no advanced publicity

I can only assume this is Tesco's corporate strategy, but if it is then it might fail an exam on a marketing communications module.

 

You see - they have been building a new mega-store near where I work, so I have watched it rise from a demolition site to [what seems to me] to be nearly-ready-to-open store. And yet when I put "tesco sunderland" into Google I got this:

 

 

Yep ... no mention of the new shop. I'm sure their PR and advertising department will go into overdrive in the week or so before it does open - at a significant cost. How much would it have cost to have developed a web page for the new store telling how magnificent it will be and when it will be open. Better still, for not too much more money, a 'count-down' web page with a timeline of photos showing the building going up? Given the cost of building, stocking and marketing a brand new store, is this another case of the web being the poor relation in marketing terms?

 

Ho hum.

Update, June 14th - I'm led to believe that the store opening was delayed ... but there is now a banner outside the building which says - I think, I drive past it in traffic - 'opening June ... '

And yet still nothing online. So , I assume, I am supposed to either drive past again [slowly] or risk an accident by reading the  banner fully. Tesco certainly don't want me using any one of my internet-connected devices to find out when I can start spending money with them.

Ho hum. Again.

Update June 27th - I've just been shopping in the newly-opened massive Tesco store in Sunderland ... and very impressive it is.

It still doesn't exist on Tesco.com though

Ho hum. Again. Again

 

delivering on delivery

I had ordered a water pump for my old car from a company who would only deliver to the home address of the credit card holder * - so I was waiting at home for it to arrive when I got this text ..

 

The full message advised me that I could text to have the parcel delivered to a neighbour or other options. 'Ian' arrived at 11.35.

 

* I can understand this security measure but it must cost some businesses sales - there are ways around it. 

numbers that don't add up on ebay

I wanted to ask a question about a product offered for sale on ebay, so I went through the process of sending a message - no problem, I've done it many times before. Presumably to prevent fraud or dodgy practice ebay require you to enter a CAPTCHA. Again, no problem - or so I thought. 

 

I have written before about  CAPTCHAs that are impossible to read - well there's a twist to this story. I typed in the first version, but it was rejected. So, I thought, I must have mis-read the number so I was careful with the next one - but it was rejected too. And so was the third. So I started saving images of my submissions - all were rejected, do you think they were all incorrect?

So I thought I'd click on the 'hear the verification code' option ... and got totally different numbers to those show. So I replayed it - and sure enough when I clicked on send with the numbers show below, it worked. Go figure.

 

 

Update, March 7: today I tried to send a message to a different seller. Same problem with the numbers, but this time the the third attempt worked. Hurrah. 

can you hear me on the radio?

Another example of a lack of joined up thinking I'm afraid. It is an age thing, but I am a big fan of Smooth Radio's 'Smooth 70s' station. Yep, it's just music from the the best decade for music. So anyway, I was listening to Smooth 70s on my PC and on came an add for downloading the iPhone app for Smooth 70s. So I fired up the iPhone, went to the app store and put "smooth 70s" into the search facility, and got only three results ...

 

 

... neither of which are for Smooth Radio's 'Smooth 70s' app.

 

I did a number of other searchers based on 'smooth', '70s' and 'radio' and still couldn't find the app that I had heard advertised. Ho hum - at least they won't have paid for their own advert [though there would be an opportunity cost. Business students; if you don't know what opportunity cost is, you should do ... look it up now].

hardly a seemless connection from BT

OK ... I will start by making it clear that I have only praise for my home's BT Infinity connection to the Internet. However ...

 

I got an email which started:

And ended with:

And when I clicked on that link, and was taken to a page that started:

... and ended with:

So here's the thing. BT know whether or not I have Infinity. They know how long I have had the contract - so they know if I am eligible or not. They know where I live and so they know how fast my upgrade could be.

 

So why was I taken to a generic landing page that is [obviously] used for other promotions?

 

Why not send me an email that says 'we can improve your Internet access' with a link to a web page which tells me exactly what I will gain and how much it will cost?

 

The answer to all this is that when I followed the links I found out that my download speeds cannot be improved. My upload capacity can be improved - but BT will know I upload so very little I am nowhere close to my existing limits.

 

All in all, they have wasted their time and mine - and achieved no more than provide an entry for this blog. Ho hum.

quid quoddam pondus rudera

Go back 10 years and I used to warn against a practice common amongst techie website developers whereby they would design the site and because they had no textual content to work with they would fill the space with Latin text. The idea is that before the site goes 'live' the Latin text is replaced by the 'proper' content. I didn't even include this in my 2009 book because I thought no one lets a website go live without being proof read properly. Big mistake ...

 

Note that I have removed the name of this university to save embarrassment. Oh, one thing I do say in the book is that the textual content should be written first and the website designed around it.

 

BTW Google will translate 'quid quoddam pondus rudera' for you.

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