Bailie.com

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Vancouver snow situation and the 2010 Winter Olympics

The snow here, oh, the snow! In our pocket of Burnaby, we had about three feet of the stuff. Its been on the ground for a couple of weeks now, and is slowly melting, although the snow is being replaced by flooding. The snow removal in Vancouver and surrounding areas has been next to abysmal. There was one night where an estimated 8,000 people waited for the Skytrain that never came. As someone who used to live in Montreal, where they have snow removal down to a fine art, I am flabbergasted by the ongoing inefficiencies and lack of services that is [not] provided to residents. Yeah, yeah, I know - they broke their budgets; that just means they didn’t budget well for what was inevitable. We’ve had significant snow for three years now, and each year it gets worse, so it’s time that the city faced up to the fact that they need a snow plan.

In Montreal, we would see a snow scooper tackling the streets, with a series of dump trucks behind it, where the snow would be deposited, and trucked away to dump in a spot where it wouldn’t flood homes when it melted. In greater Vancouver, you’re lucky to see a snowplow on the main roads a day or two after a big storm. And if you live on a side street, forget it. In Montreal, the city takes little Caterpillars along the sidewalks to clear them. Here, there’s an honour system whereby the residents are supposed to clear the snow in front of their buildings. Except when I got off the bus into a large snowbank, I noticed that I was outside of a city-owned park – and the city hadn’t cleared! So clearly, the honour system is impractical.

Keeping the region moving during a snowstorm - this winter was the last practice run to get it right. In a year, a whole raft of tourists will be upon us for the Winter Olympics, but if it snows, they’ll be stuck in their hotel rooms, unable to use public or private transit, and will have to resort to watching events on TV instead of using their uber-expensive tickets to get to the venues. (Who knows, maybe even the athletes won’t be able to attend, if they get stuck in their rooms. Now, that would be funny!) If the government doesn’t go consult with the cities who know how to do snow removal, the right way, these winter Olympics will become the Laughing Stock Olympics. I wonder if anyone is thinking about this other than my friend, L, whose rant on an email list gave me the idea to vent our frustrations here.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

All the reasons not to deal with Wells Fargo Financial

A few months ago, I made a furniture purchase, and was offered one of those “no interest for six months” deals, and took it. I put the sales receipts aside, as the furniture came with a warranty, and waited for a statement from the lender, which turned out to be Wells Fargo Financial to come. Now, six months later, I came across the paperwork and gasped, realizing I’d never made a payment yet. So I called them, and after an incredibly frustrating user experience, I finally got my account paid, and closed for good.

I thought a lot about my experience, because a usability test, or information architecture during the design phase of their site, would not have prevented this user experience from going awry. Instead, it would have required full service design to make this a satisfactory user experience. Here, then are all the ways that Wells Fargo Financial dropped the ball.

(1) Using wrong information. Despite having provided my home address and phone number, they somehow got a partial work address and sent a statement and credit card to that address. This is to an address that has something like 80 companies, and they didn’t use a suite number.

(2) Not making contact. After having my info returned, they didn’t try to make contact, letting months go by without making contact, even after I had phoned them back in January or February.

(3) Confusing me with TMI. When I made contact, they couldn’t find me in the system, then after passing me from rep to rep, each which gave me yet another customer number, at some point telling me that one of the numbers was for internal only. The agents were friendly enough, though, and after we established that my bank wasn’t set up to pay my account, I was redirected to a retail outlet to make my payment.

(4) Lack of customer focus. When I arrived at the storefront office to make a debit card payment, the door was locked because it was their lunch hour. Someone came to the door and suggested I go have lunch and return in 45 minutes. I declined, as I had other appointments awaiting me. However, given that lunch time is probably the most likely time someone can pop out from their jobs (and as a financial institution, I imagine they prefer to deal with people who have jobs) to make a payment. It’s not like they are a 1-person or 2-person shop; I counted six people in the office - you’d think they could split lunch into two shifts so someone is always around to take a payment?

(5) Defending their lack of customer focus. When I called the head office to register my incredulity about the office closure, whoever answered the phone (who insisted that he’d spoken with me earlier, though from his accent, I knew full well it wasn’t him, but that’s a whole other story) became quite insistent that the practice of closing in the middle of the day for an hour was a perfectly logical practice because of the office size and employee entitlement to a lunch hour. He was explaining it to me in a rather condescending manner, as if I didn’t get his justification. Arghhhh. If he’d just said he would pass my frustration along to the customer complaints department, that would have been enough to save the customer transaction, but he couldn’t seem to get what my problem was.

