Ryan Powell’s Blog

Not only am I impressed with UPS who provide a superb service enabling you to track a package from the time they receive an instruction to collect it through to the point where it’s delivered to you, but I am really chuffed with the approach taken to Customer Experience by Aerobed.

Last year I decided to pay a sizeable chunk of change £70 for a new airbed.  My reasoning being that I didn’t want to spend ages inflating the darned thing every time I wanted to use it and I was prepared to pay for quality.  After some diligent research, I bought an Aerobed Active double bed (brown).  It inflates in 60 seconds and deflates in around 15, so it’s the ultimate in convenience.  And it’s comfy too!

Cut to last month.  A friend of mine, who had been staying in my spare room on the odd weekend, found the thing had sprung some kind of a leak and started deflating itself during the night.

Despite our best efforts, (have you ever tried getting a double mattress into a bath of water to see where air bubbles are escaping from?),  we just couldn’t find a leak.

After checking their website, I decided to contact Aerobed via the only means available - email.  Within a day or so I received a replacement valve, which unfortunately still didn’t remedy the issue.  So further emails were exchanged and although I’d stupidly thrown out the receipt, (as it was more than 1 year old), a copy of the credit card statement was sufficient as a proof of purchase to show the mattress was still within its 2 year guarantee.

So then I received instructions to “cut around the air release valve at the footend of the bed and send it” along with some other details to their office.  I was told “once we receive the valve we will send a replacement bed via UPS.”  The worrying line in the email read “We suggest that you obtain proof of postage.”  At this point, the customer experience sceptic in me was fearful I would totally ruin the bed and then see the firm claim they promised no such thing.

However, I sent those things off last Thursday.  They arrived Friday. Monday I received my first email from UPS with the tracking information and a mere 30 minutes ago (Tuesday pm) I took delivery of a fab new bed.

Well done Aerobed! That’s how it’s supposed to be done.  This is an inspirational example of good customer experience that I shall take with me into my new role in the Virgin Media Customer Experience team that I am joining in January 2010! Ace.

I am heading off to Australia at Christmastime this year and the preparation for this trip sparked a couple of thoughts.

Firstly, we will be in the air on Christmas Day itself, which is less than ideal.  But then, if you saw how much cheaper the flights were you would surely understand.  I was wondering whether or not the in-flight entertainment and food/drink will differ in any way.  I wouldn’t imagine so, because if the airline made any effort to respect a Christian festival, then surely they would be obliged to respect all other religious events too, right?

 Does anyone have any insight to share on this?

The second thought concerns the process for getting  a visa to enter Australia.  I learned first of all that you can do the whole thing online, there’s no need to find a travel agent (sorry folks) and wait in a queue to fill in forms etc.  I set about looking online for an ETA visa only to learn that instead, as a British Citizen I could use the eVisitor online process.Well, imagine how pleased I was when just 5 minutes later, after following a simple online process, I was told my part in proceedings was complete and to sit back and wait for an email.  Imagine my utter pleasure a few hours later to receive the email (admittedly automated) telling me that “The department wishes to advise that a decision has been made on this application and you have been granted an eVisitor.”

Brilliant, efficient, easy to use… need I go on?

I spent a few days aboard P&O’s boat the Oriana recently attending the Call Centre & Customer Management Executive Forum. This event provides the delegates and suppliers alike, the opportunity to spend 2 1/2 days shut away together on a boat with a personalised programme of keynote addresses, one-to-one meetings and personal development sessions.

The forum I attended runs in parallel with two other events for Internal Communications and Human Resources specialists. It is a real shame that the rumour mill suggests the event will not take place next year. Mind you, it was noticeable that the number of suppliers was much lower this year. Considering each vendor has to fork out a tidy sum of their marketing budget to sponsor the Oriana gig, it comes as little surprise.

This brings me onto the theme for this thread - the challenge of delivering customer experience improvements on a shoestring (minimal) budget as opposed to constructing a longer-term (strategic) programme.

I attended one workshop that asked us all to, (working in small groups,) come up with ways in which we could deliver something of high perceived value to our customers at little or no incremental cost to our hypothetical businesses. I found the creativity in the room to be pretty inspiring. When you put your mind to it, there really are a number of great ideas residing in the heads of those that work for your business. Last year, the equivalent topic was entitled “employee led change.” Either way, I think we can each think about the ways in which we encourage our people to contribute to the improvement of the products, services and customer experience we deliver to our customers.

Nevertheless, and not merely because I work in a function that appears to be a dying breed - strategy, I still firmly believe successful businesses need to invest in their longer-term future and empower people to continually develop the longer-term view of where the business is heading so that all the short-term initiatives meet a meaninful purpose.

