East Midlands Trains customer service: Rachel’s not happy

July 4, 2009 By 2 Comments

Rachel Elnaugh isn’t happy with her automated response from East Midlands Trains customer service

Former Dragon Rachel Elnaugh booked a discounted First Class ticket on East Midlands Trains only to find that she couldn’t use the First Class lounge.  It seems her First Class…wasn’t really First Class when it came down to it.

She tells on her blog how she complained to EMT – only to receive a bland automatically-generated customer service email.  You know the kind that begin ‘Dear Rachel Elnaugh’ and end ‘I hope you find this information useful’.

From a business perspective, selling ‘First Class’ tickets that skimp on the first class benefits and leave customers with a bad taste in their mouths isn’t a great move.

Failing to communicate properly with the resulting unhappy customer is an even worse move.  Businesses seem to forget that by the time a customer is into complaint mode, they are hyper-sensitive to the quality of customer service.

It follows logically that if there’s one place to invest in the best communication skills it’s the customer service people who deal with complaints.

Perhaps it’s the ‘monopoly’ mentality of rail franchise holders that makes them think they can ignore the public’s desire for good customer service.  The reality is that falling customer satisfaction levels is one compelling reason for DfT to withdraw a franchise.

Meantime, in the absence of a genuine listening ear, people – like Rachel – will continue to resort to social media to air their frustration.  You’ve been warned!

Filed Under: change, feedback

TripAdvisor Bali hotel review singled out for ‘horror story’ marketing

May 21, 2009 By 4 Comments

Is Tripadvisor in danger of damaging it’s own reputation by exploiting negative reviews?

This morning I got an email from TripAdvisor entitled “Hotel horror stories you won’t believe”.  The first told of a live mouse swimming in a hotel toilet bowl.  I clicked the link and found myself on the TripAdvisor page for the Conrad Bali Resort & Spa.

picture-6The mouse-story reviewer slated the hotel with a negative review and a 1 out of 5 rating.  But a quick check of the overall listing for this hotel showed that out of 191 reviews, an overwhelming majority (138) rated it 5 stars, 35 rated it 4 and only 18 (a small minority) rated it 3 stars or below.

The fact that 38 out of 65 (!) travellers found the review ‘helpful’ is an indication of the potential damage that this review could to this hotel – despite its clear track record of excellence (above).  In addition, more than half of the 65 people who rated the review rated it useful - which means they take it seriously.

Someone at TripAdvisor thinks that this was a good marketing move.  I don’t agree. Using an email to drive traffic at a negative and completely unrepresentative review for a particular hotel doesn’t feel balanced to me.

TripAdvisor already has quite a few enemies in the hotel industry.  Some are simply the owners of badly-run hotels who have lost business as a result of reviews on the site.  Others are angry at what they see as TripAdvisor’s lack of accountability and regulation.  And some allege that TripAdvisor’s system permits – and then protects – malicious and fake reviews posted by competitors.  Those are serious charges indeed.

So, in that climate, I would have thought that TripAdvisor needs to do everything it can to maintain and strengthen its impartiality – and therefore, its credibility – not erode it.

I think today’s email was a step in the wrong direction.

Filed Under: feedback, marketing, ORM Tagged With: , , , , ,

Hazel Blears’ resignation: it’s imminent, surely?

May 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

If Hazel Blears hasn’t tendered her resignation by the time this post gets indexed by Google…

…I’ll eat my cyber hat. [**munch, munch, munch**]

As of tonight, Wed, her political career is already over.  According to the Daily Mail’s website today,

“The Communities Secretary launched a public relations offensive to save her job after Mr Brown condemned her expenses claims as ‘completely unacceptable’.

I don’t envy her these last tortured hours but I can’t help thinking that she – like so many politicians – is simply reaping what she has greedily sown.

Setting themselves up for disastrous falls is, inexplicably, what politicians seem compelled to do.  Writing in the Guardian online, less than three weeks ago, she said:

“People want to look their politicians in the eyes and get their anger off their chests. We need a ministerial “masochism strategy”, where ministers engage directly and hear the anger first-hand.”

Too right, they do, Hazel but they don’t just have to do it face to face.  They can vent their anger at you on YouTube too -  as some of the responses to this two year old video demonstrate.

Filed Under: feedback, GRRRR!!! Tagged With: , , , ,

What countries is Spotify available in?

May 10, 2009 By 2 Comments

Sorry to pinch your FAQ Spotify, but this is the one piece of information that isn’t very easy to find on your site that everyone wants to know:

So here’s the answer:

We’ve released our free advertising supported version in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain. In most other countries Spotify Premium is available for purchase.