My customer service scale works like this:
A- Great service, real gems, interested in developing relationships; I’m sticking to them like glue. Example: Apex Communications
B- OK, but if a company that impressed me came along, I’d consider switching, if transferring my account
wasn’t too painful. Example: Telus for phone, internet, mobile phone
C- If a more reputable, competent option came along, I’d switch in a heartbeat, even if the process was painful. Example: ICBC (there is no alternative - it’s compulsory to deal with them)
D - Prefer deal with them because the pain of getting involved isn’t worth it; there are better alternatives out there. Wells Fargo Financial
F- I’d prefer to do without than deal with it, I find it so painful. Example: SharePoint

You can see where this company falls on my customer service scale - I’m not impressed at all. Entrepreneurs, here’s a opportunity to introduce them to the concept of service design.

Friday, August 08, 2008

Tourists beware BC Ferries

BC Ferries has decreed that ferry riders aren’t allowed to take pictures on board their ferries. I know, a ludicrous ruling, given that the ferries are packed with tourists all summer long, but so typical for BC Ferries. Evidently, the reason is ... wait for it ... 9/11. Yes, when all the rationale reasons fail, pull out that all-purpose American bogeyman.

Context: A friend of mine was on a BC Ferries vessel, taking some photos of the outdated portraits of various British monarchs, with a running commentary to himself about how they were missing a couple of monarchs between Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II. A BC Ferries employee tells him he has to stop, IMMEDIATELY. He is threatened by staff, and supervisors are called, who also try to intimidate him into submission. When he insists on a *reason* (Yes, remember, this is Canada, and though police sometimes tazer unsuspecting tourists to death, an articulate and informed citizen has a little better chance of asking for someone to make more sense instead of just grunting out “Becuz I says so."), there are some not-so-logical, half-hearted reasons given before that all-purpose American reason is trotted out.

But this is pretty typical for BC Ferries. Consider that the rest of the travel industry gives discounts when travelers make reservations so the company can plan their loads. Not BC Ferries. Instead, they charge extra for reservations. Yes, for helping them anticipate loads, they charge extra. And they don’t create variables fares (other than weekend and weekday fares) to encourage travelers to fill up the boats that otherwise travel half-empty. Talk about counter-intuitive. Of course, this creates resentment for the people who make the reservations because half the time, you didn’t need the reservation, and if you arrive even one minute past the 30-minute window, you can’t benefit from the reservation anyhow, so what was the point, other than to line the pockets of BC Ferries? But again, they used to be government bureaucrats, and haven’t made the transition to a customer-centric organization.

Well, now you’re warned. No taking pictures on the ferry, tourists - leave your cameras in the car! And it’s cheaper to bet with ferry waits than it is to shell out close to $20 extra to make a reservation that you might not need.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Why Hasbro doesn’t deserve customer loyalty

The whole kerfuffle around Hasbro forcing Facebook to shut down Scrabulous is making me examine all my toy purchases, and I’m committed to avoiding Hasbro products for the long run. (And for those of you who know that I buy gifts on a regular basis for some 7 grandkids, a niece and a new nephew, that adds up to some serious purchasing). Let me explain.

Hasbro has owned the Scrabble brand for years, and over the years, their consecutive product managers have shown that they don’t get how seriously Scrabble players take their game. They’ve successively trivialized and ignored the dictionaries, tried to “cutisie” it up (can you imagine changing chess pieces to pop culture figurines, or changing the rules for how checkmate works? this is the magnitude of change they proposed, which you can read about in Work Freak by Stefan Fatsis). So it didn’t surprise me that they underestimated the popularity of the players wanting to play online.

A lot of little sites offer Scrabble online, but what seems to be threatening to Hasbro is a couple of entrepreneurial brothers who created Scrabulous. Because it was on FaceBook, the application was heavily used, and allowed FaceBook members to play with their friends around the world.

It’s not like Scrabulous built an application after Hasbro provided an already excellent service to their user base; instead, the brothers behind Scrabulous saw a gap and filled it. (Ironically, it’s the principal behind American entrepreneurship so their actions are quite ironic.) So what went wrong? Hasbro dragged their feet, and didn’t service their customers for the longest time. And then when they say that the gap had been filled by some entrepreneurs, then they stepped in and shut them down. Even then, Hasbro still doesn’t get it. You can’t play with friends outside of your country (with the exception of Canada and the US, I believe - see the comments in the link for more on this). And if you live in North America, you can’t access Scrabulous at all - you’re stuck with the inferior Hasbro version. It feels like being in a relationship with a rather neglectful partner; they annoy you so much that you just want them to move out and inflict their arrogance on some other unsuspecting victim.