What are your thoughts? Is strategy a waste of time? Can you continually improve without having a long-term vision?

Hi there… Several visitors to my blog have asked for the best way to share their own stories with the readership.  Thanks very much for your interest.  I invite you to click on the “comments” link under this article and share your stories right now.

This is a rant aimed at Customer Service Directors of British Banks and Credit Card providers… I suspect you are all playing the same game, but perhaps readers of this blog can share their own stories on the subject so we can see.

There was a time, not long ago, when I used to travel to mainland Europe and further afield, comfortable in the knowledge the Visa and Mastercard symbols meant I did not need to buy cash currency before travelling as I could use my plastic at cash dispensers and in shops and restaurants without a second thought. If my card provider, be they Bank or Credit Card company, suspected fraudulent behaviour on my account, they would contact me by phone or email to check.

I travelled to Hong Kong in December 2006 and all went well. However, when I returned in September 2008, little did I know how much things had changed. Duly, I took no cash with me whatsoever. I visited a cash dispenser just after arriving in Hong Kong to find first my Bank card and then my Credit card were refused at the cash dispenser. With no cash to my name, I ended up having to walk for an hour from my hotel to get to my mate’s stag party, which we were celebrating the night of my arrival. Thankfully, my friend was able to lend me a few dollars until I had a chance to speak to the card providers and sort out the situation.

That is where the experience got a whole lot worse. First there was the challenge of actually getting through to the providers in the UK. The credit card provider had a UK-only phone number on the reverse of the bank card, which I couldn’t ring from overseas. I tried using Skype, I bought a calling card, I eventually had to ask a relative to call the card company for me and get hold of a telephone number that I could legitimately dial from outside the UK.

The Bank card provider made things even more disagreeable for me. I was rather miffed to find out that the monthly premium I pay to them for their so-called Premiere service means bugger all anymore. I used to have a relationship manager based in my area at the end of a local UK phone number. It was at this point I learned that particular phone number is no longer in use and my calls are routed, along with those of I suspect all the rest of the Bank’s customers to an Indian call centre, where the service I received was actually over-polite and under-empathetic.

To be clear, I do not remember having received ANY communication from my Bank telling me they were changing the service and giving me the option to continue or stop paying for a so-called premium service.

After this very annoying experience, I decided to pre-empt the same issue with my cards in advance of a four-day trip to France in December. I called my credit card provider to let them know of my intentions. They were helpful and took a note of my travel dates, though they did tell me I may still need to call them when overseas if I encountered a problem.

Upon ringing the aforementioned Bank, they told me I could now inform them via their website, though they did take down the details over the phone. Needless to say, I felt less than certain I would not encounter any problems during the trip - though thankfully I did not.

My gripe is that neither the Bank nor the credit card company has made me aware of the fact it is now MY responsibility to remember to tell THEM whenever I am going to travel outside of the UK. How customer-friendly is that? Is this just another step along the road toward the impersonalisation of customer service in the UK?? Either way, it sucks in my opinion! Your thoughts?

As I write this blog entry I’m making my way up-country aboard a National Express train.  Not only is the train clean but we left on time too, which was a pleasant surprise.  That said my experience over the past 12 months or so is that British trains are more punctual on the whole.  Progress!  In fact, the most satisfying and surprising thing for me on this journey was discovering there was free wireless Internet access available throughout the entire train. Bonus!

I’m heading to Newcastle to speak to businesses from the North East of England at the third Service Excellence Seminar.  I’m quite excited actually!  This is the first time in about a year and a half that I have an opportunity to speak to an audience about a topic that’s so close to my heart.

At this event I am going to share some of the lessons we at Virgin Media have learned about customer experience delivery and service excellence over the past 17 months since we rebranded from ntl:Telewest.  There is plenty to talk about, as you might imagine.

Our Virgin brand sets so many expectations amongst our customer that we have to continually strive to improve the way that we operate.  Changing our corporate culture to become more customer-centric has been one of our biggest challenges.  So many businesses are product-centric “inside-out” organizations.  Whereas today, it is increasingly important that companies understand the value of their customers and do everything they can to look at everything they do from the customer’s perspective (outside-in).

Virgin Media is one of a growing number of firms that use Net Promoter Score (NPS) to focus the company on what customers value.  This is done by measuring customers’ advocacy levels and capturing verbatim feedback comments to pinpoint where things are going well as well as areas that need attention.

Of course, I could go on, but I risk giving away too much of what I’m going to talk about, so I’ll save something for a later blog.

Have you adopted NPS already?  Are you thinking about it?  What lessons have you learned so far?  Do share your thoughts…

Over the course of 2008, I have attended a number of customer strategy and call centre executive forum roundtable discussions on topics about customer service and customer experience.  The attendees come from a variety of firms in the UK, across all different industries: financial services, telecoms, media, retail, pharmaceuticals, etc.

