Airline News

Kentucky man demonstrates customer service experience

I'm hesitant to add more words to the trillions that have been shared around the world after US airline United caused a passenger to be rendered insensible and dragged off a flight by three police officers. If you have by any chance been hiding in a nuclear bunker for the last 72 hours, 69 year old Dr David Dao was travelling home from Chicago to Kentucky on a United Airlines flight on Sunday and refused to give up his seat when instructed to do so by the crew. They called the police, who removed him forcibly.

United's blundering mismanagement of the entire incident reads like an text book on how to create a global PR fail of such magnificent proportions that it wipes $800 million off a company's stock price - which is precisely what it has achieved.

Although it would appear everyone was told the situation was due to 'overbooking', in fact United needed four seats to fly its own crew out to staff another flight. It had managed to screw up its own rostering to the point where it had to try and get people already boarded on a flight to agree to give up their seats. It offered $400 compensation, then $800 - which Dao agreed to and then rescinded his agreement when he found out the next available flight was 2.30pm the next day.

Of course, it's easier to say 'As the flight has been overbooked we are offering passengers...' in a tannoy than 'As we have goofed up our rostering and have four unexpected dead heads, we are offering passengers...'

United's consistent use of obfuscation and mendacity is only part of the whole glorious and potent mixture of incompetent communications that led them to become an object of global opprobrium. With a video of a bloody and unconscious man being dragged down the aisle of the plane being shared by millions, the company's CEO said this was 're-accommodating' passengers. The company also said that Dr Dao - a man torn from his seat on a plane - had been 'refused boarding'.

Dao is currently being smeared across mainstream media, a sad incident from his past being dragged up to show us that this seemingly innocent Doctor is actually a gay sex fiend who was struck off for ten years and earned a fortune playing poker instead of doctoring. We'll likely find out he was horrible to hamsters and kittens, too. United has finally, and this is Wednesday, made a full and proper apology - something it should have done at the latest by Monday but, in our Twitter-driven world, really Sunday was the time to react. It would seem United has either engaged an agency or started listening to its incumbent.

But the late reaction is too scripted, too late and follows an initial and very different reaction. Result? It lacks the one thing we know is the most important element of communications in today's environment: authenticity. They don't sound like they mean it and that's precisely because they don't mean it. United has consistently made it clear that Dao was an inconvenient trouble-maker because he didn't do what they told him to do and wanted him to do.

Is United responsible for smearing Dao? It's hard to tell, really, the smear has certainly made the 'innocent passenger' narrative more complex but it has also prolonged the coverage of the whole sorry incident. And with every new story, we have a chance to replay that video of a man being dragged from his seat - bought, paid for and occupied with every expectation of being able to fly home that night - and pulled off a plane like a sack of spuds.

For me, currently engaged in an arbitration case against British Airways, the story has particular resonance. Airlines are big businesses and the regulation of their behaviour would appear to be particularly lax. They are routinely lying about their flight times to avoid charges of delay (have you noticed how yesterday's 45 minute flight has become today's 90 minute flight?), using reasons of security to mask operational convenience and generally treating passengers pretty woefully. The first line of response is reasonably consistently to take refuge in obfuscation and filibustering, using a variety of means to disempower consumers. We are all sausages, lining up to be squeezed compliantly into the sausage machine.

It's remarkable how falling standards in aviation customer service and comportment have become the norm rather than the rule. BA's descent from the world's proudest national carrier to a sub-Ryan Air low cost carrier has been pretty meteoric. A sort of flying Nokia.

The exceptions to that rule are, of course, finding that being better than that pays off. That consumers will avoid (showing remarkable lethargy when it comes to making active choices to change) the bad airlines and gravitate to the good guys. It's where the Gulf 'feeder flight' carriers have made such inroads.

And it's going to be hard to see United waving the flag for 'good ole Amerikay first' when it comes to competing with the Gulf airlines, continuing that lobbying effort to have the Gulfies throttled to support American airlines. Their service standards being already notoriously low, beating up your customers really does set a new standard.

United will be reassuring itself that the news cycle will move on and this, like all things, will pass. they won't change, not one jot, despite their CEO's belated and PR-penned promises. It'll be interesting to see, when the online howls have died down, how many consumers vote with their feet in the weeks to come...

That British Airways Belfast Customer Experience

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes an organisation's priorities are all too evident in the way it comports itself. Let's be clear here - comportment is what you do, not what you say.

