Jananas

Sometime earlier this year Rogers redid their on demand services. Its been bugging me ever since and this morning I was finally motivated to take a picture of the screen that drives me jananas.

When I want to watch on demand, I punch in the channel number (e.g. 308 or 309). The following screen comes up.

I’ve already selected the channel I want to watch, so why do I have to press another button in order to get there? My guess is that loading the on demand channels takes up relatively more bandwidth, so they don’t want people who are channel surfing to waste that bandwidth/slow the system down when they flip past it. Understanding that, why are you making the experience of people who want to watch this channel more difficult?

Instead, why not implement a time delay on the channel? Five seconds would be enough so that people who are flipping past wouldn’t ‘load’ the channel (and use up bandwidth) and it would also mean that the rest of us who want to watch the channel don’t have to press another button to get to it.

Underlying all of this is that you want to make it easier for people to use your product, not make it more difficult. All they’ve accomplish for me is that everytime I try to watch things on demand I get frustrated and annoyed. When customers are annoyed just by receiving their basic services (i.e. those that they pay for), they are going to be a lot less accomodating and understanding when a real service or quality issue comes up.

I’ve watched a lot of outsourcing happen within businesses. As a customer I’ve had plenty of bad experiences (although to be fair, I probably couldn’t tell you how many good experiences I’ve had as those would have been too similar to a non-outsourced experience to identify). Overall, I’m not a huge fan of outsourcing. I have found that, more often than not, companies rush to outsource because they see the initial cost savings. The increased costs and time associated with management of the outsourced provider tend to downplayed. I believe that this is dangerous given how important things like quality assurance and customer experience are to a business’ long term survival.

Here’s an example from a previous life that illustrates what can happen when outsourcing doesn’t work out quite the way that you’ve planned…

Customer: I’d like to report a car accident.

Insurance CSR: What happened sir?

Customer: I hit black ice.

CSR: Sir, ice is white.

The problem in this particular case was that the CSR was in India and the customer was in Canada. The phenomenon of black ice occurring in the winter was something that an individual in a more tropical client would have never encountered. In this particular case, the CSR had no way or personal experience that would help them understand that this situation was indeed a valid reason for a car accident. And while we can rationally understand this, as a customer who has just been in a car accident the overall result is a company who isn’t able to help him.

With outsourcing, a lot of time and effort is put into training the CSRS. Training on accents so that they sound more like the country calls are originating from. Training to help the CSRS make sense of cultural differences. The problem here is that cultural training is only as good as the person defining the potential scenarios that could happen. This person also has to have an in depth understanding of both cultures, otherwise cultural differences can impact the quality of service (through no one’s fault other than the initial decision to move the service provider).

I know that I write a lot about customer experience. Its because I believe that it vital to long term success of your business. You may have to spend more money in the short term (i.e. more testing before you launch, a better designed product, etc.), but I believe that such investments pay off in the longer term. Better products today mean more satisfied customers (as an aside, they also mean easier product launches in the future and therefore save money on development down the line). Customers who are more satisfied and who have good interactions with the company (and these can still be good even when the situation that caused them isn’t) become loyal customers. And loyal customers don’t need to be bribed to stay or threatened with contracts. They will stick with you in rough patches and recommend you to friends.

And that’s why you need to be careful when you outsource. Because business isn’t just about tomorrow’s revenues, its about revenues 25 years down the line.

This weekend we drove up north of Toronto to visit Dr. Flea’s (which was a dirt mall as opposed to a flea market). We did get to have sno cones and cotton candy which made up for the lack of flea market goodness. We did pick up some cheap produce in the outdoor section  – including these…

Yup. Hannah Montana branded cherries. I did some research and according to articles like this one over at the Washington Post, this sort of branding on produce is becoming more common as Disney tries to steer away from endorsing unhealthy foods. I see the sense in that, but somehow it just seems a little wrong to be using a tween girl to market a food that’s commonly associated with losing your virginity.

And really, branded produce? Sometimes I think things just go a little too far.

Wednesday morning between 6:30-7am, someone broke the front passenger’s side window on Jason’s car. They stole his iPod and our GPS unit. I had just woken up and come downstairs when my neighbour yelled at me through my front window, letting me know. I then had the honour of waking up Jason to let him know (not a nice way to have to be woken up!). Thankfully they were able to get a good description of the suspect.

I went out and took photos (one of which is above), just in case we’d need them later. I also called the police to file a report. Thankfully the officer I spoke with had a good sense of humour, especially given the early hour of the day. After all of that was done Jason was able to call his insurance company to file a claim.

