Ian's Wanderings

Social media customer service: Reward compliments, not complaints

2011-11-02T05:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a thought for retailers and businesses of all kinds engaging in social media. A conventionally successful strategy is to respond promptly to customer complaints on Twitter and Facebook, to be seen publicly to be giving good customer service.

However, by doing this aren't we also rewarding negative behaviour? If a hundred friends see that a customer's complaint has been dealt with successfully, yes, they might raise their opinion of your business; but they might also actually be encouraged to complain more in the future, figuring that any loud whining - legitimate or not - is rewarded with better service or even valued compensation.

Maybe we should be rewarding customers who spread good news about your business, not bad. By all means continue dealing with genuine complaints well, but by also thanking customers who talk about good products or report a pleasurable transaction, you invoke a win-win situation; not only do you get a good review, but positive publicity as well.

I am thinking about taking this to the logical conclusion. A customer who complains loudly about a problem will get their issue fixed quickly and fairly; no more, no less. But a customer who raves positively and publicly about your business will be rewarded with bonus goods or services. This is advertising that you cannot simply buy. Not only is it cheap, it squarely reaches your target market, and is (ideally) seen as an honest and trustworthy recommendation.

Or is this bordering on the devious? Businesses have been caught before bribing prominent bloggers with goods or services in return for a good review; is this reward strategy as bad? I think it would be more open and morally legitimate, but let me know in the comments what you think.

HP Keyboards - for touch typists only

2011-05-04T09:05:00.001-07:00

We got a new HP wireless keyboard from Misco today - English UK layout, or so we thought.

Very user friendly, HP.

Our favourite part is the Quality Control Passed sticker on the back.

After a small amount of modification, it is now a custom-made keyboard for YouTube commentards.

Dear Lockheed Martin (UK Census 2011 response)

2011-03-09T13:22:00.000-08:00

Dear Lockheed Martin,

Please find attached my returned Census form. You will note that I have not filled in any personal details about myself or anybody who may or may not be in my household. This is because I object to handing my personal details to an arms manufacturer. I hold this funny little opinion that a business who profits from death and war is not one that I choose to trust.

However, I do understand that you are spending a great deal of my* taxpayer's money on processing this census, and would hate to see this completely wasted, so I have filled out the form with the details of my cat. I do not believe that public knowledge of her personal details could put her or her family at any particular risk, so you are free to absorb, process, publish and/or abuse this information at your leisure.

Kind regards and best of luck with the ripe developing market in North Africa.

The Occupier
[address redacted]

* Aha, that is if I pay tax... you nearly had me there.

Sent 9 March 2011. If I exchange further correspondence with Lockheed Martin or the Census, I will post it here.

Fans of Shiva can also see how well she dealt with my antagonistic correspondence with PayPal.

Letter to Optical Express

2010-10-04T07:36:00.000-07:00

Hi

In the past couple of years I have asked five times to be removed from your postal mailing list, and each time have been assured that you will. I still receive regular mailings from you.

I don't know why you are finding it so hard to remove my details. Do you understand your legal responsibilities at all?

Here are the reference numbers from some recent mailings I have received from you:

696 007907_W147
6961/R/00982/3/272432
6961 55131/02/00317144
6961 54884/02/00269263
6960/R/00568/1/00119742
6961 54167/02/00349250

Here are my details exactly as appears on your letters:

Mr Ian Ferguson
[address]
COWES

Isle of Wight
[postcode]

Here is a link to the Information Commissioner Office's very informative guidelines on Data Protection, which you might care to read up on:

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/data_protection.aspx

Here is a link to my solicitors, who I will get involved if I have to communicate with you again:

http://www.parissmith.co.uk

Here is the number of times I intend to make future appointments with you:

0

Letter to BBC Trust

2010-03-02T02:44:00.000-08:00

From: Ian Ferguson
To: trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk
Date: 2nd March 2010

Dear BBC Trust,

May I add my voice to the masses outraged by the proposed cuts to BBC services. I am a big fan of the 'fringe' BBC offerings such as 6Music and online services. No commercial rival can provide such an eclectic and innovative range.

As a avid new media consumer, I use the BBC website and iPlayer considerably, and listen to 6Music regularly. I no longer watch 'live' TV, whether it be BBC or commercial, as the weak entertainment selection is no longer relevant to me.

If 6Music goes, and the BBC online services are forced to cut back, I will no longer be able to justify paying my licence fee. I already technically do not need to, but do so out of love for the uniqueness of the BBC and the importance I feel it has had in my upbringing and education.