Some of the most egregious customer service behaviours I have seen in my professional career have been on the part of organisations which spend a lot of time and money broadcasting their customer-service values and claiming they put the customer first.

These have mostly been Middle Eastern banks and telcos, which tend to pay a lot more money pushing 'we are customer-centric' messages than they do on actually helping customers in any way. This common attitude to 'customer experience' has always confused me, to be honest. It tends to have made its way from the analogue to the digital world, BTW - these organisations under-invest in UX, search and content compared to old-fashioned one-way communication efforts and still tend to consistently confuse outreach for broadcast. And they tend to see public relations as a way of managing and obfuscating their failures rather than as a positive force.

Critically, the pain resulting from this behaviour rarely gets felt by the management taking the decisions on where to allocate resources - the customer-facing front line is stuffed with minimum wage drones who have no escalation path. Rather than listen to them, the company will issue customer opinion surveys direct to customers which invariably result in initiatives to squeeze more out of the drones rather than drive any fundamental change in behaviour.

In the case of an airline like British Airways, it's understandable that the big expensive flying machines are what matters most. You'll claim it's all about the people, but that's not really the case (comportment, remember?) - the money's in the capital equipment and shifting that equipment around with optimal efficiency (slots/routes/lading) is the ultimate key to success.

When things go wrong, for instance when your home airport is closed through fog or any other circumstance, the operational challenges can be immense. Suddenly you face the collapse of the carefully stacked house of cards that is your optimal routing/resource utilisation. Minimising time to recovery is key and, despite your loud protestations, customers tend to be one of the great inconveniences to this process. They have a nasty tendency to be where they're not supposed to be and fail to be quite where you'd like them to be.

They get, in short, in the way.

When we arrived for our scheduled flight from Belfast to find the usually minimal check-in queue was a long, snaking affair stretching almost out of the airport door, we were puzzled. We'd not been keeping up with the news - too busy doing Christmas - and found out from friends online that there had been flight delays at Heathrow due to freezing fog. British Airways - which had our email address and contact number - hadn't reached out to advise of any delays or issues.

The queue wasn't moving and there was nobody from BA 'working the line' and telling people what was happening. The boards showed later flights to LHR than ours that day had already been cancelled, which had us trying to call a friend we knew was connecting from BHD through LHR to DXB later on. Clearly her travel plans were already scuppered, even as ours still held out a dwindling prospect of hope.

After an hour or so, a tannoy advised us that check-in was slower than normal and assured us that 'we would be processed' as soon as possible. This would be my first piece of 'customer experience feedback' to British Airways. Processed is not, as eny fule no, a 'feel-good customer experience' word.

A long time later, we were duly processed and went through security to the departure lounges. We were on the 15.05 flight and watched the 12.05 flight departing shortly before we were due out. There was clearly a delay in the offing here, but we took heart on not being cancelled. Minutes later, the tannoy rang out - our flight was cancelled and we were to collect our bags and a 'rebooking form' from the baggage area.

The rebooking form was an A4 sheet being handed out by harassed looking baggage handlers who assured me that they had no information beyond the form, didn't work for BA and weren't responsible for anything. Repeated requests to speak to someone from BA were ignored or refused. The form itself had been knocked up in an annoying, hard to read 'handwriting' style font and carried a wrong number for the call centre and the instruction to 'call between XX:XX and XX:XX'. As the primary instrument of communication to passengers of a cancelled flight, it was pretty shoddy and almost utterly useless. At this stage the BA app and website were equally useless, showing the flight as either still departing or delayed. There was no rebooking option available on either platform. The British Airways call centre was dropping calls with a message that they were too busy to talk to us.

We hired a car and fled back to Newry for our unscheduled night's layover. By the time we arrived down the road (it's an hour's drive away), the flight was no longer showing as cancelled, but as delayed to 6am the next day. After 30 minutes on hold, we finally got through to the call centre, clearly managed at a distant location, which could only confirm the delayed flight or refer us back to BA.com. Because your flight is delayed and not cancelled, the message was clear, rebooking isn't really an option.

With no information other than this, we had no option but to get up at 3.30am to arrive at the British Airways check-in at Belfast City - both officially and fondly known as George Best - in time to present on time for the revised 6am flight. Once again, a long, long queue and no BA staff on hand. Getting to the front of the line, we learn BA1417 is a 'free' flight - a plane is on the tarmac surplus to requirements and they'll fill it as soon as possible and get it off when they can. As it turned out, this was finally to be at 5.30pm that day.

