While on the topic of Customer Service...

I am experiencing BT as I write. I am a very old (watch it!) broadband customer in the UK. BT in their wisdom piloted ADSL with hard wired "master sockets" with inbuilt filters which split DSL from phone. I took the service 10 minutes after it was available in Bracknell. I had the engineer come and install it, and run a 25 metre cable to my office from the master socket for a 5 metre distance.

He couldn't install it outside because "That would need a ladder, and I'm not insured for ladders, sir."

"But you have ladders on the roofrack of your van?"

"Yes, but I'm not insured. Anyway this data cable isn't weatherproof, you know."

So, for several years I was a happy BT Broadband customer, right up to the day they messed up, when I moved to Netvigator and bypassed the phone line entirely - they were radio linked, much like cellphones, to a base station. But Netvigator, now "Now!" or "MyNow!" (UK Broadband) has decided to withdraw service in my (only my?) area and I have rejoined the ranks of the cable dependent broadband users.

In the interim period I called BT Broadband to ask "Will I need the DSL cable if I ever return to a phone based system?"

"No, sir. You will be able to use microfilters. You can remove the cable any time you like, and, when you need to, just plug a microfilter into your phone socket.

So I did.

And, two days ago, my shiny new broadband service arrived from Eclipse.

The microfilters look very pretty, but they do nothing, because my DSL signal is split from the phone signal at the master socket. I need the 25 metre DSL extension cable I was told I could take out.

Or I need the master socket to be replaced with a normal one. After all, this was a pilot scheme, and BT stopped using them after about 6 months anyway.

"That will be £250, sir."

I explained the situation.

"Yes, sir, but it's still £250."

I explained, patiently, and at some length, that I felt it unfair that I was being penalised for doing what I was told, and suggested that this was not a reasonable course of action. After three tries someone agreed, probably, and made sure by asking Ross. Ross is one of two BT people who understand my problem. Ross has ensured that, even if some fool tries to charge me, the charge will be waived. Better yet, Ross calls me to check that people have done what they've told him they will do or can do. Ross is an excellent customer facing person.

I have spoken at length in the intervening period to many residents of India in call centres in India. All of them have tried to be helpful. Several have committed to doing things. All have needed me to explain from the start the problem. I now start with "Listen very carefully, I will say this only once...", but not in the accent of Michelle of the Resistance.

Most of them have told me that I am in the wrong place. That sits well with me (not), because it is they who have called me! And they have called me because they have assured Ross that they are the person who can handle this. Ross is also tearing his hair out.

One of the Indian people aimed me at Openreach (a part of BT), who would send a surveyor, then he would quote for an engineer, but this would all take 40 days. Presumably we would also build an ark and find animals, two by two. Shame about the lack of unicorns, but we'll cope. If J K Rowling can find them then I'm sure I can, too. After all, Harry Potter's house (first movie) is only a mile and a half from mine.

Just now Ross called me. He put me through to the person who could actually book an engineer to come to see me! She got the engineer on the line with his diary open and "But our records show that you don't have broadband so I can't help you," said the engineer. He got me put through (again) to BT's line faults service on 151. I had to explain it "Listen very carefully...." to the engineer first, and then to the very nice lady, Claire, who has finally, after being on hold herself for 20 minutes(!) trying to book the appointment, booked me an engineer for Monday.

Claire understood what I was talking about. She also went to find Ross (they work in the same building) but he was on another call (oddly, to me again!) , so came back to her desk to save me waiting and she has solved the problem (Monday's engineer willing, that is!).

BT are my communication provider. They are not my ISP. I wonder if it would have been easier or harder if they'd been my ISP. I'm just not going to risk it.

I could, by the way, have had the engineer tomorrow, but I am the one who can't make that appointment. Claire and Ross may take a bow. The call centres offshore? On the ark motif, we need another B Ark (A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy). They'll go well alongside the telephone sanitisers and middle men, and yes, I do know I'm a marketing consultant. I propose to miss the flight!

I suppose BT doesn't need marketing. It most certainly does need customer service. My estimate is that this simple task has already cost them, and thus their shareholders, £1000.

Update: They tried to charge me!

Customer Service seems not to cover deceased clients well

I have now had two rather bad customer service experiences, both banks, one in a call centre, the other at a counter. The call centre was Barclays, the counter was Abbey or Santander.