If Hasbro is concerned about their intellectual property, they should have worked with the Scrabulous folks to do something collaboratively that would benefit both of the companies. Instead, they’re alienated lots of users who associate their tactics with the heavy-handedness of Homeland Security. I wonder if they’ll try to justify their actions with the trite old excuse (see the BC Ferries post from last week) - why not, nothing else seems to make sense from a user point of view. They’re doing what’s best for their internal needs, at the expense of their potential, now alienated, customers. And in an environment where everything is on the Web and available at a click of a mouse, it’s easy to make friend - and enemies - in mass quantities, very fast.

On a personal note, I’ve gained more time, as I no longer have a reason to go to FaceBook every day. My 350 average will probably decline, but, well, those are the breaks. This is one customer who, on principle, can’t bring myself to engage with Hasbro.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Conflicted over the iPhone

If you’re a Canadian business person who travels at all and has a Smart phone, you probably have a monthly mobile phone bill that equals half a mortgage payment. Not surprising, as Canada has the highest wireless phone and data rates in the Western world. I found http://www.thomaspurves.com/2007/04/09/canada-worse-than-3rd-world-countries-when-it-comes-to-mobile-data-access/” title="someone who had done the math">someone who had done the math, though he got the name of the Canadian agency that regulates cellular telephone companies. It’s the Canadian Wireless Telecommunication Association. (On their site, the association claims to advocate for the industry to the CRTC, which means that Canadians aren’t likely going to get any sweet deals on wireless soon, if they have their way.)

Which brings me to my own sweet deal. I’ve been doing the annual spring conference tour, either presenting or podcasting, and as soon as I crossed the border, I turned off my phone. (This despite having a Talk North America plan, which still dings me $800/month phone bills some months. Yes, Telus, but but but ... whatever. I care about my user experience, not your business justifications.) My friend, Scott, from Indianapolis, immediately handed me his extra US mobile phone for my use during my 10-day trip. Bliss. Better yet, the phone turned out to be an iPhone. As Scott tossed me the phone, he said I wouldn’t need any instructions other than the basics. Well, I needed a few, but very few, and they were for bonus functions, such as pinching or expanding thumb and forefinger on the screen to contract or enlarge the size of a Web page.

I loved being able to use Twitter from anywhere, to connect to whatever wireless network was handy, to having virtually no extra clicks to move between applications or to confirm or close applications, no typing lag time, and best of all - unlimited voice and data plan! No mobile-use guilt while in the US. What a difference it makes when doing business.

Now I’m regretting getting the HTC P4000.  My initial excitement at getting a new Smart phone quickly dissipated when I couldn’t get the phone to sync with my computer (it seemed to be an incompatibility between Vista and Windows Mobility Centre but a system restore of my computer had the function working - for a day before it stopped working again). For a while, I carried my old phone around, just for quick access to phone numbers, but without voice activation, making calls was just too painful, and though I had my calendar appointments on the old phone, I never heard the reminders because the phone was buried in my bag. So I basically use the HTC P4000 as a “dumb” phone for incoming calls, at least until someone, somewhere can get it working. Maybe by then, Telus will get the iPhone (I’m stuck with almost a 3-year contract with them still), and I’ll be able to toss this piece of hardward that requires multiple extra clicks for every function I want to use.

Even then, I’m not hopeful that I can get it set up at all. When I called the HTC call center, the rep I had kept asking me to click on menu commands that didn’t exist in Windows Mobility Centre, and eventually he confessed that they didn’t have any Vista machines so he could follow along. (Well, they did have one in their crash lab, but he didn’t want to run back and forth to the lab.) The first Telus rep was hopeless, and the second one couldn’t help me, either, though sounded more together. I’ve been wanting to mention to them that I have to reboot the phone a lot, but fear that I’ll get an inane answer. The only folks who seemed to really be helpful was the good folks at Apex - but no matter what they did, they couldn’t crack the code, either.

So iPhone holders, keep your delightful electronic gadgets away from me. I may just drool into the keys, and then where would you be?

Monday, March 10, 2008

Texting and driving

Note: Reposting this because I deleted it by accident while trying to delete nuisance trackbacks..

When I hear people calling into talk shows calling for bans on cell phones in cars, draconian measures such as building in phone de-activators, I roll my eyes and wonder what world they live in. Or, as they’d say in my business, they haven’t thought through their use cases, let alone the edge cases. (So even passengers wouldn’t be able to use their phones in the car? If I’m pulled over but in my car, I’d have to step out onto the highway to call for help? Now there’s a less-than-safe alternative!) Instead, I’m a believer in knowing your limits. At the point in time when I realized I could not safely dial and drive, I stopped. If I’m talking and have to attend to a traffic situation, I simply say, “hold on, hold on” and deal with whatever I have to deal with, no matter how long the silence gets. Safety first. Have I texted while driving? Sure, while I’m stopped at a red light. It might take me three or four red lights to tap out the message “very late. be there 30 mins” but the second the light turns green, I put down my phone and concentrate on the road. I never want to be like the driver of an F150 truck I saw weaving down the highway one night. I assumed the driver was drunk; when I passed the truck, I saw the glow of the open cell phone - the driver was meandering between two lanes while texting.

