ThinkingSparks

Vote against sheepwalking bureaucrats!

Yesterday I wanted to cast two votes in the provincial government elections; for me and my partner. I could vote for myself without an ID, but in order to vote for my partner I had to ID myself. The polling station can ask for an ID, but are not required to. I forgot my ID so they wouldn’t let me vote for my partner. I could cast my own vote without any ID.

I saw noo point in trying to convince the sheepwalking bureaucrats that this is an illogical rule and serves – in my opinion – no use at all, I just cast the one vote yesterday. So this post is my vote against sheepwalking bureaucrats!

Adding to the apology ranking

Even in the pre internet era I loved long distance shopping. Yeah, I admit it, I like mail order. I am probably one of the few women who do not like shopping at regular stores. It is crowded, warm, and there are never enough fitting rooms. So when I go, I go early in the morning. Which I did the last time I went shopping. Unfortunately, I fell in with the Viktor & Rolf siege of H&M (which took place all over the world). Top designers Viktor & Rolf created a limited line of clothing for H&M. More convicted than ever I realized that I really do prefer internet and mail order shopping.

So I went on a little shopping spree. Ordered some stuff, returned some items, exchanges one item for a smaller size and got presented with an invoice which I paid. At least I thought I paid it. Two months later I received a reminder that there was a balance due. I checked my online bank statements and certain that I had paid I threw out the reminder. This week I received another reminder, and two days later another reminder. So yesterday, I checked again, saw that I had paid and called up Heine.

The friendly lady from customer service listed the items I bought and added up the cost of these items. Conclusion: they hadn’t received my payment and one of the items I had purchased was not on the list. I of course wanted the issue of the payment to be settled. The customer service lady was more focused on the fact that I apparently had an expensive item of clothing hanging in my closet which the system didn’t show and for which in her mind I had not paid. I had paid for it of course so she really did not have to worry about that. But she did.

Eventually I was asked to send them a copy of my bank statement so they could confirm the payment. When commented that – however understandable – the fact that I regretted having to spend even more time on this because the burden of proof lies with the customer if the systems of the business fails, is was transferred to a supervisor. She ran through my bank statement with me, checking bank account number and reference number. Apparently I had filled in the wrong reference number. This puzzled me as I am not some kind of random number generator, but eventually succumbed to the fact that I would have to find my official bank statement, copy it, black out the non-relevant stuff and fax it. Tomorrow, I thought when I hung up the phone.

Fifteen minutes later I was called back. It turned out that I had two customer services numbers. I probably had attributed their website a higher level of sophistication than it has and had assumed that I would be recognized as an existing customer. So I had two customer services numbers and one order had been booked on one number, the other order had been booked on the other. My payment had been booked on one service number and not on the other. The lady on the phone assured me several times that I did not have to pay fines and interest as this really was not my fault although – she said – it was obvious that I had ordered in the wrong way.

After everything was solved and settled three things stayed with me.

• Why was the customer services lady trying to convince me that it wasn’t my fault. She said it so often as to comfort me it seemed. I really didn’t care whose fault it was, but it appeared that it didn’t even cross her mind that it could be her company’s fault.
• If according to their system I owe them money they send me letters and charge me interest. If according to their system I paid too much I hear nothing from them and they just keep my money. I wonder how the lady would have reacted if I had told her: it is not your fault, I will not charge interest. She probably wouldn’t have had a clue.
• This form of apology has no place on Seth’s apology ranking. I rank it between 2 and 3: “It’s not your fault and we won’t hold it against you. Isn’t that just grand of us?” Customer services here is well meaning and friendly. They are helpful in solving what they consider to be a mistake of the customer. They magnanimously forgive the customer without any repercussion. At no point in time does it even cross their mind that they could in any way claim responsibility and act accordingly.

Rating dinner

Until recently whenever I went out for dinner I checked out IENS, the largest restaurant site in The Netherlands. 53.000 registered tasters rate the restaurants they have had lunch or dinner at. I have been disappointed often as the restaurants could not live up to the expectations I had after checking them on IENS.

Some time ago I had dinner at Fellini in Amsterdam. Back then it was rated with an 8,1 (on a scale from 1 – 10). Now it is rated slightly higher. The food was decent but not worth an 8 or up. Last month I had dinner at Rozemarijn in Maastricht, which is rated at IENS with an 8,8. Rozemarijn comes close to a Michelin rating. The food really is superb.