Countering custom
The counter was simple. Instead of hearing that I was there to report a death and being pleasant and sympathetic, the counter clerk told me "You'll have to..." And that's the point While I may "have to..." what I want to be told is different. I want to be told, sympathetically, that "We need to take some details from you. There is a form to sign, but I'm sure we can handle that. I'm afraid our trained person is booked solid today, would it be possible to see her tomorrow?"

We could have taken it from there quite easily. And notice that nowhere in that conversation does it say "You'll have to..."

Total lack of customer service means that one clerk has removed any possibility that I will use Abbey or Santander or whoever they are as my bank now or ever.

But that was mild compared with two experiences with Barclays and their offshore call centre.

Call Centre Blues
This was amazing. On Sunday 21st, the day my mother died, we started to set her affairs in order. I called the Barclays Customer Service number. It's pretty hard to get through to a person if you accidentally say you're a Barclays customer, but I am, kind of, because I held 3rd party mandates on her accounts. So, eventually I used * and # often enough to break it and get a person. And I reported her death.

We were doing really well until the telefool suggested that she had to speak to her to take me through security, after which time I could speak about the accounts. As you can imagine, that did not sit desperately well with me.

A further experience today leg to this blog entry. I needed to speak to her bank branch. The manager there had said "Call the customer service number and ask for a message to be faxed to use to return your call." Yes, she agreed it was insane, too. So I did. I explained that I had already registered the death and that I wanted the branch to call me. "Have you told us about this death before? We have a department to handle deaths."

The thing that strikes me is that they are incapable of handling something as simple as a death without making a huge mess of it.

The outcome?
Well, guess who will not open a Barclays account or and Abbey (etc) account ever?

Customer service is marketing. Hmm, I've said that before. I've said it quite a lot. Abbey? That was a staff training issue. Barclays is an offshoring issue. Neither understand that they have ruined their marketing.

Pause in blogging

The lady to the left is the reason. She is my mother, Constance Trent, and was born in 1918 and died on Sunday 21st October 2007.

I imagine you can guess that my attention has not been on my blog recently. She has not been well. In hospital she was infected with Clostridium Difficile - a superbug that is very hard to live through.

We have a view in my family that flowers are great for a decoration, but are excessive in grief, so we are hoping that anyone who is moved to will donate even a trivial sum at a page we are using to raise funds for The National Association for Colitis and Crohn's Disease (a UK charoty) in her memory. She supported them in life and we support them in her name in death.

UK Information Commissioner does not regulate BlueSpam after all!

He thought he did, but he's decided he doesn't. This from ComplianceAndPrivacy.com which covers news in the security and privacy fields:

Following discussions with the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and others the Information Commissioner’s Office has amended its guidance on the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. The guidance previously stated that marketing messages sent using Bluetooth technology would be subject to PECR rules relating to the sending of unsolicited marketing.

However, the Regulations only apply to messages sent over a public electronic communications network and we have concluded that Bluetooth messages are not in fact sent using such a network. We have amended our guidance accordingly. It is for government to decide whether the law should be changed to cover such marketing.

We would like to stress that regardless of whether a particular technology is covered by PECR, consumers are increasingly aware of, and concerned about, the sophisticated methods of sending marketing to them and it is good practice to take their concerns into account when devising a responsible marketing strategy. We would urge marketers considering the use of Bluetooth technology to consult industry guidelines on good marketing practice.

So who will make sure it's going to work well and ethically now? Will it be the Direct Marketing Association? Will it be the Advertising Standards Authority? Last time I checked each of them denied any responsibility. And the UKIC's changed his guidance, so now we're in limbo.

BlueSpam (etc) trends

I'm returning to my regular monitoring of terms to do with Spam and Bluetooth this month. With the mobile industry now providing better and better marketing techniques, and with the uptake of bluecasting, or proximity marketing, via your handset, I'm looking at the past 90 days and blog mentions of the terms, and I've added a few relevant terms.

For comparison the mentions, all mentions, of the term Spam are included. I really do hope this excludes the canned meat!

The graphs are presented together for you to draw your own conclusions. They are dynamic - they refresh whenever Technorati refreshes. They are the total of all blog posts recorded there with the terms and are thus likely to have statistical significance.

Posts that contain Bluespam per day for the last 90 days.