So yesterday, when taking the Super Shuttle from the San Francisco airport to the downtown Palomar Hotel, I was scared out of my wits. The driver was driving at 60-70 MPH over the Bay Bridge while text messaging the entire time. I was completely appalled. The other passengers didn’t say a word, which surprised me because I asked the guy next to me if he thought this was a safe practice and he was clearly uncomfortable, and it was only when I shrilly demanded that he stop that he did – until he had dropped all the other passengers off, and then he could not resist picking up his phone again while he made his way to my hotel. I don’t know if he was indulging in political discourse or an overactive libido, but it was obvious to me that whatever his motivation, it was pretty compulsive. (The hotel staff inform me that texting while driving is not legal in California, which means that his compulsion was stronger than his common sense on more than one front.)

I am returning to the airport on Wednesday but will make other arrangements (even take public transit, if I have to) to avoid such a hair-raising experience again. To their credit, Super Shuttle responded by saying that a complaint has been filed and forwarded to the local Quality Assurance manager for review, and I should get an answer within five days. Let’s see what kind of response they come up with. 

Saturday, June 30, 2007

The Starbucks Experience, by Joseph Michelli

The first time I encountered Starbucks was when I moved to Vancouver in 1992, and Starbucks was a cool, little company in the Pacific Northwest. I didn’t know the words “user experience” then, but even in 1992, realized then that it was a company that created an in-crowd feeling by using its own vocabulary and in-store culture. I was curious, then, to read The Starbucks Experience to see what the deal was. I’d lost a few feel-good points over Starbucks, but not because it had grown to be a large chain - I never got that “now that you’re successful, we have you” vibe. My beef was that Starbucks sued a little coffee shop inside a kids’ clothing store, in some remote B.C. town, that called itself Starducks or something similar. This from a company that has a name from a character in Battlestar Galactica? In the vein of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I didn’t shutting down a little puddleduck shop was a very good corporate move. Aside from that, however, I was impressed with what the book outlined as their five corporate principles for creating great user experiences. I wish all executives with retail operations would read this book and implement the principles throughout their organization.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

What on earth is going on at VanCity?

Don’t get me wrong - I have been a loyal VanCity customer since I moved to Vancouver many years ago. But the past few days have been quite ... let’s just say that I’d might as well be dealing with Big Ugly Bank. First, I walk down to Branch 10 to make a deposit. I get into the business line-up. There are 2 people in the line-up, and 3 people in the general line-up. The teller says to the business person ahead of me, “Sorry, I’m going to take someone from the other line-up.” Hmmm, so what is the point of having a business line-up? Isn’t the point that we have to get back to our businesses? OK, so one doesn’t have to be a genius to be a bank teller. But wait, it gets better. They deposit my money into another company’s account. So evidently, being able to read the numbers off the deposit sheet isn’t an employment requirement, either. Well, I hope that English comprehension is.

Anyhow, calling the customer service line yielded the following comedic routine:
“Hello, I have a problem.”
“What is your account number? Name? Date of birth? Password?”
“Hold on, I’m in a public place.”
“What’s the problem?”
I explain the problem.
“Oh, let me call the branch.”
(on hold)
“Hello? Hello? Hello?”
Sound of the customer service rep hanging up.

This situation repeated itself twice, until I told the third person that he could help me by not putting me on hold. And they assured me that Barbie (or Muffy, or DragonLady, or whatever her name is that made the mistake) would try to fix the problem today.

I really hope that Mercury goes out of retrograde soon, because my loyalty quotient dropped significantly today, and I really don’t want to have to switch banks.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Will Telus ever “get it”??

I don’t know why I continue to use Telus as my mobile telephone service provider. Heaven knows that every time I have to deal with them, my blood pressure goes up at least a dozen points. I should have a section on my blog for Dumb Things Done by Telus. Don’t get me wrong, some of the individual service reps I’ve spoken with are pleasant enough, and they’re dealing with the stupid policies they’ve been given. But others have been on the ... let’s be polite and say rather obtuse side ... and then we have the ones who are disinterested and just going through the motions. Heck, I should have an entire section on my blog: Telus: yet another f-up.

