Faster Future: Possibilities now and beyond: Royal Mail

Showing posts with label Royal Mail. Show all posts

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Going Postal

I tried to track a recorded delivery on the Post Office website today.
When you Google 'Post Office' Track & Trace comes back as one of the four most important returns, as selected by Google, relating to the term Post Office.
On the Post Office site it is one of five (and listed at No4) of the Post Office Essentials.
Bear with me...
These to me are indicators of how important both the Post Office and its online customers view the Track & Trace function of the site.
So if you were looking after the Post Office twitter account you may think it worthwhile to stay abreast of its state of functionality - or at least have routes to hand to find out what the issues may be and the fix times estimated?
Or then again... you could regard it as someone else's problem.

This afternoon I tried to track a parcel and got the message that the system was down.
It gave no clue as to when it may return.
So I tweeted the Post Office.

This is how it played out:

David Cushman ‏@davidcushman 1 hour ago

@PostOffice how long is your Track & Trace site going to be down for?

‏@PostOffice

@davidcushman Track and Trace is powered by @RoyalMail you may wish to tweet them about this. ~ Luke

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Taken without consent

Apparently, if a financial institution changes what it charges you (including creating brand new fees) it can do that as long as it tells you. It doesn’t need a response from you. It just needs to tell you that from now on you get to pay them for something you never requested.

It does not even need evidence that the message was received. Message sent, it can get on with taking the money from your account.

I’m not making this up – and according to the folk at Hargreaves-Lansdown –it’s all perfectly legal and within the rules.

I bought some Royal Mail shares when the last government was fool enough to give them away some time ago. I followed this trade with one other in which I sold the amount of Royal Mail shares that covered the cost of my investment within a few days. I left the rest in the Hargreaves-Lansdown account I’d opened specifically for the purpose. I used them because they were relatively easy to use online.

That was my last transaction with them. And the last contact from customer to Hargreaves-Lansdown between then and now.

In the meantime they sent me many letters in the post – pretty consistently marketing material aimed at getting me to invest in other shares with them. In short order I began to view them just as I do the regulars from Virgin about broadband – spam that goes direct to the bin – for the most part, unopened.

A CRM or even learning business process could have saved them heaps in postage. The spam wasn’t working. The evidence is clear in my empty trading record.

Unbeknownst to me, among this deluge of spam were letters informing me that they were now going to charge me for paper reports. Now, if you know me, the last thing in the world I am going to opt for is paper reports when a digital version is available. The fact is I didn’t opt in for either. But HL’s argument is that because I didn’t respond to their letters, telling me they were going to charge me for something I had neither requested nor had any intention of using, they could merrily take cash from my account.

At first they took the share dividends my Royal Mail shares paid out without telling me. Then (and this is when the penny dropped for me at last) they sent a letter (one I did open) telling me my account held insufficient funds to cover fees that fell due. Fees? I thought. What fees? I didn’t k now I was paying these guys fees? Annual ones? I don’t recall opting for that? I never had, that’s why I couldn’t recall it.

But because they had sent me a letter saying they were changing their terms from what was a free service to one which would now be billable, they were within their rights to bill me and then charge me even more.

I don’t like being in debt to these types (it can ruin your credit rating), so I paid a further £20 odd at the weekend on a DD card. I do so without any grace.

Now if all of this is within the letter of the law then I say shame on the law (or in this case the regulation). It’s clearly been designed to protect the institution over its customer.

Think of other reasons why I may not have responded (apart from my learned behaviour of binning letters I consider spam). I may have moved house. I may have been in a coma. I may have been dead.

So what? Ker-ching and another fee gets taken on another account to pay for something another person never requested or agreed to pay for. I wonder how many of us there are? (And if you have ever done a trade with Hargreaves-Lansdown I suggest you make checks).

Oh – for the record – since December last year they have sent me around 40 emails. None of them refer to taking any fee from me for paper services. All of them are general marketing messages.

Here’s a thought for Hargreaves-Lansdown: Instead of opting-in people to pay when you don’t hear back from them, stop sending out the paper documents instead. And when they contact you requesting you switch the service back on, have that conversation about paying for it. Somehow that would seem altogether more honest.

The sums involved here may be small - but the principle is an important one. Everyone's mother teaches them: "Don't take without asking".

