Feel sorry for Andrew at Orange

Apparently Dave is the most common name of Orange customers, but I suspect Andrew is the most common victim.... let me explain

I got home early tonight, eager for a beer and a catch up with my girlfriend, Sylvie. Alas she was chained to the phone. She'd already invested 30 minutes in the queue at Orange to stop them taking money out of her bank account. She wasnt going to let go now!! Why?

Orange had texted her a week or two ago to apologise for billing her the wrong amount on her international calls, She'd kinda guessed that when her bill went from £35 to £180, but it was at least honest to admit it.

So you'd think they'd be ready for the barrage of people asking what the real bill was. You'd think they'd have some procedure for saying sorry, what happens next. They might wait til the bill is correct before taking the money

Nope, they take the money from your bank account anyway and cause untold strife

And when you phone......there's a lot of people phoning.

Anyway so what's this got to do with me? Well I got to her house to find her on her third such company just today, about ready to rip, and not ready to go for a hard earned glass of wine. So I took the phone, to just hold on whilst she was being transferred to "complaints". Whilst she was having a makeover and a change of clothes. Apparently complaints was the only thing to do

Alas the queue to complaints was less than the 15 minutes it takes a lady to dress and so I ended up speaking to Andrew in complaints

Quite thrown by the surprise of getting through, I engaged in polite banter, aka research, to see what was happening in Geordie land.

No he couldn't say what the real bill was. Yes, all he could do was offer an address to write to. No there was no email address. No his supervisor was busy, already taking escalated calls. No, he didnt have the ability to email people in Orange. And yes there were lots and lots of people he couldnt help. I explained a system whereby he could inform management that he was about to give up the ghost because so many customers were so fed up and he thought that'd be great. But he didnt have that system. In fact all he could do was offer an address to write to. Yeah right..... that'll really happen

Dumb things

A waste of Andrew's life. A waste of Sylvie's life. Is there a better way?

The IFA is dead, long live the IFA

The web has certainly done its bit to kill off the IFA and I'm as skeptical as anyone about the money you pay them for the service they offer. I must be one of the few people who still has a relationship with an IFA for certain investment products including my pension. My pension is not going to set me up in a style to which I'd like to become accustomed just yet so I guess I'm just expecting the guy to do a periodic review of investment funds and keep me informed of any funds that are about to go down the pan.

I recently changed my pension payment arrangements which the IFA happily helped with but the pension provider completely screwed up - letters from the same department that contradicted each other, cancellation of new direct debits - that sort of thing. I told my IFA that I wasn't happy about the mess up but in the end I didn't lose out financially and didn't really have much to do personally to get the problems fixed. I left that with him.

Today I recevied a letter from the pension provider offering me £100 compensation so long as I didn't take the matter of 'poor customer service' to the Financial Ombudsman Service. The IFA had complained on my behalf and a 2 page letter explaining what went wrong had been the reply. I wonder how far I would have got with a complaint if I had not been working through an IFA? I probably wouldn't have had the time, and certainly wouldn't have had the impact of one of the UK's largest IFA organisations.

I won't say the value I see in IFAs has increased but I hope that when the time comes to draw down the pension, the amount I receive will be greater than the amount I would have got if I'd tried to manage my investment personally. Trouble is, I'll never know.

Wonder if I should reject the compensation and hold out for £500. What do y'think?

Wordamouth

Now out in New Jersey, east of New York by 40 odd miles or an hour and a half by train. What was once rolling countryside of woods and farms is now rolling countryside of woods and commuter mansions. A “lot” is at least 10 acres here by law, so you can imagine what the "estates" look like.

Somerset County is home of the Essex Fox Hunt and horses abound including the US Equestrian Team’s HQ over the road. The changing use of land is therefore traceable as open country changes to private plots.

Looking at a book written or rather produced by one of the Johnsons ( Johnson and Johnson darling ....its that kind of area) about hunting over the past century the passage of time is traceable by the age of houses, their density and the use of land. The dress code and the principles don't seem to have moved on much though.

A good horse is still a good horse, but cars are something else. What's evident is the move from the top cars being Mercedes to being Lexus ( is the plural Lexi?)

