A few days ago we got our renewal notice for our contents insurance. With the invoice for 2011 in our hands, we realised in panic: “oh-gosh-we’re-soooooo-under-insured”. So we created a list of all items we own, took photos of everything in our house, stored the pictures in the cloud for obvious reasons, and eventually I popped into my preferred ASB branch to deal with the upgrade. I was told to call an 0800-number to speak with an insurance specialist and did so when I came home from working in town today. Without going into any detail here, the phone call was less than useless and I was quite frustrated when the call was over.

Then I remembered the ASB Virtual Branch on Facebook. I went to the page and clicked through to the customer service people available for chat. There’s someone available seven days a week, 8am – 9pm. When I went online, there were two young ladies around for a chat – I chose the one in the top row (see image below). Her name is Elysa, and within a couple of minutes she became my personal customer service heroine of the day. After a few lines of chat it became clear that she wouldn’t be able to help with insurance issues via the Facebook application, so she called me back. Since our insurance is already queued for renewal, she wasn’t able to upgrade it or give me an exact quote, but she did everything possible to help me with what I needed. She was in no position to increase my insurance on a Friday night, but she made a note in our file that I had tried to increase cover, in case anything happened to our house in the next two days. When I hang up, I felt like being in good hands, and that she’ll sort it all out on Monday.

But she didn’t rest. She hunted down a representative of the insurance company ASB are working with, and when she called me again she was able to confirm that our insurance cover had been increased and that we’ll receive a confirmation letter and new invoice next week.

She didn’t have to do any of this. She could have confirmed what the guy on the phone hotline had told me before, because it was the truth. She could have said she can’t do anything for me on a Friday night. She didn’t have to add a note to my file, after all being under-insured legally means being under-insured, and if I try to change this on a Friday night, you would be right say “bad luck”. And she didn’t have to try to get hold of someone at the insurance company, especially not after we had agreed on leaving it until monday morning. But she did.

Sure, this is in no way a sign that the virtual branch on Facebook works as intended. I could have gotten lucky with someone from the call centre who might have gone the extra mile, too. But on Facebook I was able to chose who I wanted to interact with. To be fair, all the people on the virtual branch look friendly, helpful and professional. But still, I had a choice. And ASB offered me interaction via a medium that I’m familiar with. After establishing the initial contact, talking on the phone didn’t feel as weird as it often does when you talk to some random stranger, who may or may not even be based in some low-wage country far away from New Zealand.

From now on I will certainly prefer the Facebook virtual branch for all matters I would like to discuss with someone at ASB. Even if they can’t help immediately, they seem to have picked great people to represent the bank in the online world, so I’m sure that every problem will be solved in the end.

The Japanese have a different system for dealing with wet umbrellas. To keep the water outside when the weather is crappy, all shops have a plastic cover dispenser for umbrellas at their entrance. You put your umbrella in from the top and when you take it out towards the front it’s covered in a condom like wrapper. This is how the shop floors stay dry and people don’t slip. And you don’t need to fear that anyone will get you completely wet when they wave their umbrella around in order to get it dry before they enter the shop. Awesome idea!

It would be great to see a more reusable solution, using a plastic cover once and then throwing it into the rubbish bin doesn’t sound right to me. But it’s a start and certainly limits some risks associated with wet floors.

But when you want to go to a museum or a restaurant, you’re usually not keen to carry your umbrella around, regardless if it’s placed in a cover or not. That’s why such places often have a lockable umbrella holder at the entrance of the building. Put the head of the umbrella in, close the lock, remove the metal plate to lock and your umbrella will be waiting securely locked up until you return. That’s how Tokyo stays nice clean and tidy even in nasty weather conditions.

I can only talk for the Tokyo region, since I didn’t travel anywhere outside of the big city, but I assume it’s the same anywhere in Japan – whatever you do, wherever you go, whoever you encounter: people are always nice and go the extra mile to fulfil the wishes you didn’t even know you had. There was the shower head in our hotel for example, which had a little leak. Not a big problem and I certainly wouldn’t have complained about it, but when we used the shower again the next morning, it had been fixed. Without us saying a word. Not only had the cleaning staff seen the problem, they had even organised the repair. Great service!

There were lots of little things where I though “Wow, that’s great, I didn’t really expect this”, but one of the best things happened to us at Junkudo. Junkudo is a huge book store in Ikebukuro, one of the must-see parts of Tokyo. The store has nine stories, with level nine hosting foreign books. Since neither Kai nor I speak Japanese, we went straight up to the top floor to look for a book we had seen advertised in a newspaper. When we couldn’t find it, I approached the information desk and asked for it. Luckily I had the newspaper clipping with me, so it was easy for the person I asked to look it up in their computer and locate it within the shop. For some reason they had it one level below, and they sent me down to get it from there. Now, in both Germany and New Zealand “Go to level xyz” means that you have to find the item you’re looking for at that location for yourself. At Junkudo it meant, that someone on level eight was informed via phone that we were looking for the book, and while we took the escalator down, which probably took us less than two minutes, this person grabbed the book and placed it at the information desk for us. When we arrived to ask for it again, it was already waiting for us. Great service, again!

