Tag Archives: Twickenham

Curry good service

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It’s too easy to write about bad service but good service – real good service – needs to be shouted about, so people know who’s doing it well and how.

Saturday nights in the UK are perfect nights – every so often – for a good takeaway curry. And we’re luckily enough in Twickenham to have a good number of local Indian restaurants (a bonus living near to the home of rugby – The Twickenham Rugby Stadium – yes that’s where England beat the All Blacks this weekend).

Currys

A few weekends ago, with the kids in bed, it was time for a curry. Order placed with our favourite restaurant and greeted on the phone as normal with a pleasant “How are you?”. 40 ish minutes later and the food arrived, delivered in style by a gent in a nice suit and again very pleasant and friendly. Order complete with the usual free large bottle of Cobra beer. We dished up and Mrs. Noble discovered the naan bread that should have accompanied her order was missing. Shock, horror! What do we do?

Naan bread

A quick call back to the restaurant and apologies from them and driver on his way back. 5 minutes later and the missing naan arrived plus another free bottle of beer and a few more free poppadoms. Nice! Very happy customers.

The morals of the story?

1. Good service always counts – whatever business you’re in, however big you are and whatever size order your customer has with you.

2. Exceed customer expectations. Do more than others will at the same price. Your customers will remember you and they will come back.

3. When you make mistakes – and you will – fix them quickly and pleasantly and do more than your customers expect.

It’s all about curry good service…

And in case you wondered, our very friendly Indian restaurant is called The Green Spice. Pop in and see them or call them up for a take away, you won’t be disappointed.

The Green Spice (Twickenham)

No really, poor service is not good

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Ok another post on the sadly too common theme of poor service.  This time it’s from our lovely UK (privatised) utility companies.

It’s been all over the UK press recently with pretty much all of the power companies bringing in a pretty hefty price increase – just before the winter kicks in and we all start using our heating properly.  Clearly the rubbish timing is a coincidence.  Average increases in the region of 10% seemed to be the standard.  So I was prepared – or so I thought.

Woke up this morning to find a nice letter from the lovely people at npower – our power company (who we use for our electricity and gas supplies).  A 3 page letter from them that started off with an apology…

npower saying sorry

Ok, they know it’s not good news and want to be open with me.  Next the reasons…

npower listing their excuses

 

Ok – turn over the page, it’s then the increases, hidden deep in what can only be described as rocket science (and even though I actually do have 2 degrees in rocket science it’s not easy to understand).  They’re planning a 20.3% increase on our electricity and an 18.0% increase for gas.  Did I misread that?  20+%?  I’ve never seen an increase anywhere like that.  Has inflation suddenly changed?  Have the national papers got the average that wrong (and I know it’s an average but this is way off)?  Is it an error?

A quick check on Twitter and it’s not just me.  Lots of people with similar nice letters recently, with the very same reasons (or shall we call them excuses), and with increases – but none quite this high.  Some people even with no increases.  Now maybe I see this in a very simple way but what is it about my supply that means I need a larger increase?  Pass – but npower customer services surely will be able to set me straight.

A nice 0800 freephone number to call and then a multitude of rubbish menus to go through – entering my account number, listening to it, entering my date of birth, pressing the number 6 a few times and a few more.  Then a message saying we’re experiencing a high volume of calls due to the recent letters, oh really?  And you weren’t ready for that?

An irate customer

 

A message then to say they could call me back in about 45 minutes.  Ok, sounds a good idea.  So then about 2 hours later I get the call, and yes more menus and information I have to enter first.  Then the agents on…

I explain the problem and that I’d like to understand why my increase is so much – good question she says.  So then tells me the reasons in the letter – ok that tells everyone why there’s an increase but not why we’ve had the bombshell we’ve had.  She then tells me it’s the region we’re in.  Say what?  Is Twickenham so different in how we receive our power, that they need to charge us twice as much more?  Then she says, it’s also based on our low-ish usage.  Huh?  We have a low-ish usage so the increase is higher?  Nonsense.

Let’s escalate – time for the manager, please can we speak to them?  A 5 minute on-hold pause.  Then, the agent has spoken to the manager and they say the same.  What?  Did “Can I speak to the manager?” not make sense?  So second attempt…

The manager now says the same – and then completes it with we can’t really tell you, we don’t know.  Oh, that’s ok then, so it’s some sort of lottery that even the rocket scientists at npower can’t really explain and it’s ok not to explain to customers, we just charge them 20% more.  Or it’s a secret.

