There’s quite a bit in this week’s cavalcade of customer fun that relates to healthcare and queuing so it seems entirely appropriate to dust off a jazz-rock-fusion classic from my vinyl collection for this week’s photo. Meanwhile, some of the recent sagas come to a close (and some don’t) and everybody seems to want my feedback.

Street end-of-life

Sometimes customer satisfaction arises from something as simple as a promise being fulfilled. The migration from Streetlife is over and Nextdoor is up and running, but I’ve had to nag Nextdoor – via their feedback email address – about removing my local lead status. However this time I receive a prompt response saying it will be actioned in 24-48 hours. A couple of days later I check, and it is, so end of story.

Runners still need responses

Having identified an overwhelming desire to offer feedback (and the consequent disappointment when it’s not acknowledged) as one of the symptoms of OCXD I continue to be disappointed in Runnersneed’s lack of response to my email. On Monday I received an email offering me discounts on injury prevention gear… which could mean that I am getting tailored marketing based on previous purchases (possibly I am in a segment labelled ‘injury-prone’) but it could just be a coincidence. Looks like this one will run and run (sorry).

Let’s get physical

And so to a physiotherapy appointment at my local GP, which was the subject of much automated texting to remind me that I had the appointment and how much it would cost the NHS (£160 – it was 30 mins: do the math) if I didn’t show up. I don’t mind these incessant reminders if it does make people more likely to turn up and having waited a few weeks to get the appointment I had no intention of missing it. It also turned out to be an example of the NHS at its best with a highly knowledgeable physiotherapist swiftly diagnosing my two running-related issues and focusing on the customer outcome, which in my case is to get back running.

On my way out I noticed a little screen I hadn’t seen before asking my opinion. To the OCXD-afflicted these things are a massive temptation and, as I’d had a great experience I was keen to fill it in.

Sadly, it turned out to be a NPS-style question on how likely I was to recommend the practice based on my recent experience. I hit ‘likely’ and was then asked to give a reason for my score. I don’t think my feedback was that profound (I whinged a bit about how long you have to wait to get an appointment – no surprises there) and I’m left wondering what earthly use this is to the practice. Without getting into the politics that seem to accompany any debate on the NHS I’m questioning whether a metric that’s useful to someone running a restaurant or any other business whose success depends on recommendation is particularly useful to something that should be good for everyone. This metric doesn’t help.

Fed up with feedback yet? There’s more…

I’ll post on feedback more extensively soon, but there has definitely been an outbreak of requests this week. Firstly, whilst browsing the Barbican website, I’m suddenly confronted with a pop-up:

so, because I can’t resist I score 6 and then…

I have to give some justification for my random number!

Basically, my friend, I am not massively likely to recommend the site to you as it’s clunky and, as I subsequently discovered, doesn’t work that well in periods of high demand…

Queues and cures?

A tense morning today as I dutifully log on to the Barbican site as tickets for one of my favourite guitarists go on sale. I’m thrown into a queuing system, which is fine as they normally mean ticket buying is OK once you get through it.

 

In about 4 minutes I’m pinged into the booking page, select some seats, take a sharp intake of breath at the price, and then the trouble starts…

What’s happened? Has someone else booked ‘my’ seats? There’s nothing to tell me what’s gone wrong. I hit ‘Try again’ and am back in the queue, then back to the fail screen: I’m in a loop that I can’t get out of.  I open another tab, go to the site and get on the page without queuing: seconds later the tickets – albeit not such good seats – are safely in my basket. When I have completed the transaction, the website – so needy it would appear – wants my views, this time scoring out of 5. I give it 2 and offer my feedback – a precis of the above, and request a response (because that’s what I do) which elicits the standard…

…I’ll be back to check, and if I get an interesting response it will be shared here.