I often approach these sessions with a degree of trepidation, uncertain as to the gulf in approach and performance between my company and the others around the table.  What has struck me more than once though is that we’re about on a par with them - in other words, we are all about as bad as one another when it comes to putting customer strategy at the core of our business focus.

Lots of companies are focussed on delivering shareholder returns, yet few seem to realise that if they actually focussed on understanding and then satisfying their customers’ needs, they would inevitably deliver said returns - because their customers would remain loyal (dangerous word, I know!) and keep coming back.

The other big challenge is demonstrating (in numerical terms) what having such a customer-oriented focus would actually do for the bottom-line of the business.  There are a number of books that have been written on the subject now but still, a leap of faith is needed by senior management if a business is going to really embrace putting the customer at the centre of everything it does.

Have you any thoughts on this?

I really have been tardy at writing on my blog.  I didn’t realize until logging in just now that it’s been 5 months since I really added anything!  Shocking, awful and a really bad customer experience to boot!

But it’s not like there hasn’t been anything to write about.  Only thing is, I’m off out to dinner now, so I can’t really get stuck into one story or another.

My vow however, is to do a much better job in 2008 on my blog.  The first story I’ll share concerns a trip to Glasgow just prior to Christmas, intended as a vacation, that turned out to be rather nightmarish thanks to BA - yes, British Airways, the former bastion of the airline industry.

I’ll leave it there for now, ‘cos if I get started, I’m likely to run a while.  Feel free to share your Christmas vacation nightmares here and we can compare notes!

I spent several days during the last week of June at the Satmetrix (http://www.satmetrix.com/) conference on Net Promoter Score (NPS). The best take-away for me from that event was the fact that there is now irrefutable evidence that focussing on the customer pays - as leading firms around the globe are able to demonstrate the tie between a focus on their customers and an increase in the financial growth of their firms.

The premise behind NPS is that a company asks its customers one question: “How likely are you to recommend us to your friends, family, colleagues, etc.?” to establish how successful it is in the eyes not of its accountants, but its customers. That way firms can dispense with lengthy questionnaires and cut to the chase by asking their customers whether or not they are hitting the mark, rather than obliging them to endure lengthy 20 or 30 question-long surveys!

Several examples were extolled on the audience. We were also privileged to hear the infamous Dr. Fred Reichheld, (author of “The Ultimate Question”) speak about his research, travels around the World and learnings of big businesses that he works with.

There has been a heck of a lot of debate about the effectiveness of asking so few questions. After all, the “how likely” element on its own is not going to allow you to do anything meaningful with the answer, is it? Most firms are now following up the Ultimate Question with a second, along the lines of “why did you give us that score?”

As I mentioned earlier in this post, it’s impressive that several firms Fred highlights in his work are new so mature in their application of NPS that they are able to demonstrate the link between their focus on NPS and financial growth of their businesses over recent years – irrespective of whether they are privately or publicly held companies!

I am going to write more on this topic as it’s close to my heart, but I’d welcome your thoughts and if the company you work for is thinking about looking into applying NPS, drop me a line or post your article on the blog.

When was the last time you seriously considered switching banks?  I got to thinking about this again recently when I moved house.

Before the big day itself, I prepared a great long list of those organizations I needed to inform of the change of address.  Plenty of people change their address regularly enough, right?  So, you’d think it would be one of those processes an organization such as a bank would sort out first.  Not so, obviously.

I called my bank to inform them, and yes, they made the process seem really easy and the call was finished within a couple of minutes.  Cut to a couple of weeks later and I realized the change of address obviously hadn’t gotten through first time because my former flatmate informed me there was mail from my bank at the old address.  Cue a second call to the bank… Following the authentication process, I was informed that indeed, yes, they could see the record of my previous call and the fact I’d rung to change my details, but that in fact, the bank has three different name and address databases you see… And, well, the change doesn’t always get replicated across all the systems properly.

Now, I can live with that, working in IT, I understand just how complex that can be.  But then again, as a customer, I don’t really care – it ought to be “once and done.”  So, when the nice person on the phone suggested, “in future, perhaps you could ask the person you speak with to make sure that they check the change replicates across the three databases?” I was a little taken aback – particularly because I am one of their preferred customers!

I am pretty certain all the other British High Street banks are as bad… But should they be?  I mean, they really are playing on our inertia I think.  They take a gamble that switching banks will be in the “too hard” basket for most people, and perhaps they’re right – especially if you work full-time, the switching in of itself is a slightly daunting prospect… After all, you don’t want things going wrong with your money, do you?

What are your thoughts?