In all that time, BA staff were notably absent. Information and updates were just as sparse. Throughout, our fellow travellers were anxious and unsure how to act in the total absence of information, given no option but to hang around and wait for the next reluctantly divulged snippet. Families, old people, kids and all - confused, concerned and effectively marginalised - were all systematically kept in the dark.

The overwhelming theme throughout this whole process was the lack of communication or concern for the messy carbon-based life forms which British Airways claims sit at the very centre of their business. The BA app was less than useless, the website poorly structured and lacking in any useful information, transactional capability or interactivity - especially given the circumstances. The BA Twitter team pushes out platitudes but there's little empowerment on show here - they had as much information (or as little) as we did.

BA's only attempt at 'customer communication' was a badly formatted letter packed with errors and carrying no useful information. There was no proactive outreach, no attempt at interactive person-to-person communication or 'Customer Experience Management' (at one stage the Twitter team told me they'd share my comments with their 'Customer Experience Managers' which had me in stitches and, to be honest, rather fed my Twitter output for a while. I managed some 100 tweets in all, a flow of admittedly somewhat therapeutic scorn that eventually drew the attention of the dear old BBC).

It was clear time after time that BA staff had knowledge of the developing situation which they were not prepared to share with their customers. BA.com was often updated before any communication was attempted with customers waiting in the lounge, while staff would only offer information in response to direct questions - literally, if you didn't ask (pointedly), you didn't get.

We couldn't face a long haul flight directly after the BA debacle and so re-booked our subsequent flight with Emirates. It took 5 minutes using EK's website.

BA followed up the whole frustrating experience with a customer experience survey yesterday (twice, for some reason), which actually just confirmed my views of them as an organisation. Did the pilot serve us well? Was he proactive? Chatty? Good at making us feel warm and welcome?

I don't care, BA. That's not his job. His job is to drive the thing effectively and safely, not to make up for your lack of investment in customer service by bantering and pandering to your ill-served customers.

I'd like to think they could learn something from this: listen and perhaps even consider changing their behaviour as a result of the feedback. But they won't. British Airways didn't learn a thing from the Eyjafjallajökull debacle, which cost us four days of BA-induced hell back in 2010 - because every single awful lack in communications and customer care or customer experience management evident then was evident now.

So much could change and for a relatively small investment. Because an organisation is judged not on how it acts when everything's going as expected, but how it acts when the extraordinary happens. British Airways' performance in the face of the extraordinary has been consistently, arrogantly, infuriatingly sub-par.

All it would take is reviewing British Airways' operations from the customer's point of view. It's a serious suggestion - it so clearly hasn't been done, ever.

Meanwhile, my abiding takeaway is that a 'Customer Experience Management' team is employed by this company.

God forbid. What do they do each day?

Telco Fail Special. Etisalat WINS Challenge.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I know quite a bit about telcos. Back in 1991, strangely enough as allied forces started the air and ground assault to liberate Kuwait (great timing, I know), I launched a magazine called Communications Middle East Africa, or Comms MEA as it became known. Then, in the late 90s, I was involved in the communications strategy, planning and rollout of privatised Egyptian mobile operator Mobinil. I subsequently worked with France Telecom, Jordan Telecom, Jordan's Mobilecom, Fastlink, Zain, Wataniya in Kuwait, Algeria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Batelco, Nawras, MTN (in its Saudi license bid) and others in the Middle East and further afield. I've worked on communications strategy, marketing campaigns and capacity building programmes in telecommunications and ICT for regulators, telcos, manufacturers and governments.

I've got telco form, in short.

I knows me telcos.

So it is with considerable confidence I can assert that never in my life have I ever encountered a telco as woefully useless as the UK's EE. We're not talking just averagely bad, we're talking organisationally dysfunctional to an extraordinary degree. We're talking spectacularly bad in a sort of massive display of really bad fireworks of badness bad. I wonder they remain a viable business, so awed am I by the symphonic virtuosity of their badness.

It's truly incredible, a Harvard Business School case study in how an organisation can remain profitable whilst exhibiting a stellar disregard for its customers. If you're in the customer service business, give up. Go home. You're wasting your time. That EE is still trading demonstrates for all time that the customer really doesn't matter.