The morals and how this isn’t a good example of customer service…

  1. Don’t send out generic information when what you’re actually saying is very different.
  2. Ditch the menu after menu after menu system – it’s not friendly and no-one likes it.
  3. Employ more staff when you know you’re going to get busy, very busy.  Plan better.
  4. Empower your staff so they can talk to customers and give them real information.
  5. Tell the truth and keep it simple.
  6. Listen and listen again, and understand what is being asked.
  7. If someone needs to escalate, let them – don’t do it for them.
  8. Don’t do something that is guaranteed to lose customers.

The moral?  Well, if I want to keep warm – and today it’s cold – I’m pretty powerless to do anything with npower, the price increase stays and they’re not listening.  But I can switch to someone else.  And yes, no doubt they’ll also have an increase there but there’s a chance that it won’t be an obscene one and they might be able to tell me why….

Happy days, and a nice story in the book on how to lose customers.

The same day also, that a story about how npower mis-sold gas to someone and have been taken to the small claims court and the person has been successful in winning an harassment payment from them…

Why testing is important…

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Another Olympic post – this time on the genius (not) that is the London 2012 Olympic ticketing system.  This will be a vent of sorts, as I’ve spent too much time messing about trying to buy tickets as have millions of others.

The games themselves have been nothing short of amazing and what all the athletes have accomplished is incredible, but sport is also about people watching it.  And for an event of this scale you need a good mechanism in place to get people to see the sports they want to see.

Before we get started on the main theme of the post, Royal Mail have done it again.  We managed to get tickets for the Paralympics that start in a couple of weeks time.  An e-mail from LOCOG confirming we’d got them arrived (and we’d paid £6 for super delivery rather than picking them up at the event).  But no details on when they’d arrive, even roughly – so a black hole and left hoping they would arrive in time.  Then an e-mail from Royal Mail telling me the tickets were ready to be delivered…

Followed by another to tell me the tickets would be with me the next day.  And then one to confirm they’d been received by me, literally within seconds of me electronically signing for them with the local postie.  Now that is real service and great to see the Royal Mail – that great British institution – as a shining beacon in the whole Olympic ticketing fiasco.

The actual ticketing system went live around April 2011 – so over 16 months ago – and in that time it hasn’t changed one bit (as in problems fixed, updates done etc).  That’s a year with no new development.  How can that be right?  Was it perfect when first released?  Had all the testing that was done shown it to be perfect?  No and that’s one big no.

Rather than go into all the issues myself there is a great post on BuzzFeed Sports by Alex Rees that very nicely gives you all the juicy details – see below (it’s worth a read)…

It is very apparent from this that virtually no real testing on how the site or service works can possibly have been done.  User acceptance testing?  No – why do we need to do that, it’ll work.  Load testing?  Will many people be wanting to use the site at the same time?  Surely not.  Performance testing?  It’s just a web site.  Problems identified by the public (the users or customers), should we fix them within 16 months?  No, what’s fixing all about?

Any of these are part of computing for beginners 101, and to get onto building a web-site 101 you have to have got the first certificate already.

So why has this happened?  Good old outsourcing.  LOCOG clearly aren’t a software house and don’t build ticketing or e-commerce sites.  So they put together an RFI and get it out with all the big boys in the market place, including ticketmaster (who won it and built the site).  And it will have come down to money – ticketmaster will have bid and bid at a price they could win at and LOCOG will have picked the cheapest so they keep costs down.  Now I may be making some assumptions here, but I’ll bet they’re right!

The site will have been designed to some brief specs (or even an Agile type user story) – we need to sell tickets for the Olympic events for the public – it couldn’t be simpler.  They will have been paid to build it and maybe run it for a little bit but future development, fixes, upgrades etc?  Never – why would we need them, it’s only the Olympics and it’s only on for a short known period.  It’s not an Amazon type service that will keep running.

That’s the key here.  This has never been built to improve or do the job well, it’s been built to just (almost) do the job and no-one’s re-visited it (the design) since and has no intention to.

Testing before we go-live?  Why would we possibly need to do that?  Testing with our actual end users and listening to what they say?  Surely not, you only get…

  • Empty seats
  • Bad press
  • Frustrated British public

But like I said at the start it has been an absolutely awesome Olympic games, the best I’ve seen – and we did get some tickets (for the rowing) and saw some of the free events (road cycling) and today we’re off to see the men’s marathon in London.  And my favourite bits –  the men’s 100m, 200m, 4x100m and the men’s 10,000m and 5,000m.  Mo Farah – a local Teddington man who went to St. Mary’s University in Twickenham (where we do our karate now) and a Bushy Park Parkrun runner – is my hero of the games!  What an athlete.