So first of all, I call in and, hallelujah, because I am a platinum member (that means they’ve sucked lots and lots of money out of my wallet over the last many years), I get the choice of talking to an agent right up front. Well, hell yes. Because why would I be wasting my time calling if I didn’t have a problem complicated enough that I didn’t need to actually talk to someone? OK, so I enter my phone number get routed and routed, and routed by the auto-attendant and now the “fast service promise” begins. Now let’s back up for a minute. When I use my “park by phone” service, it recognizes my phone number automatically. So why wouldn’t the phone company, the very company who issued me the phone number, recognize my number automatically? Never mind, I’ve now punched it in. And my PIN code.

OK, so I wait and I hold. And eventually get answered by a service rep. Who asks me for my telephone number. Again. And my PIN code. So now they explain to me why my bill is about five times what I calculate it should be for the last month. Ah, it seems that when I had that discussion a few months back about switching my plan to the Talk North America plan, they didn’t actually make the switch. I guess the rep just thought we had a little discussion for ... I don’t know, the sake of my health? So I’m traveling and making phone calls, and unknowingly paying some outrageous per-minute charge, something like $1.50.

So now I have someone else on the phone and this time I get a firm commitment. We’re changing the phone plan over, right? Yes. And to keep my phone minutes from going over, I’m going to take the phone forwarding option so I can forward to a land line on the days I’m in the office, right? Yes. But let’s switch on the 8th of the next month because that will be more economical. OK, let’s do that. Good. I’ll pay $50 a month more, but save $300 a month in overage and long distance charges. Good.

So on the 8th, can you guess what happened? Well, sure, the plan got switched over. But the voice mail somehow didn’t make it. All my voice mail from the evening of the 7th was wiped out, and when I called my voice mail, it just rang busy. Voice mail was part of the phone forwarding option, so I’m not sure what happened, but when I called to ask why my voice mail wasn’t working, I had to go through the whole rigmarole of giving my phone number and PIN code - twice - and so on. OK, so that was a lost 15 minutes.

And now, my voice mail icon has come on and won’t go off. All day, I wait. From time to time, I check my mail but the mailbox is empty. I don’t give up hope till the end of the day because I dread what I have to do. You know, call, wait, hold. Eventually get answered by a service rep. Who asks me for my telephone number. Again. And my PIN code. Again. I call as I walk to the bank, so at least I don’t feel I’m wasting more time on Telus today. But the third time the technical service rep asks me if I have pencil and paper, I want to slap him. I remind him that I’m w-a-l-k-i-n-g down the s-t-r-e-e-t and don’t have a pencil handy. But to his credit, the problem does go away, and with any luck, I won’t have to deal with Telus for a while. Too bad my contract doesn’t run out for a while yet because then I could look at a company that understands the concept of competitive advantage and user experience.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Bad customer service biggest blow to office productivity, part 2

It’s amazing how another full day’s productivity got sucked away by having to follow up on information I shouldn’t have had to worry about.

Because my laptop was overheating - more so at the office than at home, it seemed - I decided to call the building management and ask if the wiring was good in the office. They suggested I get an uninterrupted power supply, which I ordered from Staples online. I had no idea which to buy, as they all seem to do more or less the same thing, so after some reading and a feature comparison, I chose a mid-range model by Belkin. It arrived the next day and I pulled it out of the box. No instructions in English. Just peachy. OK, well, you should just plug it in and use it, right? Well, I used my high school French and got as far as “charge it for 8 hours” and so did that. But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to turn it on - pushing the ON button wasn’t doing it. A phone call to technical support sent me around in circles, and eventually got me to the message that “we’re closed for the weekend”. An email got me an auto-reply that they would answer “in the order that the email was received” (the reply included a link that went to a URL that told me “Sorry, no downloads found for product F6C550-AVR〈=1.") A scan of the website got me a manual about power management software, most of it which is written for electricians, I’m sure (I couldn’t understand most of it), but not to the installation instructions sheet.

Since I couldn’t use the unit, and the laptop was still overheating, I called a friend of mine who is an electrical engineer, and asked him what he thought about the whole situation. His advice: make sure there is enough air under the laptop to keep it cool. So I stopped by Staples and bought a little “under the laptop” cooling unit with two fans to keep the laptop from overheating. OK, so the immediate problem is under control, and I can at least check email. But the larger problem was still out there.

So I struggle with the French instructions, to no avail. However, when I mention that the “Site Ground Fault” light was on, a contractor working at the office comments that her dad is an electrician, and she knew that meant there is a problem with the electrical outlet. So I call the building management company, and they tell me they’ll send over an electrician to take a look. The fellow comes over and finds that there is no ground wire at all, so we have to move desks and bookcases, and he fixes the socket, and then we move everything back and I vacuum up all the plaster and paint that has been dislodged.

