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Universal Credit: customer experience without compassion

BBC Radio 4’s ‘Money Box’ isn’t often where you go for a scoop with political ramifications but today’s announcement by the programme that families on Universal Credit will miss out on payments over the festive period adds some excitement to what’s often a ‘worthy but dull’ feature in the Saturday schedule.

Leaving aside the politics for a bit, this is a story about service design that’s anything but customer-centric.

And if you’re on a low income, it sucks. Continue reading “Universal Credit: customer experience without compassion”

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Bad boys? Dove and the problem with reputation

The recent furore over Dove’s Facebook ad – where a black woman ‘changes’ to a white, then Asian one as she removes her t-shirt – appears to be a result of a thoroughly misinformed piece of decision-making.

Dove’s subsequent ‘apology’, claiming that they had ‘missed the mark’ struck many as less then wholehearted, apparently compounding the initial error.

However, as commentator Richard J Hillgrove suggests in Drum, this could just be part of a cynical strategy Continue reading “Bad boys? Dove and the problem with reputation”

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Ryanair has a customer-centric approach, but it’s not what you think

I recently co-wrote a report on customer-centric strategy for NextTen – more on that later – that included Ryanair as a (positive) case study. The recent problems with pilot scheduling might cause me to make a hasty edit – but I think not: Ryanair is thoroughly customer-focused, but their low-cost approach illustrates the challenges of maintaining such a strategy when things go wrong. In fact, pursuing this strategy appears to be more likely to cause these problems. Continue reading “Ryanair has a customer-centric approach, but it’s not what you think”

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Towels and farewells

Towel Day has passed me by in the last few years (actually it’s passed me by since its inception) but I noticed it last week and as it reminded of a towel-related customer experience I’d intended to write something and shamelessly exploit the hashtag for a link or two. In the end a mild virus – barely even man-flu – was enough to put paid to that plan but, as it’s quite a good lesson in customer experience I won’t save it until next year.

Continue reading “Towels and farewells”

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Tales from the sharp end #1: M&S Food

Starting an occasional series in which I report back from the front line of customer experience. As well as an obsession with the minutiae of customer experience I have an obsession with keeping things as simple as possible (but no simpler as Einstein once put it) and so a recent experience with M&S Food reminded me, once again, how introducing even a small amount of complexity into a transaction can result in a poor customer experience, despite the heroic efforts of front line staff… Continue reading “Tales from the sharp end #1: M&S Food”

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My week in CX #8

Delays to last week’s customer experience owing to some pressing client work means that I’m casting my mind back to about a fortnight ago… if only I had some memory enhancement to help me… more on that later. It was a week in which tech matters seemed to come to the fore, particularly in the area of artificial intelligence (AI) where the future may be arriving, albeit slowly.

Continue reading “My week in CX #8”

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Dog days: when brands bite

I like the occasional beer, and I like brands that position themselves as something a bit different, so it was disappointing to read of the contortions that self-styled punk brewers Brewdog went through when their solicitors asked Birmingham pub The Wolf to change its original name – The Lone Wolf – as it conflicted with the brewer’s new spirits brand of the same name.

Brewdog’s actions sit uncomfortably Continue reading “Dog days: when brands bite”