Category: Channel Management

Apologies for the blurred graphics in advance…! Between all those tweets about Justin Beiber and One Direction (Who? …Exactly.) there is a powerful force at work, and it’s one that can help you find out what people think of your brand. Are you going to use this power for good? Or for evil?

Collecting public sentiment has been around for a long time in the form of surveys and forums, but has only recently began to take up any traction in the realm of social media. Although companies such as BrandWatch are already doing it for a fee, there is a feeling that some brands are going to have to do a lot of catching up before they really understand their customer base. There is not standard etiquette for how brands should behave on this platform, and it’s possible that this could depend on the customers and market segment.

In particular, I love interesting trends. Or Twends. But restauranteurs, make sure you don’t show up on this one:

This lovely lady echoes my sentiments exactly:

Of course, it’s not all negativity. You can certainly use your branding powers for good and reach out to consumers that are after something that you have. That would be pretty good customer service.

Especially if you’re prepared to take on advice from your customers, and acknowledge that they’ve been heard. Although this restaurant is no global brand, with only a few restaurants, they’re already on Twitter and engaging with their customers. They reply really quickly and in a friendly tone that not only makes you feel comfortable talking to them, but also reinforces your positive relationship with the restaurant. There is no question if I will be going back.

I’ve been going to my hairdressers for a number of years. I say that, but generally I only get round to going to them perhaps twice, three times a year. Nevertheless the amount of times I’ve been to my current hairdresser probably goes into double figures. Recently, they’ve been sending confirmation texts, reminding you of when your next appointment is.

I’m not sure how people respond to these confirmations. Whether they like them, or find them them annoying? I received one yesterday, and couldn’t for the life of me work out whether I was supposed to reply or not. Although I’d been there before, the woman on the other end couldn’t find my name. So she booked me in, as she couldn’t tell whether I’d had any colour (dye) before because she couldn’t see my record, I assume that’s why the text asks me about colour testing. But what, exactly, am I supposed to be replying to?

I take it I’m not needed to confirm that I need the appointment… So this is just the colour patch test. She didn’t mention any of this on the phone, and I already told her that I’ve been there numerous times for colour so why I would need a colour patch test is anyone’s guess. But what if you’d never had colour and didn’t know what it was? Not exactly the most helpful text in the world. I suppose you could always call them up and ask but they don’t always pick up. So I’m not going to reply.

My old doctors surgery used to send these out to confirm appointments and then again to remind people about them the day before. I think this was generally seen to be quite helpful and it also reminded patients to cancel if they cant attend, leaving the space open for other people. Do people find these helpful? Or do they just result in confusing people and ironically encourage more contact to make information clear? I’m not sure, but I do know that my current doctors surgery does not do this and I have a sneaking suspicion it’s because the demographic of the patients there are likely to be a lot older and someone has assumed that people of a certain age don’t carry around mobile phones. Poppycock.

After hearing so much about contactless card payments while working in London, I decided to find out what my own bank was doing about it, and whether I could get a card myself. Contactless payment cards have NFC (Near Field Communication) technology, similar to that of an oyster card, allowing payments to be made by just ‘touching in’ at payment terminals. If you live in London, you might have seen some.

After not finding anything on my bank’s website (I later found out there is actually information on there, but it’s not somewhere I would have gone to find it), I called them up. The guy on the other end didn’t know what I was talking about, and put me on hold for 20 minutes while he went to find out. Apparently he’d sorted it all and I’d get a card within the next 3 – 5 days. So when that didn’t happen, I waited an extra 2 weeks and then called them up again. After talking to another adviser who didn’t understand and put me on hold for 20 minutes while he found out, he told me I’d have to go into a branch and ‘opt in’ to the scheme because I don’t live in London. I asked him if there were any notes written on my account from a previous adviser and he said there were but he didn’t know why they’d said they’d sent me one.

Off to the Branch

So off I went to the branch near my work in London. The person I spoke to on the other side of the desk was convinced that if I just renewed my card I would get the new contactless technology. I tried to explain to her that I don’t live in London and therefore this wasn’t going to happen. She didn’t believe me, but after fiddling with her computer for a while decided to agree with me. She gets a senior member of staff to come over to the computer and do some other things. Then it was all sorted and I could expect a new card within the next week.

When the renewed card came with no contactless technology and my address was wrong(!) I decided it really wasn’t good enough. Back to the branch I went and this time asked to speak to a manager. I explained the story and he took me to his office where he did some more punching of keys on the computer to sort out my problem. He did manage to ‘opt me in’ to the technology and explained that the last lady had opted me out by accident, but couldn’t explain why my address was wrong and spent a good 20 minutes fixing that.

While I appreciate his help, I was surprised that whenever he had an issue he’d click on a question on the screen and then get spoon fed instructions of what to do and what to tell me why he was doing it. Long story short, I used to work in a bank call centre, and it wasn’t a nice work flow where you just enter people’s responses and the computer tells you what to say. You get access to their account so you can see what they see, and that’s all. You have to actually know everything else and go from there. So I ask him if he can see the notes from the previous telephone calls to prove my frustration, and he tells me that the call centres and the branch use different systems and it’s not possible to see notes made on the phone! When the card finally came, it was 6 weeks from my first initial phone call.

Don’t Make More Work For The Customer

Customers view the company as a holistic brand, and have no interest in whether your system works for one node in the network but not in another. This is just unnecessary and unfriendly cognitive load. Additionally, it’s clear that not only do staff not get appropriate training on new technologies that their company is supposed to be advocating, but they don’t use their own systems correctly. Once working in a banking call centre myself, I’m not going leave the fault with them but instead campaign for companies to implement consistency through various touch points. As call centre agents are often a customer’s first port of call, this is the fastest way that you can impress your customers, and also expose flaws in your customer experience – and lose the faith they have in you.

After talking to some other people who use the banking system to process their shop payments, it’s become clear that contactless payment technology may mean that banks will actually lose money through transactions – they might take less a cut of all customer purchases. This means that it might actually benefit them if this technology is slow to adopt, or doesn’t at all. If this is the mindset and they’re deliberately trying to put people off, they’ve made a poor decision. Instead they should take a look at financial services that are investing in the technology and do more research, like Barclays and AMEX. Maybe I’ll switch to them.

Read more about what NFC can do for brands.