Posts that contain Bluecast per day for the last 90 days.


Posts that contain "Proximity Marketing" per day for the last 90 days.


Posts that contain Bluetooth per day for the last 90 days.


Posts that contain "SMS Marketing" per day for the last 90 days.


Posts that contain Spam per day for the last 90 days.


The question is, are we seeing trends?

I can still see no discernible pattern in Bluespam mentions here. It looks to me as though the peaks we saw when HSBC, Avenue Q and Nissan started to do local Bluetooth broadcasts were just short duration interest. There is a small peak of interest over what the UK Information Commissioner is doing, but it seems to be beneath the public radar.

Note: This blog article will result in a spike of 1 in all the terms it surveys, and thus its value should be subtracted from the figures.

There's always a better mousetrap

I just had an email from a business colleague who is part of "my" Linked In network. He said "I'm moving to FaceBook." Well, I'm not. Not from any particular dislike of FaceBook, I'm just content with what I have where i am.

I already don't use Plaxo nor do I use Spoke. I have serious doubts about their mechanical approach, and their export of data without obvious consent from the EEA, and I do have some doubts about Linked In. But this is the problem. There are many social networks that may be useful or appropriate.

The issue is "How do I make use of them all?"

The answer is that I don't. And I'm not even sure one should. The real dilemma is about the use a contact is if you never, ever talk to them. Are you useful to me? Am I useful to you? Will either of us be useful to the other in the future?

And, if the social network is a showcase of who we are, which is the most appropriate network?

I wish I had some answers.

Ten Landmines for eMarketing

So many people get this wrong that they spoil it for those who get it right. So I’ve been thinking of a simple “What not do Do” guide.

One - Don’t use your own email server

Ok, it’s there and it’s cheap. So why not use it?

• Some fool will put every addressee in the "to" or the "cc" field, but the "bcc" field sends it to "undisclosed recipients" so you look bland and allows no personalisation and thus decreases responses.
• Your email server has your IP address. Did you know it only takes four independent spam reports in 24 hours for people to start peering very hard at your IP addresses and starting to blocklist you? I do mean blocklist, not blacklist. Similar, but not the same.
  
• There's no possibility of campaign tracking, no integrated marketing, no response tracking, no return on investment measurement.
• "It's just an email let's send it now". Yes, unchecked!

You need to outsource your eMarketing to a specialist agency. Let them have the headaches of negotiating away anti spam blocklists. You just don't need the headaches.

Two - Don't skimp on design

Design of an e-campaign is even more important than the last heavyweight postal campaign you ran. eMarketing can alienate your audience far faster and far more effectively than any other form of marketing except probably the personal delivery of manure to your target. Get it wrong and you alienate people hugely. Look at Roche Diagnostics with their newsletter that released confidential medical data.

Design is not just the collateral. Design is the dataset used as well. Look at Angel Sales and Leasing, who designed a decent enough email message, but bought unpermissioned data.

Three - Don't break the law

You have in the UK to beware of the Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations, elsewhere in Europe directive 2002/58/EC. In the USA there's the CAN Spam act

Put simply, you need to know for sure that you are allowed by law to send this message to those people. and you need to err on the side of caution. The discussion about permissions is one to hold on top of the one about legality. That on legality is highly complex anyway.

Four - Don't ride roughshod over permissions

Some folk still don't get it. So let's be blunt. People who have not given you permission are the least likely ever to buy from you. Waste money marketing to them (lawfully) if you really want to, but expect to waste even more time and effort handling complaints. When was the last time someone you only knew of as a complaint bought something from you?

Five - Don't hide the unsubscribe link

If they want to leave, let them. Have the link in plain sight, make it a straightforward process, but not a single click. It's fine to get them to re-enter the email address they want to unsubscribe, it's fine to get them to confirm their choice. It's fine to show them what they may miss if they unsubscribe, but you must let them go when they really mean it.

It's illegal not to.

Six - Don't scrape email addresses from web sites

We don't put our email addresses in view because we want to be spammed. We put them there because we're happy to be contacted for our business reasons not for your business to spam with. An email address on a website is not an invitation for you to send us information about Porsche and a yacht, like spammers seem to think. It's so you can contact us if we interest you. this is our advert, not your email opportunity.

