Keep your shirt on

So I was shopping for my brother's birthday present today.  I live in the Philippines, he lives in the UK.  I decided to order him some gift vouchers from Charles Tyrwhitt.  I searched for Charles Tyrwhitt through Google and landed on their homepage www.ctshirts.co.uk.

The first thing I noticed was that I couldn't see where I would find gift vouchers.  I used the site search and was taken to a page where I could choose between electronic gift vouchers and paper gift vouchers.  I thought it would be nice for my brother to receive something in the post, so I clicked on the paper option.

You can choose your voucher amount from a range of pre-selected figures.  There is no £10 option.  Even though the image on the right hand side of the page shows a £10 voucher.  There is also no option to enter your own amount.

OK, I'll go for £40.  Nice one Charles Tyrwhitt, you've just upsold me by £10.

You have to pay £4.95 for delivery.  For an envelope with a card and piece of paper in it!  I know First Class stamps have gone up in price, but I'm sure they're still only 60 pence.  You may as well have the shirt off my back.

So I decided to check out the electronic vouchers.

Look how different the email gift voucher page is.  You only have 3 pre-selected options.  And you can enter your own amount.  It's much more flexible.  Why can't this be the case for the paper vouchers?

Eugh, but look at the image options for the email.  Do you think that a bloke would want to be receiving an email with pictures of other blokes?  Really?  And what if the gift is for a woman (they do womenswear too)?  I went for the blue shirt, purple tie & cufflinks picture.  Riveting.

And then for 'Your message'...

You're asked to fill 'Your name' in which is automatically populated in the 'Your message' field.  This doesn't leave you with a huge amount of creative licence e.g. if you wish to sign the email from you and your family, or use a nickname.  So now he'll have the rather clunky 'Love Becca...' followed by my full name.  Great.

The checkout process seems to be generic, regardless if you're sending an email voucher or not.  I had to enter delivery address (no option to enter an email, but I had already done this) and was told how long the delivery will take.  Not really relevant for an e-voucher!

Hopefully the vouchers will arrive in his inbox on his birthday.  And hopefully he will be able to use them in-store and online.  There's no indication if this is the case or not.

Deceptive download

I was just sent a large file - ironically by a usability supplier.  I recieved the email saying "you have been sent a large file - click here to download it".  With services like YouSendIt or WeTransfer, what follow is a pretty simple experience.  But with Sendspace, I was faced with one of the most deceptive interfaces I've seen: 

 Take a look at the interface above and guess which link needs to be clicked to download the large file I've been sent...




Nope, it's not the black "Download" button...

 

Nope, it's not the yellow "Download" button...



Nope, it's not even the link that says, "Click here to start download".


It's the little blue link low on the page stating "Chlick here to start download from Sendspace"


Tricky.

The ultimate bad experience

So far, this has been the ultimate bad experience.  My purse was stolen on Saturday.  I only have (well, had) one purse, and in it was everything credit-card sized.  This included 4 bank cards, driving licence and numerous loyalty cards.  There was also some money, but as I am notoriously badly organised when it comes to carrying cash around (fortuitously in this case) I only lost about £15.

As soon as I realised it had been swiped, I got hold of all the numbers I needed to ring to cancel my cards.  First call, Nationwide (the building society, not the insurance company).  It was all going well until the man on the other end of the phone asked me whether I wanted to receive marketing materials from them.  Are you kidding me?  You're asking me whether I want to receive marketing materials from you when all I can really think about right now is the fact that I have no money, no access to money and someone has run off with quite a personal possession of mine.  He then went on to say 'Have a nice day'.  Have a nice day?!  Really?  Are you a monkey or a human?  I might expect something like this from a website, but from an actual living and breathing human?  No, I expect a little empathy.

Next call was to the Royal Bank of Scotland.  They were highly efficient, putting me through to their credit card cancellation department in the same call.  I was feeling a bit less worse now.  The lady I spoke to about cancelling my credit card was a real live human.  She did empathise with me.  Which made me feel a little better.  And she immediately checked my account to reassure me that no transactions had been carried out.  Yay, you've made some effort to understand your customers.