Meanwhile, I call the Belkin support line, and get put on hold. The standard high call volume message plays. They remind me several times how I should follow all the instructions that came with the equipment (hah!) and how I should have all my equipment handy, and such other things that don’t apply because I can’t get past first base. Meanwhile, I figure that I might try installing their power management software because at least I can figure out the CD, which is in English. Pity the poor sod who needed a French instruction sheet but got an English CD. The CD tells me to enter the serial number. Fair enough. I turn over the unit and enter the serial number. Error message: serial number is incorrect. How can this be, I wonder? After all, the chances of this being a bootleg product are next to nil - I bought it from Staples online. I try again, no luck. I laboriously copy the number, and try every combination of “O” and “0” to make sure I haven’t mixed those up. Nothing, nada, zilch.

Now I’m getting really choked, and of course, this is when the rather surly - no, actually, not surly but bored - service rep finally answers the phone. She tells me there is no English instructions she can send me. That’s comforting news. But there should be a manual online. With some searching, I do find the instructions sheet, under the guise of being a manual. Then, she tells me to hold the ON button down for 3 to 5 seconds, and it will go on. Hallelujah, we have lift off! But wait - the CD won’t work. Could she explain to me what to do? She tells me that the serial number is needed. (Thank you for that enlightening piece of information, like I haven’t already found that out.) But it’s not a serial number that I need, it’s the serial CODE, the one ON the CD itself. Yes, the CD that’s spinning in the CD drive. So I thank the service rep and hang up, then cancel out of the installation and copy down the serial code. I pop the CD back into the CD drive and start again. And, you guessed it, it doesn’t work. So I do this again, and it turns out I’ve transposed a letter. So I start again, and double-check my input but again I’m told that my serial number is wrong. At this point, I’m completely frustrated but don’t want to call back and be put into a long-distance queue again, so I give up. I unplug everything, set it up at my desk, which now has a new, grounded outlet, a new UPS, a new cooling unit, and so on and so forth. And I may never get the power management portion working because, quite frankly, I don’t need to lose any more billable hours because a consumer product company can’t invest in a little usability before they take something to market.

For all I know, Belkin developers and customer service folks may be rubbing their hands in glee because they’re thinking, “Good, we got rid of another service call!” But the marketers should be thinking, “Yikes, we just lost another customer - and she’s telling the world!” All it will take is a company or two offshore to start doing usability better than the domestic companies, and they’ll attract customers like flies to honey, because not only will their stuff be cheaper, but it will be more usable. And ultimately, for me that translates into more time saved, and less opportunities lost.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Bad customer service biggest blow to office productivity, part 1

Sorry, but I need to rant. I am on hold because I am on hold. Again. This company, like all the other companies I’ve had to speak with over the last few days, is “experiencing “a high call volume.” This is code for “we didn’t hire enough people to answer all our calls and prefer to keep people on hold for upwards of 20 minutes.” I’m sure part of this is in the hopes that people will go away and not bother them. What they don’t realize is that people who just hang up instead of getting help are probably busy packing up their product to be returned to the store. I play a little game with myself while I wait. If I can get the product packed up before the customer (un)service rep answers, I hang up and return the item. I then buy from the competition, if at all possible.

It started last week. Now, Mercury goes into retrograde on June 15th, though June 1st started the shadow period. Merucy is the planet of communication , which means that during the retrograde period, miscommunications are likely to happen until the planet comes out of retrograde on July 24th. I always notice miscommunication and technology glitches.

So first, I get a horrendous cell phone bill for the third month in a row. So I call Telus, and as a platinum customer, which means that I get overcharged a lot by them, it seems, I get to speak to an agent right away. Well, after going through an exercise where I have to give them all my information twice. (Their systems don’t talk to each other, I would guess. Turns out that the long conversation I was sure I had - about switching to the North American plan that avoided roaming charges while I travel - never happened. I guess I must have dreamt all those details about the per-minute charges and how the roaming scheme works. So while I’m waiting on the line (thank goodness I only hear the message about the “fast service promise” once), I play the game of “if I can find an equally good plan online while holding, I’m going to find some sucker to buy my contract and I’m out of here”. But damn, they answer just in time and I work really, really hard to be polite to the nice young man whose job it is to deal with grumpy customers all day.

