excellent virtual sales person

In my book and classes I talk about how an ecommerce website should act as a sales person for the customer [it's also why I say sales staff should be included in the web development team] - and here is an excellent example from Amazon - see how the page points out to customers that there is a newer model available. At a higher price of course :) - it's called 'up-selling'.

on the twelfth day of Christmas ...

Well, today [January the 5th] is the day by which Christmas decorations should be taken down - but I think this ad on the eon website [www.eonenergy.com] has over-stayed its welcome.
 

lost jobs?

I often complete online surveys [it helps keep me in touch with the subject I teach] - and in one I was - not unusually - asked my occupation from this list.

 

So where would you put 'lecturer'? Or 'teacher'? Note to students who take one of my dissertation modules: if you can't come up with a comprehensive list, put a 'other' box at the bottom - preferably with a space for the respondent to type in their job.

feedback or interrogation?

In chapter 9 of my book I address the importance of feedback for hotels. Well, after a trip to Malaysia on business I have had a couple of emails [in a week] from the Hilton hotel group asking for feedback. When I clicked on the second I got this ...

Ten minutes? Take this as a lesson on how to put people off filling in feedback forms. In the interest of research, I did complete the form - well, nearly. All questions were on a Likert scale and many could be tracked to individual staff or their responsibilities and I was unwilling to give poor marks where a member of staff might be criticised for performance when I do not know the full circumstances [eg was the cleaner given sufficient time to do an excellent job of cleaning the room?]. However, I gave up when the form asked me to rate the hotel I had stayed in previously [a competitor]. Why not have just half a dozen questions on one page with a comments box? I bet they'd get a lot more completed forms, even if there was less data. And that data would be qualitative and not simply quantitative.

KLM get their geography right [eventually]

I have criticised KLM on this subject a number of times in this blog [the latest here] - but they seem to have finally realised that every single flight I have taken with them has been from my local airport at Newcastle. Hurrah!

 

 

oh, o2

If you went into a shop and asked an assistant if they stocked the iPhone 4s you would expect that assistant to be soon looking for a new job if they told you 'no' when the shop did, in fact, have iPhone 4s for sale. So who is going to get the sack for this ...

On o2.co.uk I did a search for 'iPhone 4s', and got this result ...

but when I clicked on the top listing I got ...

And yet elsewhere on the site I found this page ...

Ho hum.  

just plain lazy relationship management

Like many folk who do not live close to the football team they support, I have signed up for membership to the 'club player' -  mainly so I can listen to the online commentary of all the matches. So this week I got a reminder that my subscription was due. Or rather, they sent an email saying it had run out! So I followed the links and paid for a year's subscription - getting this email in return:

 

So here's the thing. What do you mean 'Welcome to Forest Player' ? I've been a member for over 10 years - 'Welcome back' would be nice. But if they had informed before the subscription ran out there would have been no need for any welcome - just a more suitable phrase that made me - a supporter of their club for more years than I care to remember - feel as though I was part of the club. 

 

And yes, I know, the service is run by a third party, not the football club - but the football club should be telling the provider what they should be doing in the name of the club [for club, read brand].

UPDATE
And then a few days later I got this email:

Ho hum.

KLM still miles off

I have written about this before [just put "KLM" into the search facility of this blog] - but it seems some folk just won't - or don't want to - listen.

 

Here's the subject line of an email from KLM as seen in my in-box ...

 

 

And when I clicked on the link, this is the web page which I was taken to ...

 

For those of you who don't know, Sunderland [where I am, and where KLM know I live] is - according to Google - 277 miles from London Heathrow.

 

Local? I think not. And there are around 10 airports closer than Heathrow, including Newcastle which is not only around 15 miles away, but it is the only airport I have flown from using KLM. Ho hum.

email still the poor relation?

I've raised this issue before [see email - still the poor relation of customer service? ] - I'm sure if I rang eon someone would answer the phone straight away, so why does it take five days [yep, that's five days] to answer an email?

UPDATE:
I have still not had a reply - this is from my email in-box:

FOOTNOTE #1

After nearly two weeks I gave up waiting and sent another message - to which I received a response within a couple of hours.

FOOTNOTE #2
This article is about social media rather than email, but the viewpoint is similar to mine, see: Customer Response Times: Might Take Hours Via Social, Seconds By Phone
 

leading edge?

I came across this online and thought I'd share it with you youngsters out there. It is the home page of Microsoft.com from 1995.

review ... or sales copy?

I was considering the purchase of a floor cleaner, and ended up on Amazon checking some out. As is the case with all products on Amazon, after the description there are reviews written by folk who own and have used the products. However ... as I describe in a section on the consumer generated content my book, the origin of some of these reviews might be, well ... suspect.

 

Take a look at the first few reviews on the Amazon page for this Vax S2S Bare Floor Pro Steam Mop with Detergent. Am I the only one who thinks these are kind of professional? How they seem to address all the FAQs a potential buyer might have? For example; it cleans parquet floors and tile grout. How to use it ["... release steam and to slide the cleaner back and forth ..."]. Fits in a cupboard. One even has a bullet point list of advantages.

 

And if you are not as naturally sceptical as me - take a look at the '1 star' reviews.

Footnote: Although Amazon could be a bit more editorial about the reviews they feature, the nature of CGC is that it is not edited - and so my complaint in this entry is not aimed at them, it is aimed at the marketers of the product ... who have benefited from the reviews. Or have they?

CAPTCHA catch

A lot of writers have commented on the fact that many CAPTCHAs are un-readable - well the one that Ryanair presented to me just to check on a flight price was also un-seeable.

 

link spam

Some of you will have heard of link spam - but are unsure of what it is. Well ... I have an example on this very blog. As you will see, anyone can add a comment - but I have the setting so that all comments are emailed to me for 'vetting' so that I can reject unsuitable comments and release suitable ones onto the blog.

 

Below is one comment I received for moderation.

As you can see if you take a quick look at the blog entry on which the comment is added - the comment has nothing to do with the original entry from me. You will note also that that the 'comment' is full of links to a variety of services offered by this company. This is link spam. It hasn't worked on this occasion because I have not published it [and have marked it as spam] - however, many blogs are not moderated, and so 'comments' like this go live on a multitude of blogs, each with a link to the link-spamming organization's website.

profit by default?

I have never flown with Ryanair before - but much has been written about the extra costs added to the basic price featured on the budget airline's website ... and here's my contribution after booking a flight to Gdansk. Good website usability - or should I say 'moral' website usability - offers extras as a 'click-to-add' offering. Less moral businesses make users 'click-to-delete' extras that are added by default. So I was not surprised when Ryanair added insurance by default with a message saying that "If you are already insured you can select 'don't cover me' in the drop down box"  [I'll not be so picky as to point out that a compound adjective should have a dash ie drop-down box - oh, alright, I will] 

But what drop-down box? The only one I could see on the page was the one for 'Passenger 1' - and it had United Kingdom showing, so I assumed it was for the nationality of the passenger. But I did click on it, and it was - I thought - just a list of nationalities in alphabetical order. Eventually, I clicked on it and scrolled down ... and found the 'don't cover me' option stuck in there out of alphabetical order.

OK, so maybe I was being a bit thick - but consider my background, surely I would not be the only person to be confused by this ... and ultimately, of course, a cynic like me might think the objective was to have customers just say "sod it, I'll just pay for the insurance".     

clever ... and a bit spooky

You may well have see the 'generic' advert on TV, well BA have used some clever technology to include your street in the ad - try it on BA taxi. An excellent example of integrated marketing.