Category Archives: Technology

Has your service bubble burst?

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Continuing the theme of the last post, and some good conversations that followed, I want to think about what happens when service goes wrong and the service bubble that was working bursts.

Bursting bubbles

And specifically what can you do to stop it bursting.  Like any bubble once the process starts, the burst is quick and more often than not catastrophic – there’s no going back!

Bursting bubble

I love the shot above – the bubble is actually made up of millions upon millions of individual droplets of water.  Your service bubbles are no different – they’re made up of different teams of people, multiple customer interaction points and channels, the overall customer experience and all your social conversations, and they all need to work together to provide your service bubble.

Don’t forget – the whole thinking behind the service bubble, is that it’s all about great service, in the bubble.

It takes just one of these different parts to falter and the bubble is at risk of bursting unless action is taken very quickly.  Once the bubble bursts, you lose customer loyalty, that repeat business you relied on before is at risk and your company reputation can be threatened.

To stop the service bubble bursting, you need to focus on two key components – making sure the customer experience works (by constantly listening to what your customers are saying, wherever they are saying it – as part of this you need to be listening and engaging with them on the different channels) and by having the right customer service focused staff on your team, who share and understand the company values (and believe them), and who are empowered to make the right decisions to help your customers.

Service bubble - about to burst

And yes, customers will be willing to pay a premium for service bubbles that deliver and provide the expected service levels.  Just make sure you’re investing sufficiently in the team behind the scenes and that service is one of the core values of who you are and what you do, as a company.

Thanks Bill Quiseng (@billquiseng) for your thoughts on this.

Have you been caught in a service bubble?

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Bubbles everywhere

Service bubbles?  So what are they?  They’re the places you are when you’re being looked after and experiencing a brand’s great and amazing service – and caught in their bubble.  You may have never thought about it before, but we’ve all been there.

You’re shopping and having a great experience in the shop, or in a hotel and being looked after by their team – and getting great service.  The service is personalised to you, it is provided by service professionals whose job it is is to understand what delivering great service means and what makes it special, and it’s specific to that brand.

Apple Store

Take Apple – yes one of my favourite service brands:  you step into their Apple stores and are greeted by their Geniuses – easily recognisable, all smiling and friendly and all there to make sure you are helped in the way that you need.  And they’re proactive in providing good service.

Shangri-La Hotels

Another great example – is good hotel chains, like Shangri-La (well known in the Far East but with some great hotels now in Europe as well).  You arrive at the airport in a different country, quite often tired from a long journey.  You’re met after security by a hotel representative to take you to the hotel and you’re then in their bubble.  Again, friendly staff, personalised service (often greeting you by name) and with a smile.  Whilst you’re staying with them – as their guest – and being looked after, you’re in their care and their bubble.

The usual result of the bubbles?  You go away a happy customer, you remain loyal to the brand and come back for more, and you tell people about it.

Bubble

So what makes them bubbles?  They’re normally temporary for you – you step into them when you start an experience or journey and step out when you’ve done (a good example being when you leave a hotel, are taken to the airport and dropped off – everyone knows that feeling that it’s back to normality), the bubbles normally grow whilst you’re in them – with the service getting better as you complete your purchase or transaction and there is a only a thin line between the bubble and the outside world.

Many bubbles

You can imagine different service bubbles coexisting for different businesses and organisations, and moving from one to another and receiving different experiences in each – some good, some great, some maybe not so good.  Businesses that work well together as partners can even have bubbles that join together and your journey from one to the other, is seamless and there’s no need to step outside of them.

Airlines (and other forms of transport – e.g. trains) are another great example of service bubbles and they differ widely from good old economy, business class and first class!

How do different companies bubbles differ from each other?  How can you rate and compare them?  Quality and size?  Does and should good service demand a premium price tag?  Stay tuned for more on this in a future blog post.

Whose service bubbles have you be in and what were they like?  Do let me know…

And that is how you do good service – thank you Apple!

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Apple Store

My trusty iMac (from 2008) decided to not play ball earlier this week.  It was way outside Apple’s warranty (even Apple Care) – by over a few years – but trying to fix it was beyond me and I needed help from Apple.  A call through to the local Apple Store (in the Bentall Centre in Kingston) and they advised that they had no Genius appointments that day but to come in with the iMac and they would see what they could do.

When we got to the store we spoke to one of their guys who said all the iMac tech team were busy all day with no slots, but to hold on and he would see what they could do.  A very friendly iMac Genius then came to have a look and ran a series of quick tests on the iMac.  As typically happens in these situations, everything worked fine and the iMac passed all the tests.  A number of restarts were done – where the problem had been before – but all working fine.

