We are REALLY sorry, now about that hard sell?

Some weeks ago I received the attached message and new credit card form Citicards:

I was not happy to hear that my personal data may have been compromised, but at least I live in a State that requires that a company tell me when such an event happens. In too many places that is still not the case and such an event can be quietly forgotten, more than six years after California became the first state to require such disclosure.

As usual, I’m required to activate the card by phone. I call and my home number is recognized and the activation proceeds smoothly. Till I get the message ‘Please hold for a representative.’ Oh, oh. It’s a cunning move as I can’t drop the call just in case the activation isn’t completed properly.

Turns out that there isn’t a problem with activation, but Citicard – in their misguided wisdom – want to do the hard sell on me. I’m pressured for additional services that I neither want or need. This in response to a major cock up in their systems and processes. Who on earth thought that ANY message other than a contrite apology for all the hassle that comes a credit card number change was a good idea?

Is that how you would treat your customer? I hope not. If one of my clients is ever in that situation my advice is to apologize, be contrite and ask what the company can do to make amends. Not to apply the high pressure sales tactics, with not so much as a ‘by your leave.’

And to add insult to injury, I can no longer download transactions from my Citicard account into Quicken which I use for my business and personal finances. 12 weeks later, I still can’t. ‘Customer Service’ tells me that they don’t know when it will be fixed.

Hey it’s only three months, for a feature that I’ve come to depend on. Fortunately, this is not a card I use a lot, so the volume of transactions can be hand entered, but it is a pain. And each time I have to do that for a monthly reconciliation, I’m reminded about the abysmal customer experience that Citicard makes me go through.

Compare and contrast with the customer experience at my other credit card – American Express – they have invariably done the right thing.

Citibank can send me as much marketing bumf and encouragement to spend. It won’t make me use their card, except when I have no alternative. Oh, and the last statement came with a notification that my APR is now 29+%!!!

Definitely feel like a valued customer!

So, how do YOU treat your customer when something bad happens? Do you go out of your way to make amends? And to make sure that each interaction thereafter reinforces the positives – and doesn’t keep rubbing salt in the sore wound?

Are you SURE?

Truth in Advertising???

Has to be the most truthful adverting I have seen for a while…..

Now you start to understand my sense of humor …..

Truth in all its Glory!

As regular readers will know, I’m an advocate of truth and authenticity in our relationship with customers. However, I do think that the poor product marketers responsible for Quaker Instant Oatmeal have had to carry this a little too far – something you never thought you would hear me say!

Take a look at this:

“Artificial Fruit & Cream Flavors” plus “AND OTHER NATURAL FLAVORS”.

It struck me how different the two – at first glance – similar product packages were and I wondered if this was legal advice at work, or whether someone in the product department was being overzealous. As I said, I’m in favor of truth and authenticity in marketing and in product information, but I would hope for a little more creativity in presenting accurate information. As I pondered a little more, I started to think that maybe the two packages were so in order to try out different packaging.

But that’s a risky way to do it, live in the field. I always advocate quick and cheap ways to test ideas – like asking directly.

So what’s the lesson? Be truthful, but be creative. If you want to test ideas, ask customers directly.

Smart Marketing Bose

I travel on American Airlines – one of the better experiences (if that’s possible on modern airlines), really due to their customer service phone lines. I recently headed to Europe for the first time in quite a while, and took notice of how many passengers had Bose Quiet Comfort headphones – as I do. They are a nice device and work well on aeroplanes (I got them after leaving TWO pairs of in ear noise-reduction headsets on aircraft inadvertently – never to be seen again).

But what made me like them – even at the premium price they command? AA hand them out to business class passengers to try. It’s obvious that once they are tried, people buy. Something over 25% of the business class passengers on the sector from San Francisco to Chicago (where they are not handed out by AA) were wearing Bose headsets. That’s an incredibly high percentage. There were also a reasonable number, five or so, in the economy section going to London.

I’ve written before about my Bose experience – others commented that they were not anywhere near as happy. But my experiences have been positive – both with the products, and with their service. And it is clear that if you can get customers to try – especially when corralled for a long time in a perfect trial environment – they will buy.

So how can we get our potential customers to trial our offer? That is the challenge for us in marketing, but thinking ‘outside the box’ as Bose did clearly works and works well.

I’d love to hear what you have done that worked.

How do YOU treat YOUR trapped customers?