I am greatly concerned that Sky and the Murdoch corporation are using their considerable influence on this country's government to replace key BBC services with biased, profit-based commercial services. Even if this was good for the British economy, it is undoubtedly bad for British culture.

If demographics help, I am a 29 year old white British male and quite painfully middle-class.

Kind regards

Ian Ferguson

From: Trust Enquiries
To: Ian Ferguson
Date: 3 March 2010

Thank you for contacting the BBC Trust, the governing body of the BBC, with your concerns about the future of the radio station 6Music.

As you may be aware, the proposal to close the station has come from the Director-General Mark Thompson as part of a wide ranging review of the BBC’s future strategy.

In July last year the BBC Trust challenged the Director-General to address questions about the scope of the BBC’s activities, focusing on how the BBC can most effectively deliver its public service mission and meet audience needs as well as deliver value for money. The full strategy, which is now available on the Trust’s website, is the Executive’s response to this challenge.

As part of his proposals to the Trust, which are focused on increasing the quality of the BBC’s output and setting a new direction for the BBC, the Director-General has proposed closing 6Music. The Trust is now consulting on all of these proposals, and we welcome your views.

We will of course take your email as a contribution to our consultation. Should you wish to know more about the overall strategy review and our public consultation, there is more information on the Trust’s website at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/strategy_review/index.shtml

To be clear, a decision on whether or not to close 6Music will need to be made by the BBC Trust and we will consider any formal proposal to do so very carefully.

Our consultation is open until 25 May 2010.

BBC Trust Unit

What I won't be doing on the Plinth

2009-07-06T10:32:00.000-07:00

I'm reposting this here as the One & Other website diary/blog/thing has a unfortunate problem of being shit, and cutting off my post after the first two sentences.

Now that a few of the first plinthers have strutted their stuff, I still have little idea about what I'm going to do; but it is easier to say with authority what I WON'T be doing. Hopefully without sounding too negative, here we go;

1. I won't be 'freestyling'. That's another word for 'I'm not inventive enough to think of something in advance, so I'm just going to grin inanely and counter hecklers.'

2. I won't be reading a book or some other mundane activity. There's nicer places to read books. Try a library.

3. I won't (only) be taking photos of the onlookers. This was my initial idea, being a keen amateur photographer; to record a kind of meta-plinth photo blog of my time up there. But on reflection, everybody is a photographer nowadays, and I bet at least one person a day tries to fulfill this idea in a new and innovative way.

4. I won't be promoting a business. I mean, come ON. Talk about missing the point by a light year.

5. I (probably) won't be raising money for, or promoting, a charity. A bit controversial maybe, but again, I think this is diluting the point of the project. The idea is (as I see it) to take a snapshot of British life and culture, and expose the raw humanity of each person brave enough to stand up there. Charity is an important part of culture (I work for one) and has a place on the plinth, but it's not such a major component of Britishness that it needs to be stuffed into every performance.

6. I won't be 'representing my town/county/region'. I was born in Devon, grew up in Wales, have a Scottish name, and live on the Isle of Wight. I consider myself British or European; I have no strong emotional ties to any place.

7. I won't be dancing or singing. That would be a sure-fire way of emptying Trafalgar Square in record time.

On a side note, I notice the rules state 'no weapons on the plinth'. Please can an exception be made if I specifically target busking bagpipers?

PayPal: We're terribly sorry, and we no longer walk over customers

2008-10-03T02:43:00.000-07:00

Google indexing is great. Literally within hours of posting my rant about PayPal's 'Unwelcome' doormat marketing, it appeared in Google for suitable searches; and as I predicted, the marketing firm found it.

It's also been picked up by my favourite IT news outlet, The Register. I'm pleased to announce that my cat Shiva is now famous!

I've just had a call from someone at PayPal's 'Customer Experience Team' (called Maria, with a rather lovely Dublin accent), who was as nice as pie and couldn't do enough to help. She was most apologetic about my experiences and pointed out that under PayPal's brand new protection schemes, I would have been able to claim back my money.

They have unlocked my account and deposited £150 in there as a 'gesture of goodwill' - not a bribe, of course. And not as an admission of guilt over my dispute (otherwise I would have cheekily asked where the other £150 was!)

Naturally, I'm assuming that anyone else who has been unjustly put out of pocket by PayPal fraud will be treated just as well... pertinacity aside, while I probably still won't use PayPal again, it's only fair to say that they seem to be responding to past mistakes and improving their protection and customer service schemes. Or so they claim - I'm sure other people will make their opinions known if they still feel maltreated.