Apple Genius

The guy took down all the details of the problem as I’d seen it and advised that I could leave it there for them to take a more detailed look (which would probably take a few days) or take it back home and see how I get on (which I did and typically again the problem has re-occurred and I’ve booked to go back in tomorrow).

But, the whole point to this post is the exceptional level of service that Apple provided here, going way beyond what they were obliged to do, going out of their way to help as best they can, to listen to the customer and check and test accordingly, to offer options when the standard response (booking a slot for that day) was a no-goer and doing all of this in a friendly professional manner.

This level of service is what makes Apple so great and why people – like me – will now go back and go nowhere else.  It is exceptionally good service and yes you do pay a premium for Apple products but this is one of the major reasons why; it’s not just a great product, you’re buying it’s a full service experience.

It’s not the only reason of course, there are 3 reasons generally why you are willing to pay extra for a product or service.  These are:

  1. The quality of the product
  2. The level of service received
  3. The overall experience of using the product or service

These 3 are the major drivers to creating loyalty for you business and Apple yet again are are leaders here.  Fingers crossed that my visit tomorrow fixes the problem once and for all.

Bentall Centre

High street shops are fighting back

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The emporium strikes back

Nothing like a Star Wars-esq headline to catch my eye…

“The emporium strikes back”

Following very neatly on from my last post – way back in April – I found a great article this week, talking about the growing “threat” from online retailers and what the more traditional high street shops (our bricks and mortar friends) are doing to come back.

Things like bundle deals, profiling great accessories, personalised high street shopping and shopping as an experience much like Apple do now are all coming.

The one thing that’s sure, is that for the customer and consumer, the shopping experience of the future is going to be very different from today!

Is this the future of shopping? Showrooming and paying to browse.

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My first blog for a few months – this article caught my eye and is on a similar vein to some of my previous ones about the future of shopping.

A very interesting article from the BBC on “showrooming”.  Something you may have never heard of but like me something you do lots.  So what is it?

The peril of showrooming - BBC

You’re out shopping with the family and browsing a high street bookshop (for example) and find something that takes your fancy – your normal reaction now is to scan the barcode and check the price on Amazon (pretty much the de facto online shop for us all) and no surprise it’s cheaper.  You then order online and a couple of days later it arrives, backed up by the great service that Amazon provides.  The high street bookshop clearly loses out here and there isn’t much it can do – they have more physical shop space to pay for and staff to help customers.  Or is there?

Showrooming

 

We all do it.  And it saves us money as online is normally (much) cheaper.  But it doesn’t help the high streets stores.  Charging for browsing is an idea to tackle this growing problem and it only needs to be a small charge, that you get knocked off your bill in the shop if you buy anything from them.  I like it – it makes sense and it’s easy to do.  But unless the prices come down in the shops, it’s not going to help long term get us back on the high street buying, which is what’s needed.

Another interesting article over on Euromonitor talks about other ways retailers are looking to address this problem – in-store discounts, store loyalty schemes, online price matching and more.  Some I can’t see working – loyalty schemes can apply online and the likes of Amazon have their own loyalty scheme (attached to their credit card); online price matching hasn’t caught on – any price matching that is done now is very restricted and never includes online as it’s more often than not too big a difference to match.

Euromonitor - showrooming prevention

Jessops, HMW and Waterstones in the UK have all had this problem and in some cases suffered massively as a result – and gone out of business.

Is it too late for the rest of the high street to change?

 

But it does depend on good connectivity

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All nice having streaming content when and where you want as per the last post BUT – and a big but still in 2013 – we have the limitations of our current ADSL broadband connections.  Generally they work fine, still down the same old telephone line we’ve always had, but now demanding more and more – and we’re pushing the limits!

Netflix working well today – some great kids’ programmes – and then Spotify through AirPlay on the iPhone to the Apple TV.  But struggling – jittery – playing a few of the tracks!  It’s ok but with more and more of us now getting everything online when we want is the infrastructure behind the scenes ready?  Not yet….

Telegraph poles

Telegraph poles

Connected content – it’s nearly time!

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I’ve long preached the time when we’ll be paying a single fee that covers all our home connectivity and includes unlimited access to all the content we would ever want (music, videos, games, books and more), and all through a single joined up service provider that knows what they’re doing and where it all just works (including how I access everything and when – so a big mobile and hardware bit).

Are we there yet?  Nope, but there are some very clever interim solutions and ways to almost get some of this.

I caught up with a good friend this week who I’ve not seen for some years and we were talking about the joys of using Apple devices and in particular how good Netflix was on it.