Since I set up in business on my own, I’ve had an office at my photographic studio. When I moved in, there was no phone or internet service, so I scouted around. In short, I went with Comcast, they had a deal on, $21 for six months and $45 thereafter (more on THAT later), which was much better than paying for a phone line plus DSL.

We had some installation issues (the installer turned up with no ladder – it wasn’t clear how they thought they would reach the existing wires on the poles to make the connection – but I laughed) and eventually the service was installed. A couple of glitches – isn’t it interesting how we have such low expectations that a couple of glitches are expected – and I’m working.

Lately though – at the one year anniversary interestingly, I’ve been getting drop outs and no internet. One day I had had no connection for over an hour. I called Comcast. No system problems they said. I still couldn’t connect, whilst talking to the support rep. ‘I can ’see’ your device’ she said. ‘Nope, I can’t get anything’. They insisted there was no problem, but I couldn’t get out. They suggested that I swap the cable from the wall to the modem ‘end for end’. I asked how that could possibly help – no answer.

I was getting frustrated, and asked what the options were. ‘We can send out a technician.’ Progress! Friday morning or afternoon (this is Tuesday). We established that really was the earliest – three days is very poor in my view. And I was due to be in Yosemite making pictures, so Monday it would have to be. We book for a 9-11AM slot.

I’m in a very happy frame of mind on Monday (Yosemite in winter is absolutely stunning), arrive at 8 to make sure that I have everything covered. I connect – the internet is working! I work away whilst waiting for the tech. I’ve cancelled my lunch appointment just in case.

By 12:30 no one has arrived. I call Comcast. I wend my way through the voicemail (the one that insists on requiring the phone number we do not posses as an identifier) and get to a technician. I enquire where the technician is. ‘What are the last 4 of your social?’ ‘Why do you need that?’ I ask. ‘I can’t release any account information without it’. ‘I don’t want any account information, I just want to know where the tech is that should have been here between 9-11.’

We go on with nonsensical security questions (not that security is nonsensical, but that it’s needed for such a query). We get through that (by this time I have been on the phone for over 10 minutes), to be told that the call was cancelled. I asked ‘By whom’. You, I’m told.

I bit my tongue and didn’t point out that I’d hardly be calling if I had cancelled the visit. I can hear Barbara ‘breeeeeath.’ I ask what the options are, ‘Is your internet connection working?’ I advise that it is. ‘Then there is no problem.’ I point out that I’m having consistent intermittent problems, which is why the etch was coming in the first place. I can send a tech, but you will be charged if he can’t find a problem.

By now ‘m fuming, no apology, no sign of sympathy. Just ‘it’s working now and if someone comes out we want money.’ More money – it turns out the $45 price tag is only available if you also take cable TV service. There is no way to get the advertised $45 service alone. But i gritted my teeth and stuck with it.

And here’s the point, I’m sure Comcast have me in that ’satisfied customer’ column on the tick sheet – after all I’m still a customer am I not? I am, but not because I’m delighted. Because the switching costs and alternatives are too hard, or expensive, or both. Or maybe I just know, deep down, that going to AT&T would not be any different. How sad.

Market pressure, you say. True. Sorta. I have Comcast at home and am resisting the HD upgrade (a jump I HAVE to make next year, the analogue services go away), but Copmcast want an additional $25 just to be able to receive HD (about a 22% increase on the monthly bill). So, I’m actively looking at going with satellite when we do move. So Comcast, you might have a tick in your customer column, but I won’t upgrade my TV service, I won’t take internet services from you at home, and, and……

To my learning point for you, dear reader. How many of your customers are with you because they are delighted? And how many of them are trapped because the alternatives are few and poor?
You may say you don’t care, you still have them. And I would argue two things: One, you WANT delighted customers talking about you, your products and services, that’s what builds sustainable business. Two, what happens when a viable, or just a little more attractive alternative comes along? They (customers) bolt, that’s what happens and you will NEVER get them back.

Which category are you in? Which do you want to be in?

Discount or not?

Peet’s has a great system for its coffee card; when you put at least $20 credit on it, you get a $1 discount. Not much, but a token that, at least for me, is a good way of saying ‘Thanks’.

However, adding credit at the same time as buying coffee seems fraught! I’m not sure whether it is basic arithmetic skills (or lack thereof) or some problem of the processes. Let me elucidate; I usually discover that I need to add credit to my card when it is short of the amount to pay for my coffee. Seems straightforward, but it never is. For example, I’m short, say $2.35; I’ll say “please add another $30 as well”.

