Written for the Bolton at Home blog: www.boltonathomeblog.org
Above a row of shops on Kentmere Road the offices for the East Neighbourhood Team are freshly painted and carpeted. ‘It’s much better than our last offices’ Lisa tells me as everyone makes their lunch in the kitchen and I explain how I’d been to their old building by mistake; ‘They’ve knocked some walls down and it’s made it brighter.’ The walls are peppered with Latin sayings, original artworks and an ‘In case of fire’ checklist with a photo of flames and a tick boxes with the staff names against them.
Showing posts with label customer contact centre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label customer contact centre. Show all posts
Tuesday, 29 October 2013
Friday, 6 September 2013
David vs Goliath
This week has been an education in good customer service and has demonstrated how often it's the smaller businesses who do it best.
Today I have spent over an hour and a half on the phone to Orange, EE, or whatever they call themselves now trying to upgrade my phone. I am given two ways to do this; online or over the phone. As is now usual the deal is better online and I understand that this is because it is cheaper for them. However when this does not work, and I quote; "How do you know it hasn't worked?" "I haven't received a confirmation email or text ...or a new phone," it might have been cheaper for them to fix it over the phone on Monday rather than leave me, still phoneless, awaiting my fifth phone call of the week having tried three times myself online. I could get started on how their website logged me out three times whilst I was trying to navigate it* but I won't.
In between speaking to the polite but hopelessly unhelpful people in various Orange customer service teams I have also been waiting for some banners to be delivered. The firm, onestoppromotions.co.uk have produced them for me in superquick time and been very nice about my failure to meet their 'safe' copy deadlines. This morning I called to check the banners had been dispatched and they were able to confirm, without me knowing my order number, that they had. Then they gave me my tracking number and the number of the courier, www.apc-overnight.com and said I could contact them directly for more information.
APC overnight's number was answered without me being placed in a queue and each time I called the person I spoke to could retrieve my request with the tracking number, know exactly what I was requesting and where the driver was and each tried to get hold of the driver to get an update for me. Everyone I spoke to was friendly and each offered me a new 'Plan B' option when I explained that I really needed the parcel by Monday morning.
And its not just today. A couple of weeks ago I got the most amazing customer service from an airport transfer company, www.british-airport-transfers.co.uk, on behalf of one of the charity's clients. Again whoever you spoke to was able to promptly bring up my details, was helpful, proactive and reassuring and took even the most specialist requests (Tamil speaking driver) in their stride. And I only have the highest of praise for the poor taxi driver who put up with constant calls asking 'Are they there yet?'
In contrast BA customer service were unable to even tell me what the 'Special Assistance' they offer might include when I was booking it for one of our more vulnerable clients.
I understand that with flights and contracts more security is required and the staff I'm talking to are probably less empowered to make decisions or use their initiative but does that need to be the case?
We're looking at a new contact centre and CRM system at Bolton at Home and we need to make sure that this improves the services we can offer to customers rather than overcomplicate the situation. As a customer I don't understand why the person I speak to on the phone isn't able to see my online self service activity and if I'm honest I don't care. If I contact an organisation through whatever channel I think it's their job to be able to join up the dots and I hope that we're going to be able to offer this for our customers.
*Also picked up some lessons in how not to design a website. If your staff can't find the page, your customer can't find the page and the search function can't find the page perhaps you need to look at your navigation. Thankyou to whoever invented internet history.
Today I have spent over an hour and a half on the phone to Orange, EE, or whatever they call themselves now trying to upgrade my phone. I am given two ways to do this; online or over the phone. As is now usual the deal is better online and I understand that this is because it is cheaper for them. However when this does not work, and I quote; "How do you know it hasn't worked?" "I haven't received a confirmation email or text ...or a new phone," it might have been cheaper for them to fix it over the phone on Monday rather than leave me, still phoneless, awaiting my fifth phone call of the week having tried three times myself online. I could get started on how their website logged me out three times whilst I was trying to navigate it* but I won't.