Spotify is a great streaming music service. Its search facility is brilliant – letting you meander or focus or explore deeper in whatever way takes your fancy.  In short, it fits with how you might want to listen to music at any particular moment.

Its perfect for that quick (embarrassing) foray down memory lane; that mood-themed background for a special evening; for switching to ‘radio’ mode and letting Spotify open up new worlds you would never have otherwise listened to.

I liked it so much that I happily blogged about it for a couple of months and gave away over 400 of the Spotify invites which access to the free service at that point required. An effective use of social media marketing, I thought.

But these days, UK residents can sign up for the ad-supported, free version of Spotify without an invite. Cool!

But the traffic to my blog proves that are a lot of people from a lot of countries who still think they can use Spotify if they get an invite. Either someone at Spotify isn’t getting the message across or they’re enjoying the rest of the world thinking it can get on board…

What do you think?

Filed Under: Endless spotify praise, feedback Tagged With: , , , ,

Qwitter: If you leave me now…

May 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Wonder who’s leaving you… and why?  Try Qwitter.

If only for the great graphics and sweet little animation on their site.  And no, it’s not about ego.  It’s about seeing how other people are reacting to what you’re offering.

In the world of Twitter, nobody’s going to stop to give you feedback.  Like unhappy customers they vote with their feet or unfollow or block buttons.

Want to know who’s leaving you?  Give Qwitter a try.

Filed Under: feedback Tagged With: , , ,

Friends Re-United, give up, your thinking is out-dated!

May 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment

A recent log-in to Friends Re-United reveals why they’re history

I hadn’t been to Friends Re-United for a long time. That in itself says something about its design and underlying thinking.

So why hadn’t I been?

Even when it first came out I couldn’t be bothered to go there often.  It was too slow and it forced me to try to find places and people it’s way.  By category.  By institution.  Oh – and then I only found people IF they’d taken the time to add themselves to that institution by the same clumsy process.

Adding yourself to places?  What’s that all about?  We just ARE! Isn’t that enough?!?  Don’t other just people know us as us, not as ‘school->year->us’?  Doh.

That’s why Facebook wins and Twitter wins even more.

This morning, I logged into Friends Reunited but before I’d dragged down more than a couple of menus and waited for a couple of clunky page reloads en route to trying to find a place I worked at… I just gave up.

FR, forget site facelifts.  Either shift your whole understanding or shut down because your thinking is history.

Filed Under: feedback Tagged With: , , , ,

Sky Customer Service (Part II: It gets worse)

March 29, 2009 By 5 Comments

Yes, Sky.  Your customer service seems to get worse the further I go to try to give you feedback.

No surprise really is it?

Sky’s system for creating addtional email addresses for account holders’ family members isn’t working. No-one seems to care.  I found that out in a 2 1/2 hour phone call the other day.

So I blogged about it. That post appeared on P1 of Google for the phrase ‘Sky Customer Service’.  Oh, the power of blogs.

And today I tried to use their online feedback form to let them know that they needed to fix the problem and demonstrate some good customer service.

So I ploughed my way through their clumsy feedback form which appears to be designed to dissuade and demotivate the average person every step of the way.  You know the kind of form – designed by some idiot in IT who has no idea that you’re a real, unhappy customer trying to say what you need to say.

The result is that you spend ages trying to give your feedback only to find you’ve done something else wrong that needs correcting.  I wasted 15 minutes writing my feedback before discovering that there was a ’1000 character limit’.

Morons.  Like I or anyone else knows what 1000 characters is.

This is a pinnacle of customer service stupidity, designed to disempower the average mortal.  Well, when it comes to feedback I’m not your average mortal so I rewrote my feedback.

10 minutes later (and still not knowing whether it was under 1000 characters!) I clicked ‘submit’ again – only this time to be told I couldn’t give that feedback without entering my parents’ viewing card number.

I tried to give you my feedback, Sky, but it’s too much like hard work. You could have had it to yourselves to learn from but you obviously don’t want it.  So here’s what I tried to tell you (now for everyone else to read, too):

This is on behalf of my parents – account holder name Mrs. Linda Deeks (see address below)

Your system will not create additional email addresses (it says “There appears to have been a problem.  We are unable to activate your Sky Email and Tools account”.

Your customer service is poor – and even more infuriating is your lack of willingness to take feedback.  Including this 1000 character limit (which has just wasted another 15 minutes of my time).

I’ve blogged about this (now on P1 of Google for an important key phrase). Happy to also blog positively if/when you fix the issue and demonstrate some good customer service.

I’d like a response please.

The moral of this story is that feedback is difficult to give and hard to take but if you’re not willing to listen, your customers will talk to anyone who is.

If you’re really fed up with Sky customer service, you might like this.

Filed Under: feedback Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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