The little Nobles doing the Mobot after his 5,000m win last night and the man himself with Mr. Bolt…

How digital are you? Videos? Music? Books? Games? Newspapers?

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Having worked in the digital media, online and content space for over 10 years and being a big fan of the latest and greatest technology, I like to think that this Noble household is pretty digital.

But how digital are we when it comes to consuming content – it’s very different depending on the type of content.

Music

CDs? We don’t have many. The ones we do have, are for in the car and even those are getting used less and less, replaced by the iPhone and Bluetooth connectivity. The CDs we did have, have all been digitised into our iTunes library that neatly syncs with the other devices around the house.

Videos

VHS tapes? None. We got rid of those a few years back and moved to DVDs. I don’t think the little Nobles will even know what they are. For the home videos, we went through the painstaking process of hooking up a VCR to the pc and playing and recording digitally all the ones we wanted to keep. The quality isn’t brilliant but they’re more than watchable. DVDs? Not too many. We still have some of the classics in our library but every so often even they’re cleared out. The neat little AppleTV is the home video consumption hub for us – nice and easy to use, great selection of content and no more popping out to the local Blockbuster. Am I bothered about owning a collection of physical media? No.

HD-DVD? We tried it and yes I thought it would win the HD format war. But it’s no more. We didn’t have a big collection and we’ve sold them all now, including the player. Blu-Ray? We also tried it but found the PS3 user interface not too friendly, so gave up on that as well.

Games

We still have some console games on physical media but even they’re getting fewer. You can now download games on most consoles and it’s often cheaper and there’s no difference in the experience. And coming up fast are games as apps on smartphones and tablets, for a fraction of the price and even streamed to the TV.

Books

This is where it gets interesting. I love books and yes there is something about holding a physical book and turning the pages and reading it, and it’s not the same with digital. Sure I get how convenient digital is and in some cases cheaper (but in many cases not cheaper thanks to Amazon)and how it can be more interactive and provide a far more immersive experience. Apple’s iBooks is great, it works very well and has that usual awesome Apple experience to it. Amazon’s Kindle is also good but with no colour version in the UK still and missing apps, browsing and more, its not for me right now.

Having said that, I read something the other day about what the author of a book is trying to say – he or she is telling a story and it is all about the content. The physical book is not the content, that’s just the medium and it shouldn’t impact the experience or story that the author is trying to get across. An interesting way of thinking and it actually applies to all types of content – not just books. But digital books aren’t there yet for me, I don’t doubt it will come in time but now we have more physical books than digital ones. Maybe it’s the little Nobles who’ll help make this transition for us.

Newspapers

This is the one that made me think I’ll do a blog post about it. Up until the end of last year we had weekend newspapers and one weekday one delivered only. The rest of the week there was no time to read them, for me at least. Then through changes at work I was at home in the mornings more than normal so went for the full 7 days a week of papers. Great, with the extra time to read them in the morning and the newspapers 7 days a week then stuck. But now I’m trying an experiment and dropping back to just the weekend and one weekday physical newspapers and seeing what I can do with the iPad the other mornings and how the experiences compare. It’s only day 4 in and I’m missing the newspapers, how long can I last? Maybe it’s the Dilbert and Calvin & Hobbes cartoon strips – even though they’re still delivered to my inbox via an RSS feed.

There are apps on the iPad or in the Newsstand app for the papers we read and yes they do have the cartoons. It’s now time to test these as well as news aggregator apps that I’ve been using so far.

Why I’m missing them I’m not sure yet. Maybe it’s just part of the transition of moving to digital as with everything and it will eventually make sense. I’m not convinced about the Sunday papers though, having all those sections to read is part of a Sunday morning for me and always has been.

One thing to look at is the whole idea of “owning” content. Do we ever own it? Do we need to own it? Even on physical media – taking up shelf space – we’re simply licensed to view it and within certain guidelines (e.g. not running our own paid for home movie cinema for lots of people). Why not just pay for content as a utility when you use it? Or even – and this is a big one – content becomes part of our internet, phone etc (connectivity) bundle and is all inclusive, for you to use whenever and wherever you choose, subject of course to your particular (license) agreement.