I'm not going to bore you with the whole story. But you'll get an idea of how awfully bad they are when I tell you that I finally gave up and walked into one of their stores to get help fixing my issues with their awful service, blitheringly incompetent UX and heart-attack inducing IVR-driven call centre.

"I know," said the chap in the shop. "We're really, really bad. And there's nothing I can do about it, they don't trust us to get access to anything here in the shops, you'll have to talk to the call centre. It's frustrating, I know, but there's nothing I can do for you."

"But there's no way you can ever speak to a human at the call centre. You're just stuck in the system and when you eventually find your way to the option to talk to a representative it hangs up in your face."

"Yup. I know. Everyone hates us."

It's an interesting customer service technique. My frustration and anger were instantly defused. If it's so bad their own people have given up, what chance do I have? I eventually managed to find a way around my issue, albeit an inelegant one, but then found their iPhone app crashing every time you tried to invoke it. Reboot mobile, no change. I went to another EE store.

The bloke in the store grimaced. "Yes our app does crash. It does it on my iPhone, too. Look, I'll show you. There. Crashes every time.  Bad, isn't it?"

"But a telco in the smartphone era whose app crashes on the world's most iconic smartphone platform is surely on a one way ticket? It's almost unbelievably incompetent."

"I know. But what can we do? We just work in a shop."

In fact, EE's service is so bad, it got fined £1 million by UK regulator OFCOM. Googling 'EE customer service' gets you access to a very deep bucket of ordure indeed. It's the UK's most complained about mobile operator, as it turns out. And that seems to be quite an achievement in itself given the tone of debate around the other operators.

Which is why, coming back to the UAE from leave, I found myself looking at Gerard Butler gurning at me from a green-tinged billboard and thought, almost fondly, 'You know what? It might still be running the dumbest, most ill-advised campaign in the history of telco promotion, but Etisalat isn't all that bad.'

Yup, you heard it here first. Challenge accepted. Etisalat vs EE? I'll take the home team any day...

Fish And Superfish

I don't know if you've seen the broohaha, but there has been an almighty spat between members of the security industry and PC manufacturer Lenovo, which has perhaps unwisely been loading its consumer PCs with nasty little adware add-on Superfish Virtual Discovery.

Superfish behaves very badly indeed and basically renders any system it's installed on very vulnerable indeed to attack because of the way it uses security certificates to insert its own ad results into users' browsers. Many have questioned quite why Lenovo would be stupid enough to sell its users down the river for what can be only a miniscule contribution to revenue. This article on cnet is probably the most reasoned in tone - as you get up the security value chain, the screams and howls get impressively loud.

Anyway, I removed Superfish using the removal tool Lenovo was so achingly late to bring to bear on a problem it clearly had thought it could bland PR its way out of.

And this was the result. Which made me laugh a lot. We fixed the problem we gave you and now there never was a problem to start with. I'm glad I used Norton first to detect that, yes, I did have a problem. And pretending it's gone away, Lenovo, won't make it go away.

This dialogue box, to me, reads like the result of a battle between engineering and PR...

If you have a Lenovo PC made since last August, not a Thinkpad, but one of the consumer brands like Yoga, you might want to nip over here and run this here doohickey...

Corel Draw Display Issues? Of Graphics Software And High Resolution Screens...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you're using any professional graphics software and are thinking of buying a machine with a 4K or other high resolution screen, be very, very careful indeed.

I've been using Corel Draw since it first came out in the late 1980s. I remember extolling its virtues in the weekly computing column I wrote for Gulf News at the time. And its virtues then, as now, were legion.

Most people use Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign from Adobe Systems these days but I'd invested early in learning to navigate my way around Corel so I've stuck with it. One of the earlier adopters of graphics and page makeup software (first Ventura, which rather ages me, then Quark), I've spent a lot of money on Corel over the years - the upgrade path was always a little shaky and if you upgraded every three years or so, you almost always ended up paying full price - usually a stiff $1,000 or so.

Corel Corporation at one stage looked like they might challenge the mighty Microsoft when they bought WordPerfect from Novell. It wasn't to be - from that heyday, the company has rather plunged and tottered around and has recently completed a round of layoffs (by no means the first), impacting engineering and customer service in particular. I was to discover this the hard way.

But throughout it all I've stayed loyal to Corel. It's a bit like supporting England in the World Cup. You know you're on a loser, but you stick to your guns come what may.