Simple? Apparently not. I have had all variations: they add $30, then take the $2.35 from the card: they give me two credit card slips, one for $30 and one for $2.35: I get a credit card slip for the total of $30 plus the items I bought – so what happened to the amount that was on the card before they tried to charge it (“We put it back on the card”). And so on.

It seems simple to me to do what is requested, but I admit to having grown up in a corner store – and we worked the counter with the rest of the family – and so, doing the change equation in my head was a basic skill. And doing it under pressure of an awkward customer too!

But I gave in. So this time I bought my coffee and then, separately, added $20 to my card. “So you’ve added $21?” I ask. “No”, he says, “you only get the discount if you add money when buying coffee.”

Huh??????

Give him his due, he did immediately give me the card for $1 off my next purchase.

But what a weird and wonderful system………….

And, in case you think I’m picking on Peet’s, I’ve had most of the problems with my Starbucks card too. Including, this week, when I was told there was no credit on the card. I NEVER carry a zero value card, so I know it’s wrong. But what can I do? The manager said “Register the card.” I asked if she had tried – I have and gave up. I was registering it as there were free iTunes for doing so – so I was very motivated. But the web form would not accept the data it was asking for….. No matter what I did.

She assured me that if I called “they” would help me and were very good. I haven’t done so, but will report back when I have plucked up the calm to go through this!

Brand, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Marketing, Product Management, Service, User Experience

Merrill Lynch and security…….

I have had this love hate relationship with Merrill for some years. I went to them after a long and arduous search to find an advisor and money manager who seemed capable, professional and we wanted to work with. We met, and liked Len in the San Francisco office and we gradually built a portfolio that made sense for me, and met every six months or so to check in, chat and see how we were doing against plan.

Of course, it would have been nice if Merrill, as a global player, could manage my UK assets as well as my US ones – but no I had to be treated as a separate client in each country and to meet their minimum asset requirements in each. Now I’m not rich, but a absolutely get Charles Schwab’s advertising that talks to helping people who have “only $100K”. I’m sure that they are targeting Merrill – as I have heard that refrain a number of times over the years.

Back to Len. He was the epitome of an advisor. He cared, he gave advice that was right for me – or at least I always felt so. Then one day I get a letter that as part of a Merrill rationalization I wouldn’t have a personal advisor anymore, I could call an 800 number to transact my business. Inertia is the saviour of many businesses, and that’s true in this case. It has just been too much hassle to move things, but maybe it is time. I haven’t transacted any stock business with Merrill since Len as they didn’t talk to me for a couple of years. Then they woke up, I could have an ‘account review’, by phone of course. I did, and on both occasions it was just a hard sell for Merrill funds – despite (as I pointed out) the poor ratings that they get from most sources. No assessment of the stocks I held – whether they were still relevant, the mix of assets, etc, etc. Just ‘we recommend this fund’.

More recently I got bored with sending checks between accounts and wanted to do electronic transfers. ML’s web has always been hard to traverse and their electronic access been convoluted in my view, so I didn’t use it (one of the very few financial relationships I have that isn’t managed via the web and/or Quicken), but hey the sent me a letter saying that I could do this so I called the guy. I had to fill in paper forms, send a check for the account that I wanted to link to. All of which I did (grudgingly, Paypal can sign me up and verify my account without any of this paper going back and forth). Nothing. I call, and Brian was very good – the duplicate paperwork was shipped overnight with a return, pre-paid, courier envelope. I get an acknowledgement that the paperwork is in place and I STILL have to call to activate the link!

So I do, I have a 10 digit account code that bears no relation to anything else (not my account code, not anything….), I complain that it’s not memorable. Oh your browser will store it, so you don’t need to remember it, I’m told. Very secure! Then the password. Six characters. Not at least six, but exactly six. I’m pretty good at using passwords, not writing them down etc. I use a mechanism that enables me to remember HOW to get to the password, rather than trying to remember the word itself. That’s hard when you are constrained to exactly six characters.

So, the bottom line is, there is a lot of friction in doing business with ML. And it is not friction that makes me feel like the security has a benefit for me. My frustration is increased and I continue to do more business with others – most of my stock trades are through Ameritrade and I use Amex and Paypal more and more. And the more I do, the more I like them.

Brand, Customer Service, Marketing, Product Management

Business Week catches up?

