Let me first of all say that I have no particular axe to grind in this. If a company botches their customer service horribly, they deserve to be punished. However, in this case I think Mercury Energy should be left alone.
THE STORY
In Mangere, Auckland, New Zealand, on Tuesday May 29th, power company Mercury Energy cut off a customer who weren't paying their power bill. However, one of the occupants, a 44 year old woman Folole Muliaga, was on an oxygen machine that ran on electricity. Without it she was at risk. Three hours after the power was cut off, she died. Emergency services were unable to revive her.
So Mercury Energy, and the poor bugger that cut off the power, stand publicly admonished for "killing" this woman. The Prime Minister and other people with a complete lack of perspective are publicly criticising Mercury's actions.
There are multiple versions of the facts floating around about how clearly the family pointed out the risks to the contractor. The contractor says he had no idea of the implications. The family says they made it crystal clear.
SOME REALITY AND PERSPECTIVE
Rather than get into any sort of debate about subtleties like duty of care (which clearly lay with the family), I would like to point out some of the actions the family could have taken in the three hours between the power going off and her death.
1- run an extension cord from a neighbour to plug in the machine
2- take the machine and Folole to a nearby house with power
3- call emergency services immediately
4- obtain a system that requires no power (gas cylinders can drive themselves)
5- take the number 327 bus to Middlemore Hospital
One could readily list a large number of less likely preventative measures, including paying the bill on time, having a backup oxygen system on hand in case of power failure (which could easily last for three hours), a portable power generator, and so on.
An uncle paid the power bill the next day.
So, amongst all this fuss and bother, suing the power company for something that is utterly preventable is completely ridiculous. Other examples would be:
1. Suing a water company when you leave your baby in the bath, unattended.
2. Suing a gas station when you run out of gas, because they should have squeezed more petrol in the tank (or perhaps the car manufacturer for not making a larger gas tank)
3. Suing the postal service for delivering a letter containing bad news.
I could go on forever. I do not believe that public sympathy is remotely in line with what is being reported in the press.
Some questions:
a) Is Mercury Energy a healthcare provider or a charity NO
b) Could they have assumed the family would take some mitigating action YES
c) Was the death preventable? YES
d) Who had the most control of the situation? The Family!
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Internet Service Providers
People usually get ADSL, aka "broadband", to get faster access to the internet. Not surprisingly, if the speed of the connection drops, you want someone to do something about it.
I notified Xtra that my line speed had dropped to 192kbps. It took 12 hours to get an automated response, which informed me:
"Your email has been forwarded to our Xtra Technical Support team. Due to the high volume of emails the Xtra Technical Support Team is currently receiving, we may not be able to respond to you for up to 5 days.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused, and appreciate your patience. If you wish to call the Xtra Technical Support Team directly, please call 0800 22 55 98, option 2, option 1, option 1."
Having spent enough time on the phone in customer service hell, I would not remotely consider calling them.
It is not five days since I received that email. Five working days.
I wonder if anyone has ever considered the fact that the very name ISP includes the words "service provider". In itself, that could be considered a breach of the Fair Trading Act.
There seems to be a widespread view by most large companies that losing a few customers isn't the end of the world because they have plenty of others. Tell that to Pizza Hut.
Still, I shouldn't complain. I know someone who was told by their technician to reset their router to factory settings then hung up on them. Not a great result.
I notified Xtra that my line speed had dropped to 192kbps. It took 12 hours to get an automated response, which informed me:
"Your email has been forwarded to our Xtra Technical Support team. Due to the high volume of emails the Xtra Technical Support Team is currently receiving, we may not be able to respond to you for up to 5 days.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused, and appreciate your patience. If you wish to call the Xtra Technical Support Team directly, please call 0800 22 55 98, option 2, option 1, option 1."
Having spent enough time on the phone in customer service hell, I would not remotely consider calling them.
It is not five days since I received that email. Five working days.
I wonder if anyone has ever considered the fact that the very name ISP includes the words "service provider". In itself, that could be considered a breach of the Fair Trading Act.