Afterwards I could not get over the fact that the difference in quality and service didn’t reflect the difference in ratings. I would think that a 7,1 for Fellini would be more appropriate. I felt that there is a flaw in the IENS system. The idea of letting tasters rate the restaurants is great, but how should one value the rating of the individual taster?

What I mean by that is if I would only eat at restaurants with a Michelin star (I wish!) and would rate them with an 8, a restaurant like Fellini would never get an 8. The same works the other way around. If you always eat at restaurants like Fellini and grade them with an 8, a restaurant like Rozemarijn would be close to a 10. If every restaurantgoer would stay in ‘their segment’ it would not be a problem. But consumers tend to be quite heterogeneous these days, and not behaving as the companies would like or expect them to.

On their website IENS states that the ratings the restaurants receive are the average of the individual rates of the tasters. I think it is too one-dimensional and the rates should be calculated another way, somehow taking the tasters’ profile into account. Resulting in more realistic ratings and not raising expectations the restaurants cannot live up to. In turn resulting in me not checking IENS anymore as I do not consider their information reliable.

Insincere apologies vs. authentic rudeness

After I lived in the USA and came back to Holland I was shocked to see how horribly some Dutch companies treated their customers. Be it in a store, bar, restaurant or call center. Of course this doesn’t apply to everyone and I think things have become better over the years. Although I still can be in utter amazement about the way customers are sometimes treated. See my post on Vodafone. I still enjoy visiting the USA, where I can bask in the service and attention I receive at so many places of business.

Maybe it is a cultural thing. Americans know how to give good service (by nature?) and the Dutch don’t. Of course when you say that to a Dutch person most likely the reply will be that Americans are fake. This prejudice seems to be solely based on the American way of greeting people: How are you? Many Dutch for some reason think this is insincere and shallow and hence the label fake. Unjustly so in my opinion.

We Dutch can learn something from the Americans when it comes to giving good customer service. Seth Godin wrote about the cheapest form of good customer service: the apology. In his post he questions the sincerity of the apology. The example he gives is great. It prefer sincerety and authenticity. I however accept insincere apologies above authentic rudeness any day!

Incommunicado

I had a problem with some software and looking on the website of the company on how to get in touch with them, I noted something curious.

1. The organization does not give an e-mail address where they can be reached.
2. The organization has a support form where customers can file their questions.
3. Below the link to the support form there is an additional sentence that states that if people use the form for questions to management, publishing, the webmaster or sales that these questions will not be forwarded and/or answered.

In this time where everyone wants a dialog with their customer this company wants none of that. They rather be incommunicado.

Vodafone customer service

Some whistle blower has talked to the largest Dutch newspaper about the mess at the customer service desk of KPN, the Dutch telecom company. Apparently employees read e-mails from the customers, put customers on hold for an extremely long time so the company earns more money, of if the customer has a tough problem the employee just hangs up the phone.

As a customer I have gone through this experience with KPN. It was mind-blowingly frustrating!!! The other day I had the same with Vodafone. The Blackberry of my partner didn’t synchronize with Outlook anymore. After some reinstalling of software I was fed up with it and called the helpdesk. They would have the experts call me back A.S.A.P. with a solution or when they had solved it.

“How can they solve this problem from a distance”, I asked. “I do not think this is possible.” According to the helpdesk person this was not beyond Vodafone’s power. I told him that I had my doubts if the nature of the problem was understood, but if Vodafone could solve the problem from a distance, that would be fine with me. With the scary though that either Vodafone did not understand the problem and it would never be solved or had an unknown way of accessing both the Blackberry and the pc from a distance, I waited. And waited.

After about 9 hours of even going to the bathroom with the phone, I decided to call them back. The woman on the other side of the phone asked me somewhat surprised if I had really expected to have been called back on the same day. My surprise surmounted hers as I asked her how long I would have to wait. I could expect to be called back within a working week she told me. I asked her if she didn’t consider that to be absurdly long for something that was probably an easily solved problem. This was normal as there were too many customers with Blackberry problems she said. Not enough personnel, I thought as my total frustration as a customer turned into a jaw dropping state of wonder as a professional. I suggested that it would have been a good idea to inform prospective Blackberry subscribers about the service level they could expect. “Why would we want to do that?” the lady asked, “If we do that no one will want them”. “Exactly!” I said as I decided that further discussion was useless and wondered as a professional how it can be that these companies still exist.