In between speaking to the polite but hopelessly unhelpful people in various Orange customer service teams I have also been waiting for some banners to be delivered. The firm, onestoppromotions.co.uk have produced them for me in superquick time and been very nice about my failure to meet their 'safe' copy deadlines. This morning I called to check the banners had been dispatched and they were able to confirm, without me knowing my order number, that they had. Then they gave me my tracking number and the number of the courier, www.apc-overnight.com and said I could contact them directly for more information.
APC overnight's number was answered without me being placed in a queue and each time I called the person I spoke to could retrieve my request with the tracking number, know exactly what I was requesting and where the driver was and each tried to get hold of the driver to get an update for me. Everyone I spoke to was friendly and each offered me a new 'Plan B' option when I explained that I really needed the parcel by Monday morning.
And its not just today. A couple of weeks ago I got the most amazing customer service from an airport transfer company, www.british-airport-transfers.co.uk, on behalf of one of the charity's clients. Again whoever you spoke to was able to promptly bring up my details, was helpful, proactive and reassuring and took even the most specialist requests (Tamil speaking driver) in their stride. And I only have the highest of praise for the poor taxi driver who put up with constant calls asking 'Are they there yet?'
In contrast BA customer service were unable to even tell me what the 'Special Assistance' they offer might include when I was booking it for one of our more vulnerable clients.
I understand that with flights and contracts more security is required and the staff I'm talking to are probably less empowered to make decisions or use their initiative but does that need to be the case?
We're looking at a new contact centre and CRM system at Bolton at Home and we need to make sure that this improves the services we can offer to customers rather than overcomplicate the situation. As a customer I don't understand why the person I speak to on the phone isn't able to see my online self service activity and if I'm honest I don't care. If I contact an organisation through whatever channel I think it's their job to be able to join up the dots and I hope that we're going to be able to offer this for our customers.
*Also picked up some lessons in how not to design a website. If your staff can't find the page, your customer can't find the page and the search function can't find the page perhaps you need to look at your navigation. Thankyou to whoever invented internet history.
Tuesday, 2 April 2013
Lessons in social media and community self sufficiency from MMDA
Back to 'reality'after our holiday and weekend off. Well the kind of reality where we get invited to meet the General Manager of the Metro Manila Development Agency in a room that looks more suited to a meeting of the UN. And a brass band meets us at the front door with some Katy Perry covers and Gangnam Style.
The scope of the MMDA (not to be confused with MDMA as this caused much amusement last night with my host family) is quite wide and includes seven key areas or mandates. However over all these areas the most interesting aspect for me is the use of social media. Here the matrix signs point motorists to a Twitter account for traffic updates and in a briefing on their work social media is discussed as a mainstream tool.
Like at Bolton at Home the comms strategy focuses in part on sharing the good work done by staff at the agency and communicating the key issues in a variety of ways to meet the needs of the younger audience As part of the drive to encourage good driver behaviour viral videos of road rage and bad driving are posted onto social media to show the public the kinds of situations the MMDA deal with every day.
In the control room a member of staff sits alongside the camera operators in the navigation sections to tweet congestion updates and suggest alternative routes in a truly integrated way of working. Response time is impressive with my thankyou tweet responded to within the hour and favourited shortly afterwards.
There is a lot of talk in housing about the need for management 'buy in' when implementing a social media strategy and this is more than evident here. During our briefing with some fairly high level operational staff social media was often raised as being key to their communication. Not only raised but discussed in the way that 'experts' do in the UK showing awareness of listening to customers and responding, engaging and responding promptly, creating conversations and trust and most of all having a sense of humour. If Bolton at Home directors could speak like this in a years time I'd be happy to have achieved something in my time there.
An example of the trust placed in the account is people tweeting crime and emergencies. Rather than telling the enquirer to go elsewhere their enquiry is instead passed to the relevant agency. This means they are seen as an authoritative source of information and raises their levels of repeat interactions. Perhaps something Bolton at Home could be looking at for their contact centre?
