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.

Resurrection is actually quite a big deal

It's a stumbling block for many when it comes to religion. Whilst the premise of Christianity is appealing to many, they struggle to chew on - let alone swallow - the concept of resurrection. Why then, is the same phenomenon so acceptable in the world of technology?

Last weekend, my Internet access at home died. I tried to save it with a new router and an hour-long chat to a helpful man at BT Broadband. The diagnosis was terminal. The only treatment possible - an engineer would have to visit.

This was a big deal in our house. No Skype to Granny and Grandad. No Facebooking. No catch-up TV. Nothing.

Less than a week later, however, I noticed some other devices in my house were quite happily enjoying themselves on the Internet. iPhones and TVs were flitting about the Web to their heart's content. Unbeliever that I was, I sceptically fired up my laptop once more - expecting the same error message as before. But no - it lived! It died and rose again! Hallelujah!

A week on, and I've moved on from this miracle. I can't explain it - I probably never will. It happened once - it'll probably happen again. And somehow in the world of technology - this phenomenon is perfectly acceptable. We get over errors and crashes and things fixing themselves without so much as a reboot. The miracle of resurrection in the world of bits and bytes is something we're cool with. Why then do we give God such a hard time?

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.