Image

So far I’d resisted the Netflix move.  Just couldn’t convince myself it was worth it and that it would be that good.  But I took the plunge today and boy am I impressed.  On the Apple TV it really is as if it’s a content channel with the same great Apple usability as the Apple TV box.  And even the little Nobles can successfully navigate it.  There are box sets on there to watch, that I’ve recently bought the physical DVDs for – yes I know it’s physical but I couldn’t find digital anywhere for the right price (until now).  My DVD collection (that has been getting smaller as we move to a digital world) is now pretty much obsolete thanks to Netflix – minus Disney and Star Wars (technically though that’s also Disney).  They’ll all come I’m sure – they’re already on Lovefilm and similar.

Image

So my Apple TV is now looking even more appealing.  The music link is still missing – sure I can link to my iTunes library but I want more content streamed, not my library only.  Spotify can plug that gap for the music but it’s not on the Apple TV (yet).

I can only see this getting better and very quickly.  Whether we need Apple to bring out a physical TV box I’m now not sure.  Their little Apple TV box of magic does it all and plugs into any screen I want.  I can control it with my iPhone and it works.

Total connected content as I described above?  Not yet.  My broadband, phone, TV and content are all with many different (carefully) selected (good) providers – including Sky, BBC (care of the license fee), BT, O2 and now Netflix.  But thanks to good devices it’s all joined up and it won’t be long before we see some very clever services coming in that offer more or all of it in one package.

Anytime, anyhow and anywhere – IS coming soon…!

So long MiniDisc – one more nail in the physical media coffin

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Newsflash today (from the BBC) – not unexpected, far too much of a niche market…

BBC News – Sony to make last MiniDisc stereo system in March

Are we sad?  Not really.  Will we miss it as much as other physical media?  No. It’s been around 21 years – wow!  I didn’t realise that and I’ve never had one or used them.

Too much of proprietary format – like many others – but amazing that it’s lasted so long.

MiniDisc

MiniDisc

One more physical format gone.  And it will be interesting to see how much of a dip, if any, there is in the sales of physical media (music) as a result.  Not much I suspect.

The big question is, who’s next?  And when?

The death of physical media

The death of physical media

Do digital and online mean the end of the high street?

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I’ve long been a big fan of digital content – in all its forms – and how it’s changing our lives for the better.  More choice, more variety, better (read cheaper) prices and convenience.  It’s all about the anytime, anywhere and anyhow philosophy – with us consumers far more in control of when, where and how we consume.  But, this clearly has an impact on the more traditional world of content in its physical form.  And also drives our retail experiences – beyond simple content.

Digital media and content

Some interesting questions come up…

  1. Can digital/online and physical/traditional retail co-exist peacefully?  Yes they can.
  2. What about our traditional high street shops?  We need them but they need to change.
  3. Should we all buy online?  A good question!

It’s not just about digital content – going online for content ultimately impacts my other retail experiences and drives me to the same retail channels, online, for other products.

It’s number 3 that right now is the big one.  In the UK we’ve seen some major high street shops go under recently – or change hands and scale down.  Including – Game, Jessops, Comet and HMV.  Some with years and years of history going right back to when consumers started listening to and consuming content (and buying products).

Consumers

So why are they struggling?  I think it’s quite simple – a reluctance to change and move with what consumers want (all of the above in the introductory paragraph).  Cheaper prices, more choice and one not mentioned above better service.

This last one is important and maybe something not considered as much as it should be.  Good service – or even excellent service (of which I’m a huge fan) – is crucial to build relationships with your customers and get them back and get the all important repeat business going.  Just look at how Amazon do customer service.  No quibbles when taking items back – fantastic return policies – and people to help when you need it, however you want to contact them (not waiting round for someone who might not be the right person to help).

Customer service

Another big plus online is the whole idea of reviews – from consumers just like you, telling you exactly what they think of the item, good or bad.  This helps you make your decisions.

Your typical high street shops now are used more for browsing – and people then compare prices with online retailers, go away and order online for it to be delivered a couple of days later.  Sure there are some purchases that don’t make sense to do this way but more people are going this way.  And yes I’m one of them.  How can I justify a book in one of the few remaining high street shops, when online (and by online I mean Amazon) it’s half price (with great service and quick delivery) – there just isn’t any competition.

Traditional UK high street

I can shop when I want and even when mobile.  It’s all so convenient.

Everyone talks about how much of their Christmas shopping these days is done online and typically this means Amazon.

It’s another post about whether Amazon’s business models (pricing) are sustainable or not for them – but so far it’s working and their bottom line is healthy (now)!

So now to the crunch question – is there still a place for the traditional high street?  I think there is.  A lot of change is needed and retailers need to embrace online and digital as well as their traditional retail arms.  This is critical.  If they don’t – and don’t do it quickly, they’ll sadly go the same way as others.

For us consumers, it’s an exciting time but will be a sad one as well if we lose well known names from the high street.

It’s time to change!

It's time for change