I got really excited about the high level of service, and when we met a friend for lunch at our last day in Tokyo I got an explanation as to why the Japanese are so service oriented. It has to do with the custom of “omotenashi”, the atmosphere of hospitality and welcome. It’s the thought of creating a nice, welcoming experience for guests – with an attention to details – that got transferred into the whole service industry. It’s a great custom and it certainly makes Japan a great experience for visitors.

That’s all I have to say after my experience with ShopCity, who seem to be the only ones selling filters for our Mitsubishi heat pump in New Zealand. At least they were the only ones who were easy enough to find when we needed to replace the filters. We tried to order online, but we were able to put only one filter into the shopping cart, we needed two. So we assumed they were out of stock and used the online form, asking to get notified as soon as new stock arrived.

Two-and-a-half working days later we got a response, telling us that the filters had to be ordered by contacting customer support via phone. No further explanation if they were really out of stock or why else it would only be possible to order a single filter instead of two. Since I had no other choice, I called the phone number they had provided. First of all I was given various options on how to get to the person I needed to talk to, luckily customer service/ sales was the second option. I pressed 2 and got into a waiting line where I was told my call was important to them. They told me 5 times before I finally had someone on the phone. When I said I wanted to place an order, I was put on hold again. This time with radio running in the background; some kind of quiz show where the host had two callers on the line and there were competing in whatever discipline. Then my call was answered and I was asked if I held an account with them. No? Then I would have to use the website to order. Grrrrr.

Luckily the lady on the phone picked up my mood and was happy to let me order via phone after I had told her my story. She took my details and put me on hold while my credit card details were being processed. This time I had to listen to radio advertisement, ironically advertisement for a heat pump. Apparently my payment got through and I was promised the filters will be delivered tomorrow. We will see…

It would have been so easy to make this a more pleasant experience:

• If your customers can only order a limited amount your product, tell them the reason why. In this case a simple message that they’ve been out of stock and what the options in this case were, would have been great.
• If you expect customers to call you, please give them a positive experience. Telling them how important their call is doesn’t do the trick, if they have to listen to this multiple times while being transferred again and again. Also forcing them to listen to radio is not a good choice, at least not if the radio station isn’t playing music.
• If you have a sales department never ever let them start a conversations with “you should order from our website”. There will always be a reason why your customer is calling instead of using the online shop. They might have tried the online shop without success, or they might feel more comfortable ordering on the phone. Whatever the reason is, please don’t question their choice.

I guess in this case it’s really a matter of holding the monopoly. If I didn’t have to order with them, I wouldn’t even have called. I would have tried the next online shop. But knowing that owners of Mitsubishi heat pumps have no other choice, apparently makes ShopCity a bit careless about the customer experience. They will buy anyway, because no one else has what they need.

Update: The new filters really arrived the next day – at least one thing they were good at.

On our second day living in New Zealand I joined Wellington City Library, and I’ve been a regular visitor since. I love books and DVDs, I love the people and the atmosphere and I think they’re doing a lot of things right when it comes to delivering a positive customer experience. But today, they topped everything they’ve ever done so far, at least for me personally. It seems like they’ve tailored their offering just for me! But let me explain…

On the weekend I sent out the following tweet:

I got a few responses and started fighting the fruit flies with apple cider vinegar and lemongrass oil – the situation inside the house is now well under control. But I really do need to improve conditions for my compost bin. And as if the library knew I  needed some advice, today they sent this tweet:

And from there they made it very easy for me to follow up on the seminar: one click on the link brought me to their events calendar.

And another click on the ical icon automatically transferred it into my calendar on my Mac and my iPhone. Couldn’t be any easier – I wish more service providers would make processes so easy for me…

But today I thought they might have gone a bit over the top with the urge to deliver a perfect user experience. As Gold Elite members of their loyalty programme, Kai and I had a big envelope in the mail today, containing our new ePass. The ePass is a SIMcard sized tag, that can be used to check in quicker by waving the tag about 2-3 cm of a kiosk. Koru Club access is also faster, maybe because you don’t have to talk to the friendly lady who usually checks your boarding pass anymore. And the craziest thing: they want me to stick it to the back of my mobile phone! Are they insane???? I’m not sticking anything to my iPhone! Ok, there’s another option, you can also stick it to something else that you always carry with you when you travel. I guess, that would be my Air New Zealand Airpoints Card. So what’s the point of it? The checking in procedure at the electronic kiosks has been great most of the time anyway. Apart from all those days when they were out of order, but this is likely to happen with the new system as well.

