistency very highly.

Trust is………”trust is like virginity – you can only lose it once!”

Marketing promise, accountability, customer experience, honesty | No Comments

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 | 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 | 21.05.2011

Wow time flies and I realised I hadn’t updated anything here in the blog. All my online time seems to be going into the internal Budd wiki, the LimeBridge discussion forum, Twittering and keeping up to date through Twitter links, Linked In updates and connections, Facebook for private stuff and now lots of interesting discussions on Linked In groups, notably in PPF and ICS groups

When do I get any work done…..  One thing for sure is that I’d pay for a lot for a reliable high speed internet service either mobile or at home. So often I’m on pause.

The most interesting discussion was when I posted a “dream” – that in 10 years we wouldn’t need customer service as everyone would have copied people like Amazon and Skype and reduced it, in absurdem, to not neccessary. Wow some people didn’t like that. I’ve just kicked off another dream – that in 10 years we wont need marketing – “marketing is the tax you pay for being unremarkable!”

So what is most interesting from all this chattering?

1) Most people don’t live online – but those that do are learning exponentially faster than those that don’t. Is the gap important?

2) Arranging stuff at home is moving into facebook, thro small apps like events – still looking for a good tennis club app if anyone knows one? Anyone seen a “run a tennis club quiz” app?

3) Voice of customer is there on social and that’s useful, fast, two way – a lead indicator. Some senior people are using it to bypass their cumbersome VoC mechanisms at work.

4) The major step change of power from social business is not really understood yet. Social media isn’t just a way to speed up some stuff we do today. It invents new ways of doing stuff we don’t yet do but find useful when we can.

5) People are just sussing out that only if you are genuine, transparent, authentic, honest in real life can you be that online and succeed there. Your values and how you live them are everything.

6) We are yet to see the real jump from social – inversion of power from companies to customers. But it’s coming. Take a look at the inititiaves on mydata from the government. Friends at Ctrl-Shift, have been talking about it for 10 years already in a think tank called “Buyer Centric Commerce” which I joined early this century. Alan Mitchell had  a dream and wrote a book called Right Side Up way back when and the group formed around this.

Is his dream going to happen in the next 10 years – you bet. In the next 2 or3 ? Hmmmm an important question. Are you considering it?

Here’s a few links to get you going

The Cabinet Office and the white paper on Better Choices, Better Deals

Alan writing in Marketing magazine

Silicon.com raising questions about security of data in the mydata strategy

And here’s an interesting one – givememydata – a facebook app for claiming your own data

If you havent worked out a strategic understanding of this new world – Email me if you do want to talk

Peter

21st century marketing, social media | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 28.04.2011

I saw this question posted on a Linked In forum. Here’s what I think and I wrote:

“Important to define what you mean by “social media customer service”.

At a number of levels Social is a way of doing business, of interacting and running our lives . Social media is a range of tools that help us do it. You can use some of the tools to help you run your life – and if its easier than other ways you may use it.

For example you may get a quicker response by tweeting your telco at the moment – that’s probably not sustainable for those companies and its only another channel, not a new way of doing things socially.

Customers who share you tube clips on how to get your phone working or fix your router – that’s social. Customers who talk to each other in forums to find out what to buy or how to fix something – that’s social. So if your question is aimed at customers, its perhaps missing the point.  They wouldn’t use it if it was. And if it’s aimed at businesses, they’re perhaps missing the point.”

What do you think?

social media | 1 Comment

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.

Uncategorized | 2 Comments

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.”

Uncategorized | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 24.03.2011

The 2011 Netpromoter benchmarks report does say lots of obvious things. But that can be useful when said with numbers. Take this parargraph:

“Businesses are expected to spend $214.3 billion on advertising in 2011, according to SNL Kagan. But only 4 percent of Americans trust advertising the most as an information source when choosing products or services. Instead, the Satmetrix study finds that consumers most trust recommendations from independent sources (83 percent), especially those with whom they have personal relationships. Half of consumers (50 percent) cited personal recommendations from friends, family or colleagues as the most trustworthy source of information. And, approximately four times as many people trusted product test reviews (18 percent) or consumer opinions posted online (15 percent) as compared to advertising.”

So here’s one to  discuss with your board colleagues…… the exam question is “What would the business look like if we spent 83/4 times, let’s say 20 times, as much on improving the colleague and customer experience as we do on marketing our brand or product?”

Anyone who  has played with business simulators will know that more advertising of a poor performing service or product just leads to a worsening economic cycle – higher acquisition costs, higher cost to serve, low retention. Word of mouth reality outstrips advertising glitz.

And the opposite is true. Businesses like Amazon, Google ,eBay and Skype took off and stay up there without much, if any, advertising support. You can read more about Amazon and Google in our “100 things you can learn from …” series at our website.

100 things, 21st century marketing, Amazon, Google, customer experience, ebay, netpromoter, word of mouth | 1 Comment

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.

Uncategorized | 3 Comments