And then the pendulum swung the other way again.  This time I was trying to get hold of someone at MBNA (after mistakenly calling American Express, as that is what I recall seeing on my credit card, not MBNA).  They have a voice recognition phone system.  Problem number 1 - I'm in a public space, there is a lot of background noise, and I don't particularly want to shout my personal details to an automatic voice at the other end of the phone.  Problem 2 - after telling the automated voice that I've had my card stolen, it asks me to read out the long number on the front of the card.  Maybe it's just me, but I don't know the long number along the front of my card.  And then, because I couldn't read out the number they asked me to enter it using my keypad.  Just let me speak to someone already please.

Why is it so difficult to think about your customer when designing a service?  Who's using the service?  Yes, that's right, it's your customers.  Who pays your wages?  Yes, that's right, it's your customers.  Now, please think about how they would like to be treated and start your service design from there.

When fast service is bad service

Speedy, same hour (let alone same day) responses are what we all want from the customer service people we contact. Correct?

Not always.

I recently filled in a form on a furniture removal website. The form was titled "Get an immediate quote online". I filled it in during a 5-minute break at work. I expected to get "an immediate quote online".

Instead, I got a promise that my quote would be sent to me. Then, within half an hour of filling in the form, I got a phone call. I couldn't answer the phone. Furthermore, the voicemail left on my phone left me no clearer on what my move was going to cost me. What was intended to be a quick, faceless interaction with an immediate response has ended up requiring returning of phone calls to named individuals to "further discuss my requirements".

Yes, the response was fast. But the response was not what I asked for.

The service provider missed the point of the service they were providing. The "online" element was what appealed to me in my context. However, there was no online fulfilment to speak of. The fastest service in the world can't make up for misunderstanding what your customers want.

Dabs usability by numbers

I just popped onto the Dabs.com site to take a look at laptops. I was presented with a message "Use our tabs to navigate through the site".

Genius. I'd have sat staring at that page for days if they hadn't told me.

Banking on common sense

My bank knows a lot about me. If you add up the time I've spent using my bank cards, filling in forms and opening their junkmail, I probably spend more time with my bank than with my mum.

Why then does the information they use to confirm my identify not match the information they use to send me a new credit card?

Why then does half the bank know I've moved but the other half doesn't?

Why then do they seem to forget everything they know about me each time I apply for a new product?

As "knowledge is power", banks have the potential to be one of the most powerful organisations around. They know so much, yet they do so little. They have the potential to create some of the most relevant, meaningful experiences for their customers, yet they don't.

So what is the answer? Bigger, better IT Systems? Re-engineered processes? Quality assurance testing? Maybe. Or maybe just common sense.

Most (if not all) good experiences are about applying common sense. You'd think banks would have some.

Compare to buy

I’m off on a camping trip to France over the summer with my boyfriend.  We will be going to places we’ve never been before.  We don’t have a sat nav.  Time to buy one I feel.

I was aware of a couple of brands, but thought that there were probably more.  I did a quick search, and right enough there were others.  I quickly discounted ones where I wasn’t clear if Europe was covered.  This left me with the original two brands – TomTom and Garmin.

My next port of call was their respective websites.

Neither are amazing, but Garmin definitely came out on top.  For a start they enabled me to filter their products – I only wanted to see sat navs which included Europe.  Straight away that was 17 less products for me to look at.  TomTom on the other hand don’t enable any sort of filtering, so you are left to do this on your own by looking at the product name and description.

Secondly, the Garmin website enabled comparison of products.  This is a godsend when the products are in fact so similar.  There was no easy way of doing this on TomTom.  A Google search for ‘compare tom tom sat nav’ took me to a comparison page, allegedly on their site, but you could only compare the products they had chosen.  And there wasn’t a great deal of information to compare on.

Thirdly, the compare feature on the Garmin website enabled me to find out what the different products offered.  There was no easy way of doing this on the the TomTom website.  Their website would probably win on the ‘looking good’ awards, but it just doesn’t deliver.  There are videos, but they took forever to load.  And there just isn’t the same level of technical (presented in a non technical way) information.

I think I’m going to buy a Garmin.  It was just easier to find information about them.  I feel more confident that I know what I’m going to get.

Burritos as big as your head

I love burritos.  In fact I love pretty much any Mexican food.  So, I was delighted to visit The Mission Mexican Grill (they know burritos) in Reading over the weekend.  The smell of the place, the sight of other people's burritos - it all whet my appetite.