"Mom always had Mercedes 'cos Dad had a dealership but they got rid of the good guys once he sold it. The best guy now has a Lexus dealership and so Mom bought one from him. Its great for her, she never has to go to the dealership - which is a boon cos she cant find anything. Mercedes service has gone down the pan anyway, but these guys are great"

You only have to look at the number of Lexussss on the road to see that good ol' fashioned wordamouth works still despite changing scenery.

Good service is just plain bread and butter

So what about designing customer experiences from non-retail angle in New York?

Food and drink – well there's not a lot really that isn’t obvious:
- Have a greeter who’s there and so you don’t stand around wondering whether anyone wants your custom
- The waiter(ess) comes straight over and takes a drinks order so you know something's happening
- There’s always enough staff to wave at if you need something
- Things always come quickly when you ask for them

Very simple stuff.

The basic economics must be different to have enough space, staff and training? More expensive so they charge more? – no.

Maybe it isn’t that staff are cheap, its that you go out of business if you don’t offer service. And of course the staff need the tips to live on

Its simply a different economic model

The "tip" is a bit like the customer scoring the agent after the call to give them their quality score.

It really matters if your bonus or recognition depends on it and you can't accuse the customer of being wrong. You can also bet that if something is wrong with the system, the training or the policy, staff will shout louder & faster as it affects their “tip”.

Virtual tipping - now there's a thought

Premier customers and customers are the same people

Wow, getting my holiday blogs out of sync here.....This one's about getting as far as New York but I forgot to publish it!

Spending my Virgin airmiles to go to New York. This is meant to be a reward for spending shed loads of money - so much going to Australia that we got enough to do New York for free.

It didn't feel like a reward. Too many Virgin basics aren't working. Time for some redesign of the basic experience I think. Otherwise why would Virgin think I'd spend a fortune with Virgin, next time I go business class

Here's a few examples of how my time was wasted and their brand damaged from this one trip:
1) You cant share Virgin miles with close relatives even if you paid for the flight they earned them on

2) You can't book airmiles and non airmiles travellers together via the website. The extras on a miles ticket is half the cost of a real ticket - hmmmm, call me sceptical

3) It took 65 minutes to book the 3 tickets manually

4) By the time they'd been booked the price on the site moved - upwards of course

5) Despite escalation during the call and after the call, no one at Virgin would talk to me about the price of the ticket that changed mid booking

6)The booking reference, cut and pasted from the reminder email, wouldn't work so we couldn't get access to the site to give US visa information or change seats or check in, resulting in 3 calls

7)The nice people in the Indian call centre couldn't take a passport number of 8 digits in less than three attempts

8)At check in there are still monster queues all the time - so no one is scheduling staff to meet demand. This is highly predicatble and very frustrating

9) We got to use a member card to get us into the short queue on the premium line. It had one agent and we waited forever anyway. The lady next to us in the queue said this happens to her every time.

10)She told the supervisory types - 3 of them. Not one went and opened a desk or said they'd do something about it for next time. They just made placatory remarks, which of course wind you up up at the third time of listening to 'there are more people coming' - and there clearly aren't.

11) Having a huddle of 4 supervisors talk to each other is not the same as having 4 supervisors open 4 lines to shift the problem

12) Asking to sit further forward in the plane, not an upgrade, got us moved a bit with the usual line of "the flight is full". When we got on the plane it was a lie. The bulkhead row in front was empty. Many rows were half full or empty.

13) But apart from that its just like most airlines: indifferent

I'd love to talk to anyone at Virgin who'd like to talk about saving shed loads of money on frustrated marketing, frustrated staff and frustrated customers: peter.massey@budd.uk.com

I offered feedback to the supervisor at the airport but he was too busy dealing with the problems......obviously

Letter from America

Is blogging on holiday something only saddos do? Withdrawal symptom from email probably!!

Well the view over Central Park in NY is great, but this early in the day I cant be bothered to crawl out despite the quality of US TV driving me to despair. No the adverts haven't improved. You know those ads with 15 seconds of healthy grandparents who lived to see their grandchildren and enjoy a healthy sex life from those drugs with 45 seconds of side effects including death, pain, agony, loss of digits, nausea, vomitting and headaches. Cars can evidently be sold in the US only if they come with aaaamaaazing discounts from men with daft voices. Subtle eh?