Then, I call BC Hydro. I can’t seem to get into my online account. BC Hydro has some bizarre system that doesn’t let you choose your own user name and password. So I am constantly forgetting mine. And though I have used the “forgot your password” and “forgot your username” links dozens of times, and entered them into the login fields, and clicked the “Remember Me on this Computer” box, somehow they’re never there when I go back, or they’re there but don’t work. So I try to talk to someone, but am put on hold for a long, long time, and finally get looped around until I am disconnected (by accident, I’m sure - nudge, nudge, wink, wink). So I send off an email to request that I want to opt out of their ineffective online billing system, damn the renewable tree branch each a year that my paper bill uses up. Because if it doesn’t work, and I’m behind by one month’s payment, BC Hydro sends a disconnect notice. (Yes, that’s right, one month - a whole $64, and they’ll cut you off, baby!) Ah, but they have an email address, so I sent off an email, trying hard to be politely annoyed, a uniquely Canadian trait, to say that they should switch me back to paper billing until their online billing works to my satisfaction. A day or two later, I get a reply from someone and yes, they will switch me back to paper and remove my user ID from their system. And at the bottom of the email is the standard blurb asking me to ... wait for it ... sign up for online-only paperless billing today.

Next, I call the Future Shop, where I bought my computer, to see about my laptop, which is overheating like crazy. Their computer department doesn’t answer their phone, and I get looped around and around in circles several times until I get disconnected. Eventually, I call back enough times to get through to a general number where an operator puts me through, where the line rings and rings, until I get disconnected. But I persist, and someone with a voice that sounds like he’s under legal drinking age tells me that I should back up my hard drive because if I bring it in, I’ll have to leave it there and they’ll send it out to be looked at. Now, I’ve heard the horror stories about laptops coming back two months later, and I can’t survive without my laptop for more than a day or two. So now I’m motivated to figure out my problem before resorting to the drastic step of dropping of my laptop for who knows how long.

There were a couple of other phone calls, as well, all in the same vein. At some point, I found myself arguing with an auto-attendant, where the software prompt(er) wants me to press a button that won’t work, and I’m shouting into the phone, “It’s broken!” while the others in the office are shouting out suggestions that eventually lead to, “Agent! Agent!” I believe it was VanCity, now that I think of it. They’ve changed their menu structure, and there is no menu item for “all those complicated things that don’t fit in the menu items, so just let me talk to one of your bank of people who probably won’t be able to help me anyhow but at least it’s a step closer to someone who can.”

So there goes a half-day of productivity. I don’t think we should be worrying about outsourcing as a threat to North American productivity. Instead, we should be worrying about the lack of customer service that sucks away our productivity time. Now that is a definite threat to my personal productivity! Today’s tally: Billable hours: 2. Time-sucking activity due to poor customer service: 5.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Some companies just don’t get it when it comes to marketing

I got an interesting - useless, mind you, but an interesting spin on useless - offer in my inbox today. My mobile phone service provider wants to give me a shopping bag with their logo splashed on it. Well, if I drive to one of their stores, they’ll give me one, for FREE!! (I wish I knew how to make this blink and twirl like a bad marquee). I gather that by “free,” they will give me one even if I don’t buy one of the phones they’re pushing as holiday gifts to put into the bag so that I can walk around advertising their phones.

I understand that it’s supposed to be a clever promotional gimmick, and I can see one of their used-to-be-a-union-job marketers spinning in their swivel chair and sucking on a pen, wondering how to get the message out there, and thinking, most people just take the bag home and toss it, but if we can get people to re-use the bags for a month or so, that’s a lot of free advertising during a slow season. So how do we make them think of the bag as a commodity and not just a tossable receptacle? I know, people love free stuff. We’ll give them a bag, and stress that it’s free. I know you have that same picture in your mind.

Is it any wonder this doesn’t work? If the mental model (in other words, the general way we’ve come to expect that things work in the world) is that you go into a store and the retailer gives you a bag, for free, to put your stuff in, then what’s the commercial value of a shopping bag? Why would I want to come all the way to your store to pick up what’s basically advertising material? To walk around advertising your product for you, for free? Heck, you should pay me to advertise your stuff for you, and don’t be expecting me to have to come pick it up from you, either.

This is a typical example of poor user experience, and says to me one of two things, either that the company is grasping as straws to have some sort of promotional campaign with no budget (as in “oh oh, the company is in financial trouble") or that this is a company that just doesn’t get it (as in “out of touch with reality"). I don’t know which it is, and I don’t have the energy to really investigate, but it does make me wonder.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Restaurant policy ruins a dining customer experience

Ten professionals, gathered in Boston for a conference, look for a restaurant where we can gather for dinner. The concierge recommends a place called Stephanie’s. Someone vaguely remembers going there during last year’s conference. Those to arrive have a drink in the bar. When everyone arrives, they seat us upstairs, in the back.