And just a few minutes later, another call from their marketing team in London - apologising for any offence caused by the Unwelcome campaign. I would have found it amusing if not for my personal history with PayPal. Because of this, I found it actually insulting. Others in my office just found it unpleasant. I stand by my opinion that it is rather negative advertising. Bad publicity is still publicity - so I don't think it will actually harm PayPal in any way - but those like me who have been burnt before will just find it hilariously apt, in exactly the wrong way.

Here's a transcript of parts of my calls (not everything, and this is just in case anyone else finds it interesting or useful, it's not to point out any fallacies or embarrass them further):

***

Maria: I just wanted to give you a call because your blog got picked up by one of the UK marketing team, and they asked me to give you a call about it.

Me: Yes, I thought it might!

Maria: ...I read through it all and the marketing team had asked me if I can see if there's anything I can do about this, as it's obviously a very bad user experience. It was at a time, 13th of December 2005 actually was the date the payment was made, it was a time that our protections on eBay were kind of in product development, and they're an awful lot better now I have to say, so you probably wouldn't have encountered that same situation had you been doing it today.
So also, what I have done is that your PayPal account has been unlocked, and as a courtesy we've put £150 in there for you to use.

Me: Oh right... oh that's nice, is that a result of the investigation into the fraud, or...?

Maria: Well, it's more of a courtesy, at the time that was the way that the policy worked, and it was very unfortunate, and due to a lot of consumer feedback on it - a lot of people tended to encounter the same problem as you did, we changed the protection, as I said if the same situation came up today you wouldn't have lost that money. It's more of a, we're saying that we're sorry that you had this bad experience with us, so we'd like to make it up to you a little bit... When I read through it I felt very bad...

Me: If the same thing happened to me now, so, what exactly would happen then?

Maria: What we've changed on eBay now, actually it's fully gone live from the 30th of September, is that you don't have to send to confirmed addresses any more, which was always a big pain point, so if you send to a confirmed address and the person claims that the payment was unauthorised in any shape or form, what we're going to ask you for is proof of shipment. If you can provide us with proof of shipment, we'll cover you for that payment.

Me: Oh right... so I would be covered for that kind of transaction, now, that would be good.

Maria: Exactly. We looked at it, and at that time, there was a lot of people who were their first time selling on eBay, and weren't entirely sure how it worked, and used to be hit by this. And so we looked at changing it, purely due to that reason, a lot of people got in the same situation as you. We do completely care and we obviously want to make sure you're happy. So if there's anything else I can do, you're free to use the account from today onwards, and I apologise that it stayed locked for so long, because it shouldn't have as you paid off the amount and there were no issues there, you might not have used it anyway...

Me: Thanks, I'll take a look at it, and read your new terms and conditions, and see what I think. But from a business point of view, I mean, I do work for a ticketing agency that might be the kind of business you want accepting PayPal, hence us receiving the Unwelcome doormat. My concern would be, well, if customers just use their credit card, if they do have problems, they can talk directly to us or directly to the bank, but my concern with PayPal is that there's no immediate customer service if they do have a worry, there's no phone number to call.

Maria: For the UK there is, and it's seven days a week, we have a team here in Dublin, and there's people over in Omaha as well, and we're open until 10pm every night.

Ian: Oh right... I think that must be an improvement, becuase I had great difficulty actually getting through to a person when I had this complaint. I think I eventually got through to someone who was completely unsympathetic!

Maria: I can imagine, it's very hard for the customer service people as well, I empathise with them, they're kind of constrained by the product.

Ian: Yes, they can only do what they're allowed to do.

Maria: So I would say, definitely you can get through to somebody. If somebody has a problem with a payment they've done to you, we would never advise them to go and do a chargeback... what we would advise them to do is use the dispute system...
...
Ian: The problem I had in my case was that the person who bought the item was not the person who owned the credit card, it was stolen credit card details. It was that person who did the chargeback as obviously they were not a PayPal customer. How would you handle it in that way as you wouldn't be able to trace the person who did buy it, as they just vanished into thin air?

Maria: Well if you met all the conditions, with unauthorised payments it would generally be proof of shipment. If it was over £150 we're hardly going to ask for proof of signature of some kind, because obviously there's a potential there that the buyer and seller colluded...we have to cover ourselves in that sense...

Maria: On eBay you wouldn't have to send it to a confirmed address; off eBay it's still a requirement. On eBay you can send it to any country that accepts PayPal. And if they go ahead and... make a chargeback, we would ask you to provide proof of shipment.

Ian: Well that's good to know. Thanks for letting me know about that.