Seven - Don't use shady data

You aren't shady, after all. So you don't want a reputation of being associated with shady data. And shady data is data that comes with no permissions for any and all of:

• Marketing (at all)
• Transfer to third parties
• Transfer to countries with inadequate data protection legislation (if starting in the EEA)

Eight - Don't ignore bounces

This one is complex. A bounce is an email that has not made it for one of several predefined reasons. Bounces are soft and hard. Soft bounces should be tracked and acted on by purging your list after a reasonable number of the same bounce message. Hard bounces may be real receipt errors, or can be false positives, but, after a far smaller number of hard bounces the email record should be purged. Some anti spam software tracks bounces, some issue bounces, some report your IP range as a spammer.

Nine - Don't underestimate anti-spam software

It's designed to stop spam from getting through. It has some false positives - my spam filter said a Google Alert was spam the other day, but it had a valid reason for suggesting it - and it lets some bad stuff through. Yes, I am getting a load of pump and dump spam for Porsche and some yacht or other at present.

Well designed eMarketing gets through. It hasn't got the triggers that trigger the spam filter. This comes right back to design. Your ordinary graphic design agency is great for look, feel and branding. Give their end product to the email design house to tame for eMarketing

Ten - Don't forget to check the data

Ok, I'm going to admit it. Everyone makes mistakes. Many years ago, when eMarketing was in its infancy, we issued a campaign to the wrong data list. It wasn't just wrong, it was so wrong that it was embarrassing. You can't unpress the "send" button. It's a mistake you make once only.

But eMarketing campaigns should be tightly targeted, heavily personalised and focused, and small volume. The data is controlled and controllable. You need to be sure that the campaign is associated with the right list before committing it, otherwise you commit your reputation to the black hole of ridicule. Let's make it really obvious: You would not send emails about pork farming to Israel, now would you? Not and stay in business, at least!

Are there really only ten?

How long have you got? There are far more than ten landmines. These are just ten. Why not add your landmines in the comments? Or disagree with me!

ad:tech - Digital Privacy - How to Respect your Customers

I was also on this ad:tech panel last Thursday, in distinguished company. The excellent part was that the audience became part of the panel. We not only had questions from the floor, we had answers and opinions from the floor, too.

There were some very good messages:

Users need to take responsibility too

Looking at the opening up of social networks to search engines, users need to understand what they are doing when they give out information there. They need to understand how data may be aggregated in order to make positive and sometimes unwelcome identifications. While this is said to be especially important for minors in view of the current mediasteria about sex and the Internet, it's as important for adults, especially where a career might be vulnerable to a scandal.

We've all posted something we shouldn't somewhere we shouldn't have. A careless or angry comment on a forum, an unwise flirtation in a social network, a foolish blog entry or blog comment. [memo to self - I really ought to check back, but it's too late now! Google's grabbed it!]. We all need to take responsibility for what we put into the public search engine domain.

As an example, I looked for myself in Google. I'm not too displeased with the results. No major foul ups in the first few results, at least, and most, at least in my opinion, enhance my professional reputation. I am not a singing duo, though, nor a pastor, nor an assessor somewhere in the USA. I don't seem to have embarrassed myself in the first 100, at least. But the point is that when I do it will be there for months, perhaps years, perhaps for ever.

Be proud of your privacy policy

This came from the floor. The questioner was very puzzled, as am I, about the low prominence given to the policies, and the arcane language they use. I try very hard with all my clients to make them proud of their policies. I use as an example one of my own used at ComplianceAndPrivacy.com which is written in clear, unambiguous English. I'm sure it could be even clearer, and I'm happy to take comments about it to make it even better.

The point is to ensure that it is both accessible from every page on the site, and to make it abundantly clear on any page where data is collected. We don't currently collect data at C&P, but, when we do, there is a full Fair Processing Notice and a "pride of place" link to the privacy policy.

The rationale is simple. Trust us with your data and you can trust us with anything else. And that's the point of Pride in Privacy.

Data collection is a good thing

And there is no argument that well collected and husbanded data allows better marketing and enhanced sales. The challenge is that the law, certainly in the EEA, states that you must not keep data indefinitely, and that you must only collect sufficient data to meet your current purposes.

A good example is if C&P wanted to send birthday cards to subscribers. For that site it's valid to collect day and month, but the year of birth is none of its business. But for a bank the year is relevant data. What is excessive for one is correct for the other.