Changing blogs to ‘being guy1067′
Please note that I will be moving to a new blog shortly – being guy1067. I’m in the process of sorting that one out and replacing all my existing ones. It’s time I got a bit more serious about blogging. Half the trouble was I couldn’t decide what to call the blog, but I’ve been ‘guy1067′ for so long now, the answer was, as usual, staring me in the face. I hope you’ll take the trouble to continue to read my occasional ramblings.
Twelpforce: The power of many…
I wrote a post on the Carphone Warehouse blog the other day about Twelpforce: the power of collective help. Twelpforce is an amazing, and I would say revolutionary and evolutionary, approach to how BestBuy engages with customers. It utilises all the collective knowledge within a company and channels it through a single interface – Twelpforce. Imagine not just one person or ten people, but over 1,000 employees ready to answer any query a customer puts to them. This post is about a conversation I had with John Bernier, one of the team that brought the concept to life. I love the following sentence from John: ‘Twelpforce is the culmination of all the different experiments that took place’. Just imagine, thousands of ‘micro-interactions’ happening every day.
My first ‘boo’ – help signposts
I recorded my first ‘boo’ (Audioboo) the other day – Help signposts.
This ‘boo’ is about help signposts and how sometimes we expect a lot of our customers when they go onto a web site without perhaps knowing where everything is and how little we assist them in the world we have constructed to actually get them to where they want to get to.
It’s simple when you know…
I was given some Thule roof bars the other day (for a roof box that I have since bought). I was trying to figure out how the bars fixed to the car. There were no instructions and I hadn’t spoken to the person who had given me the bars.
I saw that there were some keys and figured out that the ends came off. But beyond this I couldn’t actually see how they attached to the car. However, when I picked up the roof box and was shown how to do it, I could see how simple and ingenious it was.
It reminds me of the time I was trying to put up a tent I borrowed from a friend. Once they showed me how the first pole went, the rest just slotted into place.
Sometimes, no matter how much we think we might know, instructions are useful. But what would be even more useful is useful instructions that accepted I wouldn’t read them until I needed them and just muddled through for the most part.
Meeting expectations
I went to Pizza Express for lunch with the kids the other day. It’s one of those restaurants that falls into the category of ‘I know exactly what I’m going to get’. And I don’t mean it in a detrimental way at all, if anything it’s good thing. Usually we can be out of there within 90 minutes without feeling rushed.
This particular lunchtime seemed no busier than any other. But for some reason we received what can only be described as the slowest and worst service we have ever received. Not only did it take well over two hours, but they kept forgetting things that we had ordered.
So what’s my point?
As a customer we go into situations with expectations formed from accumulated past experience, either our own or acquired from people whose opinions we know and trust. Subsequent experiences will be judged against the backdrop of what has taken place in the past. The criteria we use to judge our experience by is vague at best, random at worst, and everchanging.
From a business’ perspective, however, it’s a whole lot trickier to continually meet customers’ expectations. The goodwill bank that is painstakingly built up over time can be depleted within moments. Businesses are continually challenged to provide experiences that are memorable, unique, or provide a ‘wow’ factor.
For both sides, however, the customer experience is a momentary occurence where one person’s ‘satisfactory’ is another company’s ‘memorable’. And unfortunately the two may rarely meet.
I complain here, I complain there, I complain everywhere
As a consumer I have any number of ways I can complain/feedback about the experience I have had with a company’s product(s) or service(s) including:
- Phone call
- To my friends, family, acquaintances
- On my blog
- Via twitter
- Third party sites such as Plebble, ComplaintCommunity, GetSatisfaction, Qype, Yelp…
The big difference between the first three and the last three are that the first three essentially take place within a private space, between me and the company or those who I choose to tell. While the last three take place within potentially a very public medium.
What is the impact of this on a company?
Not only does a company have to contend with the fact that someone can complain very publicly, they now also have to contend with the fact that someone can complain almost anywhere they want. In a sense, a company now has to proactively seek out complaints, as well as be reminded of the fact via Twitter alerts that someone has just complained about them or that they have yet to deal with that complain.
Twitter uncut
Some random ‘uncut’ thoughts on Twitter.