This requires a huge shift in how we pay for content, how content creators are paid, how artists are paid and how royalties are paid, and business models around creation, distribution and storage and much more all need to change, but it’s a possible option for the future. We need to think more about new models and new ways of consuming content.

Good service counts even when you’re running

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So how to mix a blog post on running and customer service…

I ran the London Marathon last week with the orthotics I had from the physio back in December last year in my shoes.  They gave more support in the Adizero shoes than without and by all accounts corrected the way my feet hit the ground.  They’re made by a company called Vectorthotics and clearly say on the package that if you are planning at doing any strenuous or endurance activities, the block bits should be glued on with more solid cement glue stuff.  Mine weren’t but they had held through all (or most) of the training runs and I’d had one pair already glued again by our local Timpson shop in Twickenham.

When it (the small blue block in the middle) has come loose before, you know it has as it clicks in the shoe a bit and you can hear it.  But I guess the noise of the other runners and crowd last weekend and total concentration on getting round, meant I had no chance to hear it, as it came off (and ended up towards the toes – maybe that’s why I didn’t run as fast as I had hoped… LOL).

So I needed to visit the shoe shop again and get them to glue it back on.  When I did this last time, they just did it, with a big smile and said don’t worry about paying, just put some money in the charity box they had in the shop.  Fantastic.  I’ll come back with service like this – we’d come back anyway as we’ve used them lots over the years and they’re good.  I ran in last Saturday early afternoon and the same guy was in and I asked the same question, if he could glue it on.  No questions asked he just did it.  And again no charge – just money in the box for charity.  It happened to be a rugby day on Saturday with a big Army and Navy game on at Twickenham Stadium and I got chatting to another customer in the shop (whilst we waited).  As I was chatting and waiting I noticed some signs on the walls in the shop.  One fine example below…

With a sign up like this from the company chairman, you know the service is going to be very good.  There are other similar signs up around the store, all saying it’s all about service and making sure they do right by you the customer.  And the same in all their stores.  I popped back today to take the photo and asked the guy before I did and explained why – and he smiled!

For me this is a huge statement, the guys in the shop are totally empowered to do what they need to to make it right.  And have the ok from the top to do so – no need to phone head office to check.  Make a decision there and then, to make sure the customer is happy.

This is unlike many other companies I know of who give the front line staff no empowerment and need everything run by the next level or two up.  Even for small things.  This does my head in – such a waste of time and effort on everyone’s part and 9 times out of 10, you get annoyed customers all the same.  Do we really need to check with HQ or the bosses boss if someone wants to bring a small item back for a few pounds or dollars and doesn’t have the receipt, it’s unopened and clearly from that shop?  No.  Think of the cost of checking and delays.  And the experience the customer is having.  Not good and as the customer you think twice about using them again.

Apple and Amazon are both great at customer service, and shining beacons for others to follow, and everyone knows they are good which is a huge huge part of what makes them so successful.  They are big and yes they have the money to do it properly but it’s not all about that, so it’s nice to see the little shops doing as good here.  Sure Timpson are a global chain but the shops are small and typically with one member of staff in – and ones you might not think of as leaders in customer service and customer experience – but Timpson do it very very well.  Thanks for the great service, we will be back.  And I’ve just discovered they even do a mystery shopper programme and you can sign up on the front page on the web site.  Nothing to hide.  Nice one!

Probably the most important workout for marathons?

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Last week was a week of shorter faster runs and I decided to try something new – having read a good post from Twitter about mile long intervals.

2 miles warm-up run, just faster than planned marathon pace, then 1 mile fast (about 1.5 minutes per mile faster than marathon pace) followed by 0.5 mile recovery (about 30 seconds per mile slower than marathon pace) and then repeat the 1 mile / 0.5 mile interval 4 times and then finish with a 2 mile cool down.  10 miles in total.

That was the plan – the first one started a bit too late in the day and had to be back, so had to cut the final 2 miles off or down.  8.3 in total and great average pace – not surprising really with 4 faster miles.  Did the same again a few days later – with the full 10 miles – and a great great run.  Average pace up as well.

Nice way to train, the longer mile intervals get harder during the run – no surprises really – but it’s a good routine.

Lots of articles around about interval training and the longer mile intervals are known to be good for marathons.  Even referred to as the “single most important workout for marathon training“.  More planned for me next week.

2 seconds off

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A cracking 10 miler yesterday, complete with my bright yellow Adizero shoes.  Along my favourite 10 mile route down through Twickenham and along by the river towards Richmond and back.  And at a perfect time of the day – 12:30pm.