Maria: ...Your payments on eBay as from 30th September this year, are now fully protected, so where there used to be this tiering system, where you could be covered up to £500, now if you buy something for say £2000, then make a claim and you win that claim, we'll get your full £2000 back from PayPal, so we're covering it on the buyer's side as well as the seller's side.

Ian: Yes, I was never too concerned about buying things from eBay, because there did always seem to be fairly good coverage, it was when I started selling things that I was more concerned as everything seemed to be biased in favour of the buyer, which is kind of understandable when you're buying from big businesses through PayPal, but when the phone was the most expensive thing that I'd ever sold on there, and it seemed a bit unfair.

Maria: Yes, it's one of the things we've recommended to the marketing team, it should be an awful lot clearer, the criteria that you should have to follow, when you list a high value item for the first time. Things like mobile phones are always a target for abuse.

Ian: As I learnt.

Maria: We're trying our best to educate people where we can, without scaring them... just giving them a balance, while allowing them to sell.

Ian: My only other comment is that it would be useful, maybe in your dispute resolution centre, to have local instructions for informing the police or trading standards, because I did report this fraud to the police, but I found it quite difficult finding out who I need to contact. I know it's not PayPal's responsibility at that point, but it might be good customer service to give a bit of help if it does end up going to police or lawyers or anything.

Maria: Yes, that is in fact something our legal team is working on. At the moment there seem to be different practices in different counties in England - some people straight away seem to know what you're talking about, and other people have come back to us and said they had no idea what I was talking about, they wouldn't do anything for me, they said it wasn't their business.

Ian: Exactly, that's what I got, I wasn't sure if I was getting through to the right people. I had this address in London that I knew this item had gone to, but the police weren't interested and there was nothing I could do about it....

Maria: ...So again, apologies that it took so long for your account to be unlocked, and if you have anything else, feel free to give me an email back and I'll give you a call. If you run into any problems... need any kind of assistance, just let me know....

[I then spoke to one of their Marketing geezers, I think Mark?]

Mark: Hi, I'm the Marketing director here at PayPal UK, you've probably got overkill of PayPal people calling you, I appreciate, you did say, 'I know those bloody marketing people will find my blog!', so here's proof!
...Personally I just want to say sorry, but more importantly I want to say we've changed it, so I know it's not much help now, but if it had happened now you would have been covered, so I think we realise it just wasn't something that was working. There's things you can tell people like 'look out for the small print', but you know...

Ian: Yeah, as you're probably well aware, PayPal has gathered quite a bad reputation that makes a lot of people that have been stung, and I appreciate it's not personally your fault, it's the fault of people taking advantage of it, but it's going to rub off on you. But I work in marketing myself, and I was a little surprised by your Unwelcome campaign, as it was quite negative.

Mark: You didn't think it was humourous, then?

Ian: Well yeah, I thought it was quite amusing myself, but would have found it more amusing myself if I hadn't had problems! But other people in my office just found it offensive... and if you're sending out 2000 of these things, it's not surprising if at least one ends up on the doorstep of somebody like me who has had problems, so it's a risky strategy I thought.

Mark: It is, yeah, I don't know if bad publicity is always good publicity, but we've got more response to this than anything else. Most of it, the vast majority, has been very good, but there's been the odd person, like yourself, who have been burnt personally, so it hasn't resonated. So I apologise for any offence caused, it was clearly not intended. We knew it was risky, but we thought, we think we can get away with it, so we hope it gets the message across...

***

One thing I forgot to mention to him - but I'm sure he or someone else from his team will read this! - those other thing I found a bit off about their doormat mailing was the leaflet proudly stating that it was 50% recycled (the leaflet, not the doormat). I would have left that off - it makes the carbon footprint of mailing out the bloody huge doormat seem much worse in comparison!

So - will I use PayPal again? Personally - not to sell items, but I will to buy items for eBay, from established commercial sellers only. In business - almost certainly not, I really can't see any advantage at this time; but if it is proposed, I will at least investigate it further, and test their customer service a bit to see if it really has improved.

PayPal: We want to walk over your customers

2008-10-01T10:45:00.000-07:00

This is a slight deviation for this blog from motorcycle trips, but hey.

At work today I got this through the post:

Working in marketing, it's not unusual that I get the odd gimmick through the post, unique, clever ideas to grab my attention to a supplier of some kind. Last time it was a baby Christmas tree.

This gimmicky mailing is somewhat different, though; it's a doormat. from PayPal. Apparently they have sent them out to 2,000 UK businesses as part of their (slightly negative, in my opinion) 'Unwelcome' campaign. It was sent to my boss, and passed to me as I'm responsible for our ecommerce strategy. And they've missed the target somewhat; in the interests of full disclosure, I will now admit that I f**king hate PayPal.