Fad? Get over it. You’ll only know if it’s a fad when it’s not here anymore. Is a fad linked to time? Could be a long wait.
Story? Many people talk about the need for having a story to tell. I’m not sure what that means or on what level a story takes place? For me, my story is that I help people (@guyatcarphone). It’s as simple as that. If you’ve got a problem I listen and try to find the answer. Does that make for a good or interesting story? I don’t know. But what I do know is that it’s the people I help who judge whether I’ve got a story to tell or not, and at the end of the day are the people I help really bothered whether I’ve got a story to tell? What I do know, is that if I don’t help them, they’ve certainly got a story about me to tell.
Be interesting? What does this mean? I find it difficult being interesting out of work, what hope does that give me when I am in work? Interesting to who?
Listen? Listen to what? How do I know if I am listening to the right thing?
Be relevant? What does this mean? Relevant to who? About what? How do I know when I am being relevant? What does it look like?
ROI? All I know is that every customer I help or even turn into a fan, is a customer who might be a bit more likely to come back and buy from us again. What’s the ROI on that? Is it a social media ROI? Marketing ROI? Sales ROI? Brand ROI? Customer service ROI? Twitter ROI?
People seem to be more concerned with being interesting, being relevant, creating a story than actually simply writing their first tweet. My advice for taking your first step: get on Tweetdeck or Hootsuite type in the search field the name of your company or the product or service you provide and respond empathetically to what people, some of who may be your customers, some of whom may be your detractors are saying. Imagine you are them, how would you want to be responded to? Your story and relevance will follow. If you create a story first, just remember it may not be the one your customers want to hear.
Help is at hand…
This post is a first, actually it’s a second, but I put that down to the perils of a beginner. I somehow deleted my first attempt at a blog on the move.
I have been using an iPhone for about two weeks now and it has without doubt opened up for me a whole new world of possibilities within online help and customer service.
Geography and time difference are no longer the barriers they once were. I can literally help or provide customer service at anytime and from anywhere.
I was on the train home, a journey of about 50 minutes, time enough in theory to provide help and support to whoever might need it via Twitter or some other platform.
Imagine though if a company could harness the collective knowledge of its customers who are willing to share their knowledge as and when they feel like it. Or a Google or Microsoft creating a global help and support platform drawing on the collective knowledge and experiences of us all; people helping people on their way home on the train or on the bus or wherever they might be…nothing stopping us except an empty battery!
Imagine if customers could create their own processes from the tools that you or a third party supplier provided them with?
Imagine if a customer could create their own returns, refund or sales process?
Imagine if customers could submit their own complaints process, and then vote on which one would actually get implemented by a company?
Imagine if a company outsourced its customer service proposition to its customers?
Imagine if…
Customer service: Shouting the loudest
I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Travelling Geeks roundtable a couple of weeks ago hosted by Econsultancy. There were three tables and I was on the customer service one. One of the comments that arose from the various discussions was the impact social media, specifically Twitter, was having on customer service and how it was resulting in a kind of ‘customer service by shouting the loudest’ behaviour. The louder you shout, the more likely and more quickly you are likely to be heard and your complaint dealt with. Twitter is a perfect medium for this.
Over the last few days I’ve thought about this observation more and more. The more I think about it the more I think that actually it’s always been the case and will always be so: the louder you shout the more likely you are to be heard, and the more likely you are to be heard the more likely you are to have your complaint dealt with. The only difference now is the nature of the channel being used. Email, letter, fax and phone are for the most part limited to the person sending it and the person receiving it. Of course you can forward an email on, and there are instances of stories travelling the globe via email, but these are relatively few.
Twitter, on the other hand, is inherently a broadcast medium. Its entire being is about making information public. It’s a medium that not only allows me to shout, but also gives me the belief that I am being heard as well.
I have found through my customer service dealings with people via Twitter that often when people complain they do so because they are simply not being heard. They have tried emailing and phoning, often for months on end, but their complaint has seemingly fallen on deaf ears. They have turned to Twitter, almost as a last resort, one last enormous shout from the edge of a cliff into the wind. And for some unknown reason their tweet-complaint has been picked up within minutes and resolved within hours or days. Who wouldn’t want to shout on Twitter?