We proceed to make a wide variety of orders. Some people order liquor and appetizers and entrees and coffee; others order an entree and mineral water. We’re all business people, most of us travelling, so we all need receipts. We ask for separate bills. Then the problems start. We can’t have separate bills. OK, well, we’ll cope. The total bill is $406 (including the 18% they automatically charge for parties over six people). We’ll just put in all 10 credit cards and put $40.60 on each card. The maitre d’ comes up to explain that they can’t process our credit cards. It’s a maximum of three per party. We ask what the problem is. After blaming their software, he confesses that it is restaurants policy. Now, I’m not sure what kind of ridiculous, arbitrary cusotmer service policy that is to spring on a bunch of patrons of your business, but it smells like a bunch of B.S. to us. Now the frustration really begins. We start figuring out who has cash and who can give what cash to whom and how we can collapse ten bills into three bills. One person takes charge and gives instructions of what to charge to which card, and the waiter takes away the cards and cash and processes them.

The waiter returns with the cards and cash and - as inevitably happens - the totals are short of the total once the tip is included. Everyone is talking over each other; we can’t seem to get a straight answer about what is happening; I’m given back my cash from the person I paid, and I’m about to hand it over to the other person, but I don’t have enough cash, and want to pay with my card but, oh, I can’t because we’ve exceeded our limit of cards for that table. Then some more counting goes on, and tips are added and re-calculated, and I think some more money may have thrown in at the other end of the table though I’m waving money around at our end of the table, and then someone shouts about about how we’re now over again, and everyone groans, and at some point, we’re talking about how in this day and age, such customer unfriendliness is inexcusable. The maitre d’ had given us some excuse about how long it inconveniences customers by swiping all those extra credit cards. Excuse me? As if we’re not being inconvenienced with all this nonsense?

It’s not like we’re at the restaurant during the lunch rush. We were leaving around 9:50 PM, and the restaurant was practically empty. Back home, all but the most prickly of restaurants would have re-rung the bills as five tables of two, and the restaurants that had the ability would break down each table’s bills by diner so that each person could pay separately, particularly restaurants serving the business crowd. It would have relatively easy to make this groupf of ten happy. As it was, on the way out, the person who recalled being there last year commented on the way out that we certainly wouldn’t be returning next year. It’s a shame, because the food wasn’t bad. But food isn’t the only distinguishing factor in choosing a restaurant; at some point in our lives, good customer service gets equal billing.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Margaret Dickenson as a usability professional

It’s World Usability Day, 2006. On my drive to the office this morning, I was anxious to get to my email - I have several hundred people participating in a global online card sort, and I want to be on hand in case of emergency.

On the radio, Sounds Like Canada is on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and show host Shelagh Rogers is airing a segment with award-winning cookbook author, Margaret Dickenson, who is talking about how she made her cookbook more usable - simply without using industry jargon such as “usability” and “user-centered design.” Dickenson discusses how she asked representative audience members - notably, her daughter - for advice about how to structure the recipes, and got back lots of ideas and tips about what types of information to include about the recipes themselves and about things peripheral to the recipes, such as storage guidelines, make-ahead dishes, alternative ingredients, and icons that indicate “grillable” or “no time, no talent” status.

Imagine my delight at listening to a show about usability - a topic very much on my mind - on World Usability Day. It was serendipitous, I’m sure, as I doubt that anyone locally informed the CBC about World Usability Day - I know I didn’t think of it - and so all the more interesting this juncture. Given the circumstances, I think it only appropriate that I try some of the recipes.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

The absurdity of telephone surveys

OK, so it’s a Sunday. Yesterday I took the day off, and Em and I visited my good friend, Joy, out in the valley. We hung out all afternoon and evening with her, her menagerie, and her neighbour and her menagerie. So today, I had to catch up on stuff that I didn’t have time to do during the week. No, not housework, though I had really, really, really wanted to hang pictures, vacuum, dust, and do other things around the house. What I needed to catch up on was all the business-related stuff that didn’t within the week. I’m trying to squeeze a presentation, a few articles, and various other loose ends for World Usability Day in before the day ends. So when we get the phone call to the effect that someone wants to conduct a telephone survey, I get a little cranky. I mean, who has extra time to waste doing things like answering surveys? Especially if you don’t know whether the survey is a veiled sales call. If I had more time, I’d be spending it with my grandkids, not loitering about. Maybe I’m in a particularly grumpy mood today, but I suppose that’s part of miserably rainy day where there’s no reason to even get out of my jammies, and be chained to the computer at the dining room table working all day.