I wanted to crack the 1:15 barrier – which would be 8mph for more than an hour and for 10 miles.  Good starting pace, slowed a bit after 5 miles but picked it back up.  Always slow down at the turn – still need to figure that out and fix it.  Picked up the pace a fair bit with 1 mile to go – building up from the great mile interval training last week.  And managed to finished at 1:15:02 – a whole 2 seconds out.  Aaaaargh.  Sure there are roads I need to cross, and even with stopping and starting the Garmin each crossing, it still throws the flow you’ve got.  And the turn again!  And even starting off too slow will add a few seconds.  But so close.  Interestingly using rubiTrack – the Mac based software I use to track my runs – it says 1:14:56, along the same route, same distance.  Wishful thinking or a bug?

Next week – we’re breaking that barrier!

2012 – London’s year

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That’s 2011 finished and a week since Christmas.  Despite late starting with running last week – with Christmas Day and Christmas food getting in the way – I picked up and did 20 miles over 3 runs.  Last run just before lunch on New Years Eve – 4 miles at just better than 7 minutes 15 seconds per mile (a nice pace).  And a new last run of 2011.

The serious marathon training starts now with the mileage picking up fast.  25 miles planned over 4 runs this coming week.  Still need to think about 3 or 4 or even 5 runs a week and what the optimum number is.  A bit more research and thinking needed.

130 ish miles done in December.  And all at around the planned marathon pace – getting used to running at that pace, so the plan may be working!  Longer ones needed now to make sure I can hold it.

2012 promises to be an amazing year for London – the London Marathon in April, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in June and then the London 2012 Olympics over the summer.

The London New Year’s Eve fireworks set the bar last night showing what London can do and what the celebrations this year will be like.  An awesome display last night and absolutely now best in the world.  11 minutes long and costing a bargain £2 million – click here to see the full video on the BBC News web site – it’s very impressive.  Could be seen and heard all the way from Twickenham where we are.

A very Happy New Year to you and here’s to 2012 bringing everything you wish and hope for, and more.

Let’s do some karate cross training

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All the theories say that cross training is a key part of marathon training, with suggestions of swimming, cycling, rowing and weight training being some common ones.  For me it’s Shotokan karate – my other passion.  The challenge is (a) fitting all the running in around the scheduled class times at our dojo and (b) training hard at karate but remaining injury free.

A great session yesterday morning but took a hit on my right calf – think dead leg in your calf that lasts 2 days!  Took it easy ish on the 8 mile run today and all good.  It hurts more when moving from sitting or stationary, but fine when actually moving around.  A bit more ice on it tonight and a massage later.

As strange as maybe it seems, karate provides great cross training.  Balance, core stability work, strength exercises, stretching and breathing.  Just need to go easy on partner work and sparring.  The plan is to reduce the karate training in the run up to the marathon next April, to avoid injuries full stop!

Interesting post here on cross training in karate on KaratebyJesse, though more geared to cross training in other martial arts or styles.  Principals the same!

And do feel free to take a look at our club website or even pop along to train with us, one Friday evening or Sunday morning at St. Mary’s University in Twickenham.

Speed running

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A 10 mile training run today and at an average of 7 minutes 54 seconds per miles – just faster than my planned marathon pace.  Fastest pace today 5 minutes 45 seconds per mile.  And felt good after the run.  Planning now to slowly increase the mileage on these pace runs.  Speed interval work Friday – the technical name for this style of training run is Fartlek training.  There had some play on words of this on Google and low and behold…

Talking of speed running, my fastest time today is still slow by the standards our professional friends set.  Scott Overall mentioned in yesterday’s post manages under 5 minutes per mile for 26.2 of them in a row!  And Usain Bolt – officially the world’s fastest man – runs the 100m in 9.69 seconds and 200m in 19.3 seconds.  Translated in miles per hour we have:

  • Jason’s marathon pace = 7.5 mph
  • Scott’s marathon pace = 12.1 mph
  • World record marathon pace = 12.8 mph
  • Mr. Bolt’s 100m = 23.1 mph
  • Mr. Bolt’s 200m = 23.3 mph

Clearly I’ve got some room for improvement still!

I had the pleasure of saying hello to Mr. Bolt recently at St. Mary’s University in Twickenham – where our karate dojo is – when he was there for training and some interviews.  I’m not that small really – he’s just very very tall!