I no longer use the software suite for work purposes and haven't in a long time, but I've kept a copy on my machine because it's handy for doing all sorts of little graphics jobs, from my book covers through to worksheets for Sarah's classroom. But our copy's old now, Corel 12 dates back to 2004 and Windows 2000 (remember that?) and XP. An upgrade was clearly needed, but $1,000 for some classroom worksheets and the odd graphics job for a book or website was a tad stiff.

You can imagine, then, my glee at finding a copy of Corel Draw Home and Student Suite 2014 sitting on the shelf down at Carrefour when I bought my lovely new and VERY orange Lenovo Yoga. At a mere $100-odd, it was just the ticket. I snapped it up like Snappy Sid MacSnap the winner of last year's snappiest snapping snap snapper contest.

The software installed, but the splash screen looked odd, a little like a shrinky-dink. It was tiny. And then the actual screen display showed. You can just about make out the menu bars. It's minuscule to the point of unusability. We clearly have a problem here, Houston.

I am not going to try you with details on how I messed with the screen settings, searched the web, scraped the Corel Support Forums or had frustrating online chat sessions with witless bots in deepest Uttar Pradesh pretending to be online chat support people. I am going to skim over the countless emails with Corel customer support telling me to slam the doors, re-install the software, perform a ceremonial quirkafleeg and dance widdershins around my computer sprinkling it with the blood of a black cockerel (all very fun, but I spent an age picking sticky feathers out of the keyboard).

Google keeps trying to change 'widdershins' into 'sidewinders'. Which says something about modern society, I'm sure.

The solution, after much escalation, turns out to be buying a $1,000 copy of Corel X7, because Corel Home and Student 2014 isn't 2014 software at all, but a rebadged version of redundant Corel X6 dating back to 2012 - before anyone had even dreamed up the idea of a laptop with a stunning 4K screen. And despite saying it's Windows 8.1 compatible, it won't work properly on a high resolution screen.

Let's just pause on that one for a second. A professional graphics package that doesn't support high resolution screens. Hmm.

I argued with them. Clearly the software is unfit for purpose: you've called it Corel Home and Student 2014 but it's not, it's Corel Redundant Package so it's hardly my fault it doesn't support current hardware. Yes, they said, we understand that - and what's more, X7 might not even work with your screen - the graphics software industry in general is having to remake things so that the software is responsive rather than static. If I needed any succour, as misery loves company, I could draw some comfort from the howls of Adobe customers who are having the same problem with high resolution screens and their software from what I could see on the Adobe support forums.

The least I can do is let you know - there appears to be an industry-wide issue out there with the new generation of hi-res screens and graphics software. So try before you buy. The software, I mean. The hardware I'd recommend in a flash - the Lenovo Yoga is a lovely machine, light as a feather, deliciously functional and the screen is nothing less than lavish. You want to dive in and splash around in it. Battery life is amazing, the flippy screen tricks it does are cool and the build quality's great.

HSBC: Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Out Again

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some of you have got bored with the HSBC Whingey Posts. Why not a fun, frothy 'Shiny' post? You ask. A touch of irony, a scintilla of witty flair. Not that anger thing you do. No way, guy, that's just, like, you know, negative.

Well I can't help it. Every time I'm prepared to sue for peace, they go and do something else that makes absolutely no sense unless you are prepared to admit that the bank is being run by a row of Listerine-gargling Orangutans perched on a sapient pearwood branch lighting farts tuned by arraying their relative bottom sizes to squeeze out 'Roll Out The Barrell' every time a decision of any sort is required that will do anything other than ensure the absolute and consummate misery of their beaten-down and exhausted customers.

There is no category of banking service they have not managed to fail to perform in the time we have banked with them. Not one. Issue a cheque book, a credit card, send a draft, make a transfer. Every single aspect of banking has, at one stage or another, been royally muffed up by these vapid goons.

Imagine, then, my amazement that we managed to get new Visa cards issued with only a personal visit to the branch when our old ones were a day away from expiry, having not been replaced automatically (and I having been assured they would be). Imagine we had told the girl we were going on leave and could only accept delivery after the 24th August - and I got a long, rambling call from a drone on a heavily IP-saturated line when I was in the UK (incurring roaming charges that would melt the iciest heart) telling me my cards were ready for delivery.