The quality of ads contrasts so much with the quality of retail in the sprawl of sunshine and skyscrapers we've come to visit. We are in a 13 year old's idea of retail heaven - Big Apple, the other Apple, Abercombie, Old Navy and Dad's credit card !

Let's start with our first ventures around a couple of blocks from 59th and 5th - the corner of Central Park and Fifth Avenue where FAO Schwarz and the Apple store contrast old and new retailing. FAO Schwatz ( http://www.fao.com/ ) has been around as a toy store since 1872 and represents all the traditional shopping you can muster with rows ofd stuff to look at. On the plus side there's lots for the kids to interact with including a 10m keyboard they can jump around on and whch has featured in many films including A Christmas Story (1983). Someone from John Lewis once told me that one of their KPIs was that someone entering a shop should be greeted within one minute if they are to feel good about their visit. They even mystery shop to make sure its happening. Well Schwarz have always had a toy soldier at the door to greet you. Not subtle but it works.

The Apple Store on the other hand is probably the ultimate in designed shopping experiences. The approach is a hovering Apple logo in a glass box above street level. You know you're in for something different.

There are greeters bantering with people entering and leaving and then your entrance is either by a glass lift inside the glass box or a glass spiral staircase. You get the picture. And then of course the "normal" for Apple, well lit, loads of circulation space, big tables, loads of demo kit, lots of savvy people to help every which way you look.

A couple of contrasts with the London store though. The design idea of taking credit card buyers out from the queue doesn't work because so few people in the US store use credit cards judging by the length of line and lack of success the guys asking were having.

Secondly the buzz around iPhones. Everyone wants to play with one. There were hundreds out there all working, set up with data and wifi to test and play with. Yes I can vouch for the fact it feels like an iPod, does the obvious stuff easily and sexily. Gotta get one. But there are 2 issues I didnt solve - texting seemed to be a small qwerty touchscreen. Yuk. And with a max of 8 gigabytes I couldn't replace my iPod when its time is up. It'll be interesting to see how O2 gets on selling it for Xmas in the UK. And what Vodafone come up with in response...

Still this place is a testament to the whole design- an-experience approach with rows of tills taking tons of money 24 hours a day (and DJ'd music events on Friday and Saturday night).

2 blocks down 5th Avenue is the flagship Abercrombie and Fitch store. Now this is really what Beth came for.

The greeters look like minor film stars; and there's a greeter on every floor of course. Everyone looks like one of the dressed models in the abundant black and white photos to be seen in strategic places, on TV and on the billboards. They show the clothes like they're meant to be. In fact a little digging on the website (http://www.abercrombie.com/) shows that they are called 'cast' and can apply to be in the photo shoots and films.

The set has been dressed and lit to show the clothes at their best. The lighting is theatrical, dark and different. The clothes are piled deep in every size so you are not going to struggle to find the one you want. And if you did some model would walk up to you and offer help.

And the sound system is straight from the best night club, played loud and louder (see http://www.meyersound.com/news/2006/abercrombie/ ). And you can get the soundtrack at the website. This a place that has been designed to be good. Needless to say the tills are clattering.

It was established in 1892 and has always been a bit different. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abercrombie_&_Fitch and see what made them a different store early last century.

Well the hour has reached something decent so its time for a NY breakfast...... more on food joints next time

Peter

Who cares when your house burns down

Full marks to organic food delivery company and National Customer Service Awards winner Abel and Cole. When friends Marcus and Emma's house burned down recently Abel and Cole were the only firm to exclaim "blimey that must be awful !". The only ones to really recognise what it must have been like.

Norwich Union came up smiling too having sorted everything out quickly and easily.

The fire brigade came out of it pretty well having wrapped the downstairs in plastic before the water damage could do its worst

Hindisight to share?

• Luckily the laptop started after being rescued with most of the photos on it; dont leave your back up hard drive in the house as its likely to burn down with the laptop.
• Take photos of the interior of your house for insurance purposes
• Your possessions soon add up to more than you think

The irreplacable?
Old family photos without copies and the odd picture here and there