When I got up to the counter to order, it reminded me of Subway - lots of things to choose from to go into your burrito.  I started getting a bit panicked - how am I meant to know what all the different fillings are, and what goes together best?  And then I saw the menu.  It is phrased in such a way that it intends to help you choose your meal.  Ignore it.  I read it, and my mind started boggling with all the available choices - you choose your beans (black or pinto), your main filling (chicken, pork, steak or vegetarian - more of that later), whether you want cheese (30p extra) OR guacamole (70p extra) OR sour cream etc.  In fact you can get all 3.

Best just to let your server lead you through.  If you get a chance to interrupt her that is - before you know it you will have a burrito as big as your head, no doubt with a few things you don't want (e.g. cheese, guac AND sour cream).

All this aside - the burritos are GREAT and you won't need to eat for at least 24 hours later.

Just tell me how much it costs to park my car

I'm off to the o2 Arena on Saturday night to watch a gig.  It's a pretty awkward place to get to if you live Westwards outside of London.  Taking the train will probably take considerably longer than driving, what with all the changes and waiting around.  But what about parking?

My first port of call was the o2 Arena website.  Obvious place to start I would have thought.  They have a label: ''Getting to the o2".  Perfect.  I arrive on a page, and the second item on the list is "Parking".  Brilliant.  Then things start to go a little pear shaped.  The next page I arrive on has information about how to get there by car.  I don't want that.  I want information about parking.

And more specifically I want information about how much parking costs.  I scroll down the page and I see a nice big button "Pre-book Parking".  Great.  But I still haven't seen how much it costs.

On the resulting page I have to fill in a large form.  I don't want to fill in a form without knowing how much it's going to cost me.  At the bottom, I notice the call-to-action is "Check prices and pay".  Am I paying now?  But I don't know how much it is.  I realise I haven't filled in any payment details.  I relax slightly and click.  My page is then riddled with error messages because I still don't want to fill the form in!

I am far more likely to fill the form in and make my booking if I have all the information I need up front.

My account: I just want to be able to log in

I recently signed up for an airmiles credit card – you know the type: you buy things and for every pound you spend, you get a mile or so back.

How many miles do I have?  And where can I fly to with my miles?  A fairly common task you might argue?  And therefore, fairly easy to do?  Not so.

I fell at the first hurdle – logging in to my account.  You can enter either your email address or your membership number.  I had never received a membership number, and as I had never been to the site before I didn’t think they would have a record of my email address.

I tried my email address anyway, as I had applied for the credit card online and had used my email address on the application.  It didn’t work.

I sent a message to my credit card provider via their online messaging system to request my membership number.  When I have used online messaging systems previously (e.g. on www.ebay.co.uk) I have received a message in my email inbox when my message has been replied to.  Not here.  I had to keep logging back into my credit card account to check for new messages.  They were not quick with their replies either – it took a good 4-5 days before I got a reply.

But, I digress.  I just want to find out how many miles I have, and where they can take me.  In fact, I’d be pretty happy right now if I could just log in to my account.

Back to my airmiles provider.  I now had a membership number, which I typed into the ‘Membership number/email address’ box.  I tried one of my passwords (yes, yes, I know I should have unique passwords for every account… but seriously?) and was presented with the ‘Forgotten your password?’ page, with a message highlighted in pink “You do not have an email address registered to your account, please contact us via one of the email addresses above detailing your membership number so we can resolve this.”  BUT THERE IS NO EMAIL ADDRESS ON THIS PAGE!!!  And why do I have to email you to register an email address?  Why can’t I just validate it online?

So, I’ve hit a dead end.  I can’t log in to my account.  And how do I find out what email address I should use to register my email address?  After a few clicks, I end up back on the login page, and notice a ‘I don’t have a password’ link.  Clicking on this and I finally see some email addresses.  Yes, multiple email addresses.  Just give me one email address.  Don’t make me think about which one is correct.

More than 7 days later I have still not received a reply from my chosen airmiles company.  Perhaps these credit cards aren’t so beneficial after all.  But it isn’t the credit card provider’s fault – they provide me with an airmiles balance.  I just can’t find out what I can do with these, or how I use them.  Or log in to my account to see that they are actually being recorded in the proper place.