'HaHa!' I laughed, and 'Fie and Fiddlesticks to boot! I'm on leave! I told you! No can do! Put that in your corporate pipe and see if you can't get a tune out of it by shoving it up the nearest Orangutan's...'

The cards arrived the other day to the office once we had returned. I was, to be honest, sore amazed. They have a sticker across the front of them giving a number to call to get a PIN number as they're 'chip and pin' cards. Called it. Did the rigmarole. It all worked perfectly.

By now I had relaxed. Oh, you know with hindsight and think me a fool. But I had indeed sighed relief and smiled at my wife. "Perhaps, my love, we have broken the spell at last" - imagine Shrek speaking ecstatically to Princess Fiona (I have spent the summer mingling with young nieces and nephew).

And then I went to peel the sticker off to find it wasn't a plastic 'easy peel' sticker that leaves no glue behind. It's a paper sticker that leaves a gluey, papery residue across the front of the whole thing. It's going to pick up fluff and dirt, go grey and grubby.

A glittering new credit card that immediately looks skanky, filthy and worn. Yes, people, this is indeed fitting...

HSBC Predicts Internet Banking Growth. Shock Horror.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In an interview with Gulf News, an executive from HSBC has predicted a rising trend in the adoption of technology. This is the kind of insight we have come to expect from the bank that knows in Beijing bicycles are a mode of transport, while in Dubai they're used in the gym.

The interview goes on to tell us that mobile technology adoption is on the rise, while m-commerce "is good news for consumers who will experience the benefits of greater convenience and ease of access."

Astounding. It's like Paulo Coelho's entire body of work squeezed into a single, punchy sentence. I could feel my life changing as I read that. I had never before considered the possibility that mobile commerce would allow greater convenience and ease of access. It's one of those moments, you know the ones when the world suddenly seems, well, a little different. Something has shifted. Something has changed.

Apparently HSBC has a mobile banking solution, which was launched on the UAE Apple app store in November 2011. It's also available on Android and BlackBerry. That's news to me, but I'm just one of their customers so see no reason why I would be told. The application, developed by Montise, allows account access, balance, movement of funds between accounts and bill payments. All you need is your Internet banking PIN, password, memorable information and your HSBC Secure Key (which is a small hardware device designed to make Internet banking more frustrating than it need be).

HSBC has apparently conducted research on the factors inhibiting the adoption of Internet banking. While that research is alluded to in Gulf News' piece, the results are not. We are told merely that a third of HSBC's customers are using Internet banking, while half of those are inactive.

I'm one of the inactive ones. I couldn't remember all the usernames and passwords for phone banking and Internet banking both. Username, password, the sequenced genome of a pipistrelle bat, six digit PIN, memorable information, ten digit phone banking identification matrix, internal diameter of a six tonne bow thruster, date of birth, the names of six different violent mammals, secure key entry. I don't even have a secure key. Sarah does. She loathes it with a passion. I wonder if perhaps the sheer richness and complexity of information required to access these services would not count perhaps as one of the inhibitors? My real bank just wants an Internet banking account number and password and hey presto, I'm in.

The study, apparently, revealed that it was important for HSBC to raise awareness about the benefits of online banking.

I can't wait.

Service With A Smile.

Image via WikipediaMany of us are inspired to post on blogs by life's little hiccups rather than its delights. It's the part of human nature that fills our news with death and destruction, with Chi-Chi the panda's new baby relegated to the furry animal slot at the very back end of slow news days broadcasts. It's why the traffic slows for the accident, but not for the family picnicking on the verge. We're more interested in the negative than we are in good times. It's one of the reasons why Gulf News' local news pages are such an utterly compelling read.

Well, I'm bucking the trend. I've got something good to say. Al Ghandi Electronics, the distributor for Philips, has the best customer service out there. Bar none. It's stunning.

The washing machine's 's on/off switch bust. Put in a call to the boys and girls at Al Ghandi's Dubai service centre and got a woman who used my mobile number to access my record on their database, which held all our details from the last service visits they'd made. She told me the service callout would take 2-3 days as they had to ensure they had the part to repair our machine. I got a text shortly after with a service ticket number.

Two days later, in the morning, I got a call from the technician who wanted to set an appointment to come to the house. He asked for directions and told me precisely what the service fees would be. We agreed on 5pm and that was lovely.

At 5pm precisely two blue-shirted technicians were outside the house. Fifteen minutes later they left. They were pleasant, knowledgeable and efficient. Our washing machine was fixed.