And just before anyone tells me I should have opened my spam... a reminder on the importance of making sure messages are received by those for whom they are intended - from The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

UPDATE: On July 21, 2015 after a series of lengthy exchanges between myself and increasingly senior members of the H-L team, I finally received a refund for the latest report (though not, it has to be said, for previous fees taken on other occasions).

I was told of this in a message from the CEO. I'll be fair and say the tone was not somewhat questioning with a degree of surprise retained that I had not read their communications (to which I refer you to the video above).

That being said, the CEO did say that their policy was that where people were unaware of the paper fee and contacted them then it was usually waived (provided they then swapped to paperless). That hadn't happened in my case costing both parties considerable time and effort.

I will also note that I have only been refunded the most recent paper fee. I'm still out of pocket on reports it seems I must continue to receive, though at least - as the digital option is now well and truly selected - future ones will be at no additional cost.

The victory may be small (£12 back for - all my dividends on the shares I hold there plus a recent payment of just over £20) but at least the CEO knows in detail how his customer experience is working out right now...

Monday, December 20, 2010

Amazon acts exactly like a customer-centric org shouldn't

Amazon gets cut a lot of slack by a lot of people. It's held up as a paragon of the web2.0 age - a fabulous disruptor.

Its stated mission is to become the most customer-centric company on Earth.

Sounds wonderful.

But let's get the reality stick out.

Like so many people in a snow-affected UK, I've been let down recently by Amazon.

And when I've tried to email customer services I've found an un-usable form to fill which fails to send unless I complete an 'add your name' field - and there isn't one!!! (I generally use Mozilla Firefox for this - not exactly a rare interface with the internet...)

And when I've called, I've found a 'computer-says-no' attitude among staff - having to demand escalation to more senior people within a short but frustrating period of time.

Customer centric is as customer centric does, my friends; not as it says it does.

I'm an Amazon Prime user. At the moment.

Biggest let down for me has been a delivery of Christmas presents which I ordered to come via the 'First Class' delivery option.

Little did I know (and neither is it clear in the Amazon purchasing process) that when you order 'First Class' from Amazon they get to choose how they are going to send your item to you. I do wonder if trading standards have ever challenged this. Royal Mail ought to have a word, in my view.

Amazon chose to send me this last package via CityLink. Now, I don't know about you, but for me and most folk I know in the UK, when I select 'First Class' delivery I expect delivery by the Royal Mail. Indeed the very last courier company I want deployed is CityLink because they have a 'local' depot furthest from me. And their website fails to record requests for redeliveries from their customers. And they don't answer the phone. And they close for pick-ups from the depot when the going gets touch. And they don't try to fix their backlogs by going out on Sundays.

No, Amazon, when I request 'First Class' I mean by Royal Mail - because if I'm not in when the the postie tries to deliver there is a depot I can go pick up from about a mile from my home.

So Amazon, I want a 'Not by CityLink (and for other folk not by x, y or z courier) option - at the very least made available to Prime users.

But why am I blogging about this rather than just dropping Amazon some customer feedback?

Well, first because that bloody email form keeps failing for me (I hate email forms with a vengeance, by the way - no record of what I sent and never a clue as to whether they are being picked up or dealt with).

Second because when I went looking for senior Amazon UK folk to make contact with they were, how can I put this, virtually absent from the internet.

The MD, one Brian McBride (you know, the chap who dropped you an email apologising for poor service a week or so ago), is not discoverable on LinkedIn even - let alone on google or any social media. It's alright for you to send your customers an email then Brian - but not to get one back?

You will find a few relevant and pertinent folk for Amazon UK on Linkedin - the Marketing Manager, for example. But their profiles are, for the most part, marked 'private' - not even a name on show.

Guys - you are operating in the exact opposite direction of your organisation's stated aim. You cannot become customer centric when you don't listen and respond. You certainly can't listen if you don't engage in social media and you hide from contact with your customers.

No one appears to be monitoring and managing response to the deluge of outcry about your services on twitter etc right now. A real shame because there is one hell of a wikifixing opportunity happening for you right now.

You cannot become customer centric when you don't listen and respond.

Seriously, taking online payments and enabling user reviews does not a customer centric organisation make.

Step up - start listening, start responding, open your doors - then you can start leading the way to customer centricity.

In the mean time, feel free to contact me by any means you choose. I will respond.