Air New Zealand ePass

I hope that there are some real advantage to this, maybe I’ll find out about when I’m traveling the next time…

Update: With the mPass iPhone app there’s no need for me to still carry the ePass for traveling. Flight details are now automatically loaded into the application, and a barcode created for scanning at both Koru lounge and  boarding gate make the ePass redundant for me.

If you don’t like it, get confused or simply loved the old search function – it’s still available, so you have the choice which one you want to use. Well done, Library!

It’s a community-driven tool, featuring everything you need to plan, perform and evaluate your journey through Australia. Get all the information you need before you start, receive insider tips from fellow travelers, keep in touch with friends and family at home, share your happy moments or simply find someone to sell your equipment to before you return home – here you’ll find everything you need. In the first release the map, find interface, trip planner, contributor services and many more things are fully functional. Although there is currently still a lot of information missing, it’s stable and works very well, and the first load of content providers is getting on board. There will also be a list of new cool functionalities coming during the next few weeks and months (e.g. diary entries via txt, commenting etc.), so keep your eyes open for that. And the best thing is: everything is for free! So get out there, place your favourite destinations on the awesome map of Australia and be part of this from the very beginning!

What can other small retailers learn from this?
1. If you offer online orders, make sure you check your inbox regularly! In the unlikely event of a hard drive crash, inform potential customers on your website that you currently cannot access orders!
2. Make sure that each employee knows how to forward information. It must either be impossible that someone agrees on a delivery date that someone else is not able to match, or people must know who is to be informed about commitments that are agreed on with the customer.
3. Train your Telephonists on how to deal with a customer in a friendly manner. It is important to calm the client down and to make him/her feel valued – in most cases they are about to spend a lot of money at your company (and worst case they usually deal with User/Customer Experience and you might end up being mentioned in their blog in a negative way). To laugh at someone who is about to spend 400 Dollars at your place is not acceptable!
4. Never offer cancellation as a first solution. This means for your customer that he/she has to find another supplier and gets even more angry. An angry customer is never helpful – in best case you’ll only lose one client, but it’s highly likely that they’ll tell all their friends and family about it, which means that you lose either other existing clients or potential future clients. However, there is more impact than just one lost delivery.

At least the Action Recyclers gave me a long story to blog about and a really remarkable User/Customer Experience. Although this is not much fun sitting in a cold house…

1. The Usability Week organised by the Nielson Norman Group and held in Hong Kong, Washington D.C., London and San Francisco. Unfortunately this has just taken place in the last couple of months and I missed it :-(
2. UPA’s “Patterns: Blueprints for Usability” but this has taken place mid June as well, so I missed this one, too :-(
3. World Usability Day in Hamburg, Germany in November this year. But I can’t see myself spending this much money to attend a one-day-event. So most likely I will miss this one as well :-(

These were the most interesting conferences I could find by briefly scanning the internet. Does this mean that I can’t get face-to-face encounters with experienced experts?

1. On a links overview you can’t tell if a click on a link will open a new browser window or not, so most people who want it to open in a new window would use a right mouse click, right? If you try this on www.rosen-romantik.de the only result this will cause is the opening of a popup saying “Have much fun while surfing!” with the option to press an ok-button. After agreeing the small window vanishes and nothing else happens. If you want to click through a couple of these links and try the right mouse click out of habit for a few times, you’ll become really aggressive after a while, believe me!
2. A less frustrating but absolutely useless website is the one of the Europa Rosarium, which is the largest rose museum of the world in a small German village called Sangerhausen. Apparently they do have an existing Website but if you click on the link above you’ll simply get a note saying “Future home of www.europa-rosarium.de”. It can’t be that hard to forward the user to the existing website, can it?

I really appreciate that different people have different talents and while I have no idea about rose processing I don’t expect a rose lover to know how to build a website. But for user’s sake they should rather not having a website at all, then testing people’s patience by running poorly designed websites…

I tried to learn programming. Using computer and internet for several years now, I have a rough understanding how things work. Someone recommended starting my “developer’s career” with html and php, so I bought a book called “PHP for kids” which picked me up on the right level. It’s a really good book, where a little rabbit explains how programming works. Whenever there is something really important, a carrot on the page alerts you for more attention. Unfortunately I could no longer stick with it when the coding became more complicated and every little distraction meant that I had to start from the beginning. I just can’t concentrate on numbers and letters for an extrem long period of time. That was the end of my developer’s career.

But what else could I do to make my contribution to our company and to support Kai with the incredible amount of work he’s doing at the moment? It must be something that has to do with people. With interaction, community, making things easier. And so the idea was born to take a deep dive into the secrets of usability! This blog is here to document my journey to explore the topic from the scratch. I have no idea where it will lead to – maybe I will give up on this like I gave up on programming, maybe I will become a world known expert on usability, or maybe just something in-between with the ability to use my knowledge for Ventego Creative. Who knows? We will see… Tips and hints to bring me closer to the mysteries of usability are always welcome!