This isn't the first time they've come out. They fixed the broken seal on our oven a few months ago and we'd called them out years ago for our last washing machine (the reason we bought Philips again was the service we'd received). Every time they've left me looking like a beached guppy as they drove pleasantly away, waving goodbye.

It always amazes me that this amazes me. But it stands as amazing customer service here in the UAE. So this is for them. Why the rest of 'em can't do this is beyond me.

Service With a Snarl

Image via Wikipedia

I've got into the habit of carrying a bottle of Masafi around with me, so pretty much every morning starts with a quick nip into our local ADNOC service station to buy a bottle for myself and one for Sarah.

Invariably, the lone blue-trousered cashier is stacking newspapers, crushing crisp packets or doing something else more important than actually standing next to the till and waiting to do the one thing cashiers do best: take the cash. I usually leave the money and walk out waving the two bottles. They know the code, so I don't have to wait around for them to scan the bottles, something one is now forced to do if buying anything else there, thanks to the Tyranny Of The Scanner.

I have watched people buying other stuff and the drill is always the same - the customer is studiously ignored until he or she is standing waiting to pay at the cash desk and starting to fidget, at which point, the cashier will slowly shuffle across the shop and grudgingly swipe the goods before demanding payment, usually with a grunted number.

It struck me this morning just how very wrong this scenario is. The customer is almost always made to wait upon the convenience of the shopkeeper, who has defined pretty much any task in the shop (a destination intended to be attractive to the customers it depends upon) as more important than actually serving the customer. Nobody complains, partly because this is the way things are and partly because finding anyone to complain to who has any power to effect any degree of change is just too much investment for likely no return.

I only thought about this at all because I had been in a workshop thingy the day before and one of the questions we had considered was where UAE banks' pain points were. I had made the point, not unreasonably, that one of the greatest pain points for banks in the UAE is that their customer service, without exception if anecdote is to be believed, stinks. I have found nobody who would recommend their bank to me, have never complained about my bank (which I, admittedly, do quite often) and had someone respond with a cheery, 'Try my bank, it's great!'. If anyone ever does, I think I might have to be treated for shock.

Someone else in the workshop thingy corrected me.  The abysmal customer service of banks in the UAE wasn't a pain point for them, because it doesn't actively hurt them. People still bank with these people, despite their anger. So banks don't care about it, it isn't a business issue for them, my colleague claimed. And he was right. Well, sort of. It's not a pain point for them simply because they're ignoring the issue - not because there is no issue to be addressed.

Like the awful ADNOC shop, banks treat their customers with very little consideration. The many instruments and vehicles of international finance do not include customer service, although all of the money banks play with belongs, ultimately, to customers. There is no thought of anticipating customer needs, instead the customer is forced to wait upon the banks' pleasure. Escalating the complaint is almost impossible - you get stuck in the numbing vortex of the call centre, which has been designed to take customer feedback and beat it into submission before discarding it. And so 'management' is effectively cushioned from the pain - the call centre is where pain begins and ends 99% of the time.

Because there's nobody listening to the customers, the management of both ADNOC and banks don't see that there's anything wrong - that perhaps there's a better, happier, way of doing things that likely costs less than the annual staff party but that has the potential to transform the brand experience of the people the business depends upon - it's that inability to see the customer as germane to the business that informs the appalling customer service of both. They'll spend millions on telling us we're happy, but not one penny on actually making us happy.

The easiest thing to do is craft a mission statement that puts the customer first, conjure up some brand values that include 'customer-centric', then run some nice, reassuringly expensive, ads that talk about customers and then completely ignore the customer in any business process, staff training or management objective.

Because customers aren't king any more. We're just dirt on the shoes of management teams sitting around in focus groups congratulating themselves on how much they invest in us, whose last thought would actually be finding out what we think or feel.

I'm quite enjoying watching companies start to experiment with social media. The first step any half-decent practitioner (ie: anyone who doesn't call themselves a 'social media expert' or, worse, 'guru') counsels companies to take is to start listening.

We've already seen some rather shocked reactions as a result of that advice. The first shock is frequently at the whole idea of listening to customers. ("Yew! Who wants to listen to them?"). The second one is when they hear what customers actually think about, and are saying about, them.

I wonder when ADNOC (the Abu Dhabi National Oil company, thank you for asking) will start...

(Yeah, so I'm grumpy. Bite me.)