Stephen Wildstrom, whose column in Business Week I read every week, got to talking about the non-technical aspects of tech in a recent article. I’m delighted that the mainstream press – and especially someone as well informed and as widely read as Wildstrom – is picking up on design issues. I hope he gets to the whole of the user experience (rather than just the – important – aspect of design), as tech is the area that needs it more than most. Design needs to be applied to the WHOLE user experience – from start to finish – in the same manner as the product and the packaging. That has been my theme here since day one. It will remain so! I comment in Wildstrom’s blog with a link back to this article that I wrote in August 2006. Let’s see if it makes it through the moderation process as I included a link to my original article. It often feels like a slog to get organizations to confront the customer’s truth, but hey maybe it is starting to happen! Onward and upward!

{Product Management, Apple, Brand, Marketing, Product}

Apple, Brand, Marketing, Product, Product Management, User Experience

Drinking Your Own Champagne

Starbucks & Peet’s – Compare & Contrast

We used to have this horrible expression ‘Eating your own dogfood“. I get what it is all about – do the people (marketers in my case) who develop and decide on product features ever use their own products? If they do, one would be driven to the conclusion (in the majority of cases) that they are very strange people indeed! So, I prefer the version in the title, but whatever we use as a phrase to describe it, it only works if marketers do indeed eat or drink of their product.

Where I grew up, in the North of England, I remember the wholesale destruction and rebuilding of the town where I spent my teenage years. The town centre was razed and built as a concrete monstrosity as were many of the Victorian era slums. I visited a friend in his mum’s shiny new place – a block of flats – and came away thinking ‘Would the guy who designed these actually want to live in them?’. 25 years later they were demolished as they had rapidly become the slums they were intended to replace – so much for the brave new world of our betters ‘knowing what we need’.

Back to my point, marketers (or architects!) need to build products and services that reflect the REAL needs and wants of customers, not those that THEY THINK they should have – or worse, deserve. I saw a quote from Steelcase’s CEO, James Hackett who asks in product planning pitches from his marketers ‘What customer insight drove this product feature’ (the articles in in Business Week) and goes on to describe the consternation that such a question caused at first.

I got here by my mind wandering – in the queue for coffee – to a ‘compare and contrast’ thought. I buy coffee from both Starbucks and from Peet’s regularly – and the experience is very, very different. It used to be simple: Peet’s had the best coffee. Starbucks had bathrooms, wireless, a place to sit – and Peet’s had none of these. Also the people (almost all of whom are FANTASTIC in either chain) are very different. More varied in Peet’s, a little edgier (for example, tattoos, piercings and interesting hair are widely evident in Peet’s, Starbucks much more ‘corporate’ though diverse). And Starbucks is all process and efficient flow through the store: Peet’s has an air of slight disorganization and chaos – but nice chaos. Finally, to go with the best coffee, Peet’s sells and grinds beans (I know Starbucks sell beans, but I get the impression that beans are about as important as the bears and the other stuff they clog the stores with) and you get the smell of cofee – none of that at Starbucks. I do hear that Starbucks has recognized the power of the smell of coffee and is working to reintroduce it!

Recently though, Peet’s started opening new stores that had bathrooms (only one mind you!), a limited amount of seating and a new layout. Which gets me to my point – eventually!

The new and refurbished stores have a long narrow format, with the counter on the right, stretching about 2/3 the length of the store. The line to buy goes down the left side of the store and people are called to be served by walking back towards the door. When they have given their order, they walk to the pickup which is at the BACK of the store and in doing so, they have to fight their way through the line that is waiting Oh, and to compound the problem, once the drink is collected, the sugar, milk, jackets, etc. are stored on a servery on the left wall – you guessed it, right by the head of the line! So now we have a huge scrum in the middle of the store and it creates absolute chaos.

The customers talk about – or more rightly ask ‘Why?’ whilst in line. A simple change that moves the waiting line to the right and then flows from the door to the pickup point (a la Starbucks!) would resolve the problem, but no, there is a sign and rope barrier to direct and corral any recalcitrant customer with a brain.

So back to our marketers; hopefully I’ve already established that the whole experience is important? And I’ve talked elsewhere about empowered employees in many posts here. So the customers know that the flow is braindead and inconvenient and, it turns out, so do the staff. My favorite server is Molly. I asked her one day why it was the way it was. She, and other staff, recognized the problem. But I didn’t get the impression that head office did! But why oh why don’t the staff (or manager!) take it upon themselves to ditch the system and move the line to the right? Go on Molly!

