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?

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…

Well, I had a great time in HK. My feet hardly touched the ground during my entire 11-day stay. I’ve been slow to blog of late as I’m busy sifting through all the photos and choosing the best ones for my Flickr page.  I’ll put the more complete galleries on my site in the World Photos gallery.

There were several occasions during my trip where I got to experience outstanding customer service in Hong Kong.  Essentially, shop staff went out of their way to help.  Over here you might take their assistance as intrusive.  I have to admit it took me a couple of days to adjust.

Picture this: I managed to fry my mobile phone whilst plugging it in to charge one day and I dropped my iPod, which then refused to work anymore - the hard disk died.  So after that double-whammy I visited a local mall to see about replacing both of them just before I returned to the UK.

I don’t have a lot of time in which to write this post so I’ll cut to the chase.  Every single item I intended to buy in the electronics store I visited was taken out of its packaging so I could play with it before parting with my money.  That included switching the phone on and demonstrating that all contents were present and correct in the three boxes (I made and impulse purchase of a very nifty iPod Shuffle too!)

Awesome experience, helpful and friendly staff who could so easily have given me the Tottenham Court Road box-shifting treatment…

It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a long-haul flight. Today sees me taking a direct flight out to Hong Kong from London’s Heathrow. I am intrigued to know what this experience is going to be like as I’m flying in Business Class - Club World.

The last time I flew in Club I was the benefactor of a complementary upgrade at the gate, which came as a complete surprise! This time however, I made the conscious decision to fork out the extra cash for the pleasure. My (male) logic ran something like this… a) it is getting late to book a decent-priced economy ticket, b) oh look, the economy tickets are more expensive than business anyway, c) well I haven’t had a decent holiday this year anyway, d) perhaps I won’t be quite so jet-lagged and well, e) who enjoys flying cattle-class on long flights anyway?

Thinking about it… buying the ticket online fell at the final hurdle the first time around. I reached the payment page and when I clicked the “right let’s buy this thing” button, I was booted back to the start of the process completely uncertain whether the sizeable purchase had gone through on my credit card or not?! After a short(ish) wait on the phone, I confirmed with the helpful BA call centre guy that in fact, there was no booking registered in my name - and I did indeed need to start over.

Since then I have had no issues to speak of, the second attempt was fruitful. I received my (automated) email confirmations without a hitch. Nice touch a couple of days ago, I received a “did you remember you’re flying with us in just a few days now and we think you ought to think about a, b and c” email.

Bang up to the present then and it’s the day of truth. I fly tonight. One slight issue, it’s darned foggy out there - so much so BA has grounded ALL domestic British mainland flights for the whole day! So fingers crossed I get away tonight…
I have checked in; found I’m lucky enough to be seated in row 13… But then, after looking at the alternatives, I decided to stick with it, ‘coz I got a window, which might be rather cool when it comes to landing (over the sea) in Hong Kong on the other end.

Right well, not a lot more to look forward to until I get to the airport (on the tube!) and join the throngs, (tens of thousands) of people trying to get away from Blightey for the next week or two…