Because he drives a Scion (a sister company to Toyota and not currently sold in Canada), the only place that can repair the glass in the city is a Toyota dealership itself. Its going to be one expensive claim for the insurance company! Oh well, I figure it balances out all the money we saved them by going through low priced auto glass in Austin, Tx when we had to repair the windshield. The other not so great part about Scions not being available in Canada is that it will take 10+ business days to get the new glass in before the repairs can be completed. This sucks for Jason because he’s now out his deductible ($250) plus the cost of the rental car ($3/day) as his car was deemed unsafe to drive (because the window can’t be shut, anyone can access the vehicle thus increasing the potential for further damages and insurance claims).

Even worse is that the individual stole Jason’s iPod. It means that he doesn’t have any of his own music on him. And because all his own music is in Columbus on assorted harddrives it also means that he won’t have any of his own music on him for a while. The description of the stolen iPod follows:

• white 60 gig but was in a black silicone case
• colour/photo
• personalized with a quote from a Saul Williams song “and I know god personally / in fact he lets me call him me“

Hopefully someone out there will buy it from a pawn shop, wonder about the quote on the back, google it, and stumble upon this. By then it’ll probably be too late to save the music or get it back. I would assume that someone purchasing electronics from a pawn shop doesn’t care about the dubious source of those goods. Maybe stumbling upon this would make them think twice about the reprecussions for the people on the other side.

The entire thing is just a bummer all around. We’re out money for the deductible and to replace the stolen items and the individual who stole them wouldn’t have even been able to pawn them for very much. It also has made us feel more paranoid about the street and the safety of our possessions, as the suspect has been seen around on more than one occasion. I don’t like feeling like I can’t trust my fellow citizens to be respectful, kind, honest, etc.

Before I begin, a disclaimer. I am a former President’s Choice Financial employee. I worked for them for six years in various capacities, and left before starting my MBA. I cared about the quality of my own work, the quality of our services, and the success of the company. More simply, I was emotionally invested in seeing things work. The following post is not meant to be malicious (although undoubtedly it will be construed by some as being so). Rather as an even longer term customer I have experienced some issues with my service.

Back in 2008, I experienced two separate issues. The first issue had to do with a compromised credit card, the time it took for the fraud department to catch it (more than 1.5 days with very strange spending behaviour), and the subsequent lack of notification that my card had been canceled. The second issue had to do with a change to a backend system setting without my authorization, and for which the company was unable (unwilling?) to provide an explanation. Outside of personal concerns as a customer related to the experience and my treatment, I’m also concerned about the operational costs associated with these issues. In the first case, the fraud write offs and in the second case the additional cost to print and mail statements that I hadn’t requested. I don’t want to see companies spending money that they don’t need to!

In discussions with friends (and former colleagues), it came out that at least two other people had experienced one of these issues – the example of the first is documented here and the second only came to light recently. While I’m not the strongest person when it comes to statistics, I do know that when 2 out of 30+ (a good sample size!) have experienced a problem its probably something more than just a one off quality assurance issue. I’d feel reasonably confident to assume that these issues, in fact, extended beyond to a wider customer audience.

Which brings me to my point today. Earlier this week, someone searched the world wide web for “is President’s Choice Financial good?” And what they came across were my blogs about poor experiences with the company.

This is exactly why companies have to care about what is being said about them on the web. More than that though, they have to join in the conversation. Many people much smarter and more knowledgeable than myself have likely written about brand management and the internet. A portion of that includes communicating with your customers when you come across blogs like the ones I had written. This is not to say that you have to respond to every single one, but that if you respond to a portion of these with something as simple as “we’re sorry that you had a bad experience and we’re looking into it”. Then get back to people with an actual answer about what happened. It means that you’re proactively managing your brand. Instead of it being a negative blog post, it makes your company look better.

And really, how can you be a internet (or online) bank, when you aren’t communicating and interacting with your customers online?

Instead, I heard through the grapevine that people within the company had come across the post (not surprising, as I know for a fact that at least some employees have google alerts set up). Instead of responding though, the internal response was that “100% quality assurance was impossible“. From this I assumed two things. The first is that they considered these both one off issues. But the paragraph up above where I notice that the problem extends beyond just my own personal experience? That implies that it was a larger quality assurance issue. The second is that it shows  to me that customer experience isn’t considered a priority.

Customer experience is important. It isn’t something that you measure once a year and report back on. It isn’t something that you respond to only at a tier three level. Its something that you think about every time you make a decision, write requirements, build systems, plan campaigns, or even test systems before release. It is about long term planning and relationship building.

To the e-commerce and customer experience and brand managers at President’s Choice Financial, what are you doing to manage your online brand and customer experience?