I did tell Molly that I was going to write about it in my blog; I promised to make her famous – but only on the proviso that she had to sign autographs! So, if you know your local Peet’s and there is Molly behind the counter, ask her for her autograph – she is a real superstar – and tell her I sent you!

In the meantime, I’ll wait for the new marketing manager (I see that Peet’s are advertising….) to make his or her mark. I wonder how long I will wait……..

{WOM, Brand, Customer Service, Product Management}

Technorati Tags: Brand, Customer Service, Marketing, Product, Product Management, User Experience, WOM

The eFax experience

I have been an eFax user for many years, and stuck with it even though it’s not a medium I use much nowadays – and more importantly nor do my clients. Email, Adobe’s PDF, messaging and devices like the Fujitsu Scansnap make fax – plus the fax spam that I get – a medium of the past.

As a smart marketer you would think that awareness of your products maturity or ‘ageing’ would be top of mind. You might do mid life enhancements or add services that keep the product relevant. Integrate it with other services or products perhaps?

Maybe it doesn’t look like that from the inside? Maybe eFax has a nice ‘annuity’ revenue from it’s existing base and it’s slow to recognize the problem I see? Maybe.

I stuck with eFax for the same reason many customers do with such services: – it was easier to just renew than to fill in complex forms about the spam, or to cancel for that odd time when I DID use fax. Then I got the price increase notice. Note to self ‘when you have a nice annuity revenue stream, don’t do anything to cause customers to question the service’.

So, being a good GTDer, I made myself a note to downgrade to free service, or to cancel. No urgency, just one of those fill in tasks to do when I was bored.

I was bored. I went onto the eFax web. No way could I find out how to cancel. Nothing in ‘My Account’. Nothing in FAQs (nobody will leave if you don’t tell them how, right?). Nothing.

eFax has one of these fancy ‘Talk to live operator’ facilities. I click the button. It opens a special window and i type in my question. Nothing. I get one with other tasks, type ‘Hello’ once in a while. 30 minutes later I give up.

But now I’m on a roll. This is reinforcing all the ‘ease of use’ issues that I had when starting up with eFax. But then you learn how to cope and they fade away. Now they are back – with a vengeance! There is a link to email sales, so I email them. “I wish to downgrade my account to the free version. If that is not available for any reason I wish to cancel. How do I achieve that?” The reply is “Customer Service don’t read these emails’ and an explanation of how to get help (the ones I had already tried).

My bad side was piqued I had to reply ‘Silly me! Fancy expecting sales to deal with a customer issue! Having sat on the end of your ‘talk to a live support person’ for over 30 minutes with no response, and no way to remove my credit card information from within my account it seems that customers cannot leave.”

No answer to date! Wouldn’t you read that as a red flag? I would. I did, every time I saw an email from a customer that looked even vaguely dischuffed (an English term – head for Google), I would leap in and regard it as a challenge to bring them back on board. Not Efax, no response was ever received. And even if it’s not a part of sales’ remit, wouldn’t you forward the email, or have someone call. As an aside, I ordered form Land’s End recently and pressed the ‘Call Me’ button and had a very smart and on the ball woman call me, literally within seconds. Compare and contrast.

I tried phoning and end up (many times) in auto response hell. I won’t go into how bad it is. Suffice it to say, it refers me back (after many branches) to the web site that I can’t make work.

Onwards! By now the bit was between my teeth. I had a hunch that the ‘talk to me’ may be to do with the fact that I was using Safari web browser on my Mac. I check the eFax web (the rest of the web appears to work fine, BTW) for a FAQ telling me to use Microsoft or some such – nothing. I download Firefox and install it on my Mac. I click ‘Talk to me’. Viola!

Progress, I get to ‘talk’ to someone at last. But my woes are not done yet. The person I’m talking to doesn’t ‘get’ my problem. They “cannot downgrade my account due to the architecture of their system”. Huh??? I should just get in touch when the annual agreement expires, and they will cancel it. The short version is that I was getting quite angry and told him to do whatever it took to cancel the account RIGHT NOW. There never was an attempt to understand WHY I was unhappy, if there was a way to fix it, if they could find a way to keep me.

So if I had stock in eFax, I would be ditching it very fast indeed. I’ll watch with fascination what happens. i do hope they wake up in time…..

{WOM, Bad Customer Service, Customer Service, Mac, Marketing, Product Management}

Technorati Tags: Bad Customer Service, Customer Service, Mac, Marketing, Product, Product Management, User Experience, WOM