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.

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:

1. Email
2. Phone call
3. To my friends, family, acquaintances
4. On my blog
5. Via twitter
6. 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 your customers created their own processes…

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?

What effect – social media on customer service?

The customer service paradigm as we know it is being gradually eroded away by the forces of social media. It is being pulled outwards, away from the company and into the hands of customers themselves. The challenge for businesses is not only to face up to this, but also to identify meaningful and relevant ways in which to provide a form of customer service that utilises the best characteristics of social media. This hybrid ’social media customer service’ must somehow find its rightful place alongside the self-help social networks created by customers themselves.

Twitter

Take the example of Twitter and the impact it is having on the provision of customer services. To focus on the ‘fad versus trend’ debate in my view only serves to ignore the inherent value that Twitter offers. Frank Eliason (@comcastcares) of ComCast has rightly observed the early warning characteristic of Twitter. In my own work at Carphone Warehouse (@guyatcarphone) I have observed this first hand with the recent Apple iPhone upgrade to 3GS.

Checking Twitter activity the night before the launch highlighted that once we integrate Twitter as a more formal part of any handset launch, we have the opportunity to potentially minimise issues well in advance of an actual launch, particularly around stock availability and delivery.

A further characteristic of Twitter is around the whole issue of ‘time’. Not time to resolve an issue, but rather time to identify an issue. Whilst I believe that Twitter can be used effectively to resolve first line issues and stop them ever coming into the contact centre itself, for more complex ones, a resolution will happen in line with more traditional channels of resolution such as email or phone. However, the time it now takes to actually identify an issue and make that initial contact with a customer is far quicker than before.

C2C customer service: some random thoughts (‘customer-to-customer’)

Customers are helping themselves and each other.

Businesses are no longer integral to the customer service value chain proposition.

How does a business harness what is effectively a decentralised call centre network?

Pockets of information authored by many different people that are accessible 24/7 in many different formats and on a variety of platforms – podcasts, blogs, videos, twitter, web, mobile phone.

Geography is no longer a factor to the provision of customer service.

Anyone with knowledge can provide an answer. But whose information do you trust? Are customer ratings the new ‘trust’?

Customer service is part issue resolution, part marketing, part PR, part sales opportunity…

Who owns customer service?

Will customers be able to design and engineer their own customer service ‘micro-interaction’?

If I can now complain and provide feedback on a third party site (ComplaintCommunity, Plebble etc) and it is broadcast to any number of people, why would I complain on a company web site where the only audience is me and the company? Even if a company chooses to ignore my complaint it is, if nothing else, forever in the public domain. What are the implications for a company?

As the underlying forces of Twitter or whatever the next fad might be become more mainstream how does a business integrate that force (ie. ‘time’ or ‘early warning system’) or even scale it in a viable way?

…the challenge businesses face is just how do you take advantage of the best that social media has to offer and integrate it into your overall customer service offerings.

what price technology?

I went in to my local bank the other day to deposit a cheque. As I walked in a member of staff guided me towards one of their new deposit machines. So instead of depositing my cheque at the counter, they now had a machine that could do the whole process. Seemed fine to me. 

So I happily tried it out. Put my cheque together with the pay-in slip and then fed it into the machine. Everything seemed to work fine. And several days later I saw the amount had been credited to my bank account. 

I’m all for the advancement of technology. But the question I have got to ask myself is this: If you are going to replace people with machines, what’s the point if the machine is going to take longer? At least with a person, there is the potential of a smile and a ‘Have a nice day’.

understand the platform

I recently started using Facebook to keep in touch with friends. I’m definitely not a regular updater and what has been enlightening for me is understanding how not only I but my friends and family use Facebook.

I had my own preconceptions about how it was used and simply whether it had any value or relevance to me. I must admit I am starting to quite like it. I definitely fell into the ‘why would anyone want to know what I am up to and who really cares’ camp. My life isn’t that interesting – mainly made up of running around tidying up after the kids, sitting on the sofa in the evening and promptly falling asleep only to wake up at 1am, wishing I did more with my life. The cycle continues, apart from my time at work, the next day.

I recently received a couple of emails from two people who I have not been in contact with since I lived in Taiwan about 16 years ago. They both found me through Facebook – which I was amazed about. But what was interesting for me was that in both instances they sent a message to me via Facebook and I responded accordingly. But I was expecting then to keep in touch with them via email. The emails never came. What they did do was keep their Facebook page updated by adding one or two comments a day.

So I learnt that once that initial contact had been made by email or a Facebook message, that we would keep in touch by simply following each others updates, posting comments if we  had something to say (or a photo), or adding more info about ourselves. 

This whole approach is new to me. I’m used to using emails which are specific to a time, an action, a place, whereas Facebook is more like an ongoing conversation that goes at whatever speed you want it to. 

Anyway, this got me thinking, that it’s crucial to understand the platform that not only you are using, but that your customers are using. And once you understand the platform, to ask yourself, is it a relevant platform on which to communicate with my customers and if so, what type of communication should I be doing. You’ve still got to understand your customers and put together something relevant to converse with them about. But at least it’s a start.

it’s the small things that make a difference…

I was on a two day course last week and stayed overnight in a strictly average hotel. I checked-in at reception when I got there in the morning, was given directions to the room, but couldn’t actually go to my room because it was still being cleaned. I didn’t pay much attention to the directions I was given, because I knew my room was still being cleaned. All I remember was that the room was up two flights of stairs.

I didn’t actually pick up my keys until about 6pm. My room number was 240. 

I went up the first set of stairs and at the top I was faced with three signs: Rooms 118-142 to the right, and to the left rooms 152-178 and 240-241.

I naturally go towards the sign showing 240. I go through a set of doors and am faced with a further two signs this time with doors going off in different directions. Unfortunately, neither sign has 240 on it. I try the left hand door first, no luck. So faced with the only alternative left I go through the door to the right. After a few steps I find a sign for room 240, indicating that I have to go up another flight of stairs and at the top is room 240. 

The question I asked myself is this: Why hold my hand so far, only to let it go when it matters? Where’s the logic in that?

It was the end of the day for me, and the last thing I wanted was to have to think where my room might be. I am a customer. I’m stupid at the best of times (but that doesn’t mean you can patronise me). Please think for me. Don’t ask me or expect me to think, especially if you have started leading the way. Please make sure the experience works the whole way through because it’s usually the small things, the things that we gloss over, the things that we’ve seen so many times we become blind to, that make the difference.