Why? Because they represent to me exactly what this 'Unwelcome' doormat is meant to represent; appalling customer service, insecurity, and fraud.

And because they have the sheer tenacity to suggest to me that I let them walk over my customers like they have me, I'm having this little rant; and if I know marketing people, they'll find this in Google in a few days and find out exactly what I feel. If there is any justice in this world, other people will link to this page, and it will make others think twice about adopting PayPal for a respectable business.

(Note on the photo on the right: The leaflet is 50% recycled. How thoughtful of them! How environmental! Never mind the bloody great doormat that they've shipped to me for a one-line joke)

It is a little ironic that the doormat came to me, when I am personally banned from PayPal. I cannot use my email address, postal address or bank details there. Why, did I commit fraud? No, quite the opposite; I was the victim of fraud on PayPal.

I sold a mobile phone on eBay, PayPal's domineering adoptive father, for £300. The buyer paid using PayPal; I had no reason for suspicion. I happily packed off the phone* and withdrew the money to my bank account. But a few days later, PayPal told me out of the blue that I had a negative balance of £300. It seems the buyer had used stolen credit card details, and the rightful owner had instructed the bank to make a chargeback. Fair enough for whoever was victim of identity theft, but PayPal saw fit to charge me for this, and let the buyer get off scot free.

*Addendum: Someone told me it was my fault for not using recorded delivery. I did, actually - even got a copy of the signature from Royal Mail - fat lot of good it did.

Maybe there was more I could have done to recognise the fraud; if I was familiar with PayPal terminology I would have known that an 'unconfirmed address' is a bad sign, but a 'verified account' means sod all.

Regardless of that, though, the lack of customer support I then received from PayPal was frankly astonishing. Repeated phone calls and increasingly pleading emails fell on deaf, computerised ears - it took me a week before I got a response from an actual human. And that was no help - all they said was that I owed them £300, full stop. And when I refused to pay, they banned my account and referred the debt to a collection agency.

I tried my best to refer the case to the police, but PayPal were not interested in helping; they didn't even stop the buyer from defrauding several other people, despite my warnings.

So what could I do? I paid them £300 of my own money, which at the time I could really not afford (I had sold the phone to raise living funds), and vowed that due to the complete lack of support (or even sympathy) from PayPal customer service, I would do my best to give them negative advertising. Ever since, I have warned my friends off PayPal.

I was going to take a Stanley knife to it and cut off the 'UN' to make a conventional Welcome mat for my doorstep. But no; I've left it be, and put it outside my back door. And whenever I walk over it, I will remind myself that PayPal is unwelcome at any business or website that I manage.

Boulogne-sur-Mer, France to Cowes, UK

2008-08-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

Ian's Wanderings

Social media customer service: Reward compliments, not complaints

HP Keyboards - for touch typists only

Dear Lockheed Martin (UK Census 2011 response)

Letter to Optical Express

Letter to BBC Trust

What I won't be doing on the Plinth

PayPal: We're terribly sorry, and we no longer walk over customers

PayPal: We want to walk over your customers

Boulogne-sur-Mer, France to Cowes, UK

Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany to Boulogne-sur-Mer, France

A day and a half at the Nürburgring

Puttgarden, Germany to Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany

Ödeshög, Sweden to Puttgarden, Germany

Nybergsund, Norway to Ödeshög, Sweden

Örnsköldsvik, Sweden to Nybergsund, Norway

Luleå to Örnsköldsvik, Sweden

Harstad, Norway to Luleå, Sweden

Whale watching from Andenes, Norway

Bodø to Harstad via Narvik, Norway

Two days in Bodø, Norway, home of the best motorcycle club in Europe

Grong, Norway to Bodø, Norway, in to the Arctic Circle

Isfordjen, Norway to Grong, Norway, via the most rubbish road in Northern Europe

Førde, Norway to Isfordjen, Norway, via the most awesome road in Northern Europe

Geilo, Norway to Førde, Norway

Sand, Norway to Geilo, Norway

Munkedal, Sweden to Sand, Norway

Køge, Denmark to Munkedal, Sweden

Rotenburg (Wümme), Germany to Køge, Denmark

Zoesrel, Belgium to Rotenburg (Wümme), Germany

Cowes, UK to Zoersel, Belgium

Dublin to back home... eventually

Kerry to Dublin and all over the place

Ring of Kerry and Dingle Peninsula

Kilkenny to Killarney

Isle of Wight to Kilkenny