Not having had access to people anywhere near this high up in strategic development at home I guess I don't have a lot to compare the conversation to but it seemed that in this agency, as with others here in Manila, common sense ideas were implemented to provide cost effective solutions to the problems they face.
Their coding system for traffic is a great example. Faced with massively over populated and congested roads a solution is to ban 20% of the cars on each working day. So on Monday licence plates numbered 1 and 2 are not allowed to travel, on Tuesday 3 and 4 and so on. On Thursday the roads are particularly light as the Chinese population favour the plates with 7 and 8 on as lucky. This leads to increased demand for these and less traffic. (They estimate this is a 4% increase over the normal 20%)
I do have to say that almost every household I've stayed in has had a number of cars with different coding to avoid the ban. And many people I spoke to had ignored the ban and driven anyway. A great example of their Twitter skills though was given to me by my current host's daughter Reggie. Her friend had driven to work on a banned day and tweeted how happy she was to have made it through. MMDA replied saying they were glad she'd got to work on time but warning her she could be caught if she did it again.
Among other fascinating work one idea really stood out; the training of normal people in disaster response. We've already seen in communities children being taught to be first aid responders but this training extends further to cover how to deal with flooding, fire and earthquakes among other things. In a perfect example of the joined up thinking displayed here people who violate minor rules such as jay walking and cannot pay the fine are sent on this training instead.
As has been pointed out to me so many times we are lucky in the UK. We know we can call 999 and help will come. We know someone will be there to help if there is an emergency. But as we face further cuts to services maybe we should be looking further afield for how we can respond to this. Great initiatives such as this allow people to help themselves and their community and would work just as well in heavy snow or a power cut as they would in an earthquake.
The scope of the MMDA (not to be confused with MDMA as this caused much amusement last night with my host family) is quite wide and includes seven key areas or mandates. However over all these areas the most interesting aspect for me is the use of social media. Here the matrix signs point motorists to a Twitter account for traffic updates and in a briefing on their work social media is discussed as a mainstream tool.
Like at Bolton at Home the comms strategy focuses in part on sharing the good work done by staff at the agency and communicating the key issues in a variety of ways to meet the needs of the younger audience As part of the drive to encourage good driver behaviour viral videos of road rage and bad driving are posted onto social media to show the public the kinds of situations the MMDA deal with every day.
In the control room a member of staff sits alongside the camera operators in the navigation sections to tweet congestion updates and suggest alternative routes in a truly integrated way of working. Response time is impressive with my thankyou tweet responded to within the hour and favourited shortly afterwards.
There is a lot of talk in housing about the need for management 'buy in' when implementing a social media strategy and this is more than evident here. During our briefing with some fairly high level operational staff social media was often raised as being key to their communication. Not only raised but discussed in the way that 'experts' do in the UK showing awareness of listening to customers and responding, engaging and responding promptly, creating conversations and trust and most of all having a sense of humour. If Bolton at Home directors could speak like this in a years time I'd be happy to have achieved something in my time there.
An example of the trust placed in the account is people tweeting crime and emergencies. Rather than telling the enquirer to go elsewhere their enquiry is instead passed to the relevant agency. This means they are seen as an authoritative source of information and raises their levels of repeat interactions. Perhaps something Bolton at Home could be looking at for their contact centre?
Not having had access to people anywhere near this high up in strategic development at home I guess I don't have a lot to compare the conversation to but it seemed that in this agency, as with others here in Manila, common sense ideas were implemented to provide cost effective solutions to the problems they face.
Their coding system for traffic is a great example. Faced with massively over populated and congested roads a solution is to ban 20% of the cars on each working day. So on Monday licence plates numbered 1 and 2 are not allowed to travel, on Tuesday 3 and 4 and so on. On Thursday the roads are particularly light as the Chinese population favour the plates with 7 and 8 on as lucky. This leads to increased demand for these and less traffic. (They estimate this is a 4% increase over the normal 20%)
I do have to say that almost every household I've stayed in has had a number of cars with different coding to avoid the ban. And many people I spoke to had ignored the ban and driven anyway. A great example of their Twitter skills though was given to me by my current host's daughter Reggie. Her friend had driven to work on a banned day and tweeted how happy she was to have made it through. MMDA replied saying they were glad she'd got to work on time but warning her she could be caught if she did it again.
Among other fascinating work one idea really stood out; the training of normal people in disaster response. We've already seen in communities children being taught to be first aid responders but this training extends further to cover how to deal with flooding, fire and earthquakes among other things. In a perfect example of the joined up thinking displayed here people who violate minor rules such as jay walking and cannot pay the fine are sent on this training instead.
As has been pointed out to me so many times we are lucky in the UK. We know we can call 999 and help will come. We know someone will be there to help if there is an emergency. But as we face further cuts to services maybe we should be looking further afield for how we can respond to this. Great initiatives such as this allow people to help themselves and their community and would work just as well in heavy snow or a power cut as they would in an earthquake.
Friday, 8 February 2013
Catching up
Watching a recording of last week's Creative Virtual webinar: 'A New Customer Service Paradigm: Customers are Now Demanding Self-Service Options and Why You Must Adapt' raised some interesting points about how far we should be taking our multi-channel approach.
Although I'm a huge advocate of us looking to global leaders not just leaders in UK housing there has to be a limit. Although IVR (Interactive voice response) seems like a tool that is being widely adopted among the big corporates I'm not sure it would work for us at the moment.
This session also highlighted how far behind we are in terms of customer access with chat and email being incorporated into call centres in 1996.
This was incidentally the year I started secondary school and if I remember rightly a year or two before I had a mobile phone. I don't think at that point I had an email address and think web chat would have been far beyond my imagination. If memory serves me correctly this is only slightly after my mum professed the opinion that the internet would never catch on whilst we did homework on Encarta.
Another eye opener was social media being incorporated into call centres in 2008. A quick trawl of my timeline tells me it was July 2008 I joined Facebook making me a very late but enthusiastic adopter.
Now we can all agree the internet has caught on where now? Someone asked me at a project meeting what was the 'next big thing'. Having just been to a seminar on digital and comms I was able to talk about augmented reality and RFID both of which I can see becoming really useful tools for housing in the future.
But if we consider that we're only now looking at introducing live chat into our contact centre that puts us 16 years behind the leaders in this field. Given that I wouldn't have dreamed of some of the technology we now see as everyday I'm not sure I can imagine where we'll be in 16 years time.
I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that it will include the huge transparent video walls you see on CSI. And with creator Antony Zuiker putting this only two years behind the times four years ago I hold high expectations for our new offices!
@creativevirtual
Although I'm a huge advocate of us looking to global leaders not just leaders in UK housing there has to be a limit. Although IVR (Interactive voice response) seems like a tool that is being widely adopted among the big corporates I'm not sure it would work for us at the moment.
This session also highlighted how far behind we are in terms of customer access with chat and email being incorporated into call centres in 1996.
This was incidentally the year I started secondary school and if I remember rightly a year or two before I had a mobile phone. I don't think at that point I had an email address and think web chat would have been far beyond my imagination. If memory serves me correctly this is only slightly after my mum professed the opinion that the internet would never catch on whilst we did homework on Encarta.
Another eye opener was social media being incorporated into call centres in 2008. A quick trawl of my timeline tells me it was July 2008 I joined Facebook making me a very late but enthusiastic adopter.
Now we can all agree the internet has caught on where now? Someone asked me at a project meeting what was the 'next big thing'. Having just been to a seminar on digital and comms I was able to talk about augmented reality and RFID both of which I can see becoming really useful tools for housing in the future.
But if we consider that we're only now looking at introducing live chat into our contact centre that puts us 16 years behind the leaders in this field. Given that I wouldn't have dreamed of some of the technology we now see as everyday I'm not sure I can imagine where we'll be in 16 years time.
I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that it will include the huge transparent video walls you see on CSI. And with creator Antony Zuiker putting this only two years behind the times four years ago I hold high expectations for our new offices!
@creativevirtual
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