There seems to be a widespread view by most large companies that losing a few customers isn't the end of the world because they have plenty of others. Tell that to Pizza Hut.
Still, I shouldn't complain. I know someone who was told by their technician to reset their router to factory settings then hung up on them. Not a great result.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Goodbye Sky
With the arrival of Freeview, a digital tv broadcast in NZ, I did not see the point in paying Sky TV $20 per month just in case I wanted more. I called to cancel, and they told me I had to give them 28 days notice (what a complete crock). Apparently that is buried in the terms and conditions I have never seen.
Anyway, since I attempted to cancel the service, I have received two rather feeble letters from them. The sentiment expressed in them is "we miss you, what went wrong" in a really cheesy way. I don’t really see the point in sending me such mail when the only contact method mentioned is the 0800 number. As an about to be ex-customer, I can’t imagine why I would want to ever call that number and try to find a real person that actually remotely cared about why I have stopped. The very concept seems quite ridiculous.
I think they need to consider whether these awful win-back attempts are producing results other than the opposite of their intention. It is exceedingly close to harassment.
Anyway, since I attempted to cancel the service, I have received two rather feeble letters from them. The sentiment expressed in them is "we miss you, what went wrong" in a really cheesy way. I don’t really see the point in sending me such mail when the only contact method mentioned is the 0800 number. As an about to be ex-customer, I can’t imagine why I would want to ever call that number and try to find a real person that actually remotely cared about why I have stopped. The very concept seems quite ridiculous.
I think they need to consider whether these awful win-back attempts are producing results other than the opposite of their intention. It is exceedingly close to harassment.
Friday, April 6, 2007
When Charities Get It Wrong
Got a call today from the Westpac Rescue Helicopter at work. At first the chap wanted to ask me some rather odd questions, like was I in the city and what my address was. I was a bit suspicious and asked a few questions (because he could have been a potential or existing customer). Given the nature of my work, I don't really have time to tell complete strangers my life story.
He instantly got a bit stroppy, which seemed very odd. He then told me where he was from and what wonderful things they do. I tried to slow him down pretty quickly and said that donations from us were unlikely to be forthcoming because we do our bit in other ways. He got more stroppy. I then asked him to remove our number from their list because such calls cost me money. His response was that he got our phone number from the phone book, and if we didn't want to be called we should remove our number from the phone book. How absolutely bizarre.
So here's a free tip if you want people to give you money for nothing:
- if you are asking for money, don't shine a light in the donor's eyes and ask them irrelevent questions;
- wasting the time of the potential donor is unlikely to be productive;
- being offensive and suggesting that they don't publicise their details for potential customers to avoid vacuous, rude, time wasting beggars, isn't a winning strategy.
Whilst I am sure the Westpac Rescue Helicopter is a worthy cause, their methodology for getting funding needs serious attention.
He instantly got a bit stroppy, which seemed very odd. He then told me where he was from and what wonderful things they do. I tried to slow him down pretty quickly and said that donations from us were unlikely to be forthcoming because we do our bit in other ways. He got more stroppy. I then asked him to remove our number from their list because such calls cost me money. His response was that he got our phone number from the phone book, and if we didn't want to be called we should remove our number from the phone book. How absolutely bizarre.
So here's a free tip if you want people to give you money for nothing:
- if you are asking for money, don't shine a light in the donor's eyes and ask them irrelevent questions;
- wasting the time of the potential donor is unlikely to be productive;
- being offensive and suggesting that they don't publicise their details for potential customers to avoid vacuous, rude, time wasting beggars, isn't a winning strategy.
Whilst I am sure the Westpac Rescue Helicopter is a worthy cause, their methodology for getting funding needs serious attention.
Monday, March 5, 2007
Return on Investment for Parents
I admit that this isn't strictly a customer service topic. However, if you consider children and their parents as customers of schools, sporting clubs, and other activity providers, then a poor ROI could be considered poor service.
Parents these days are busy people. Some are busier than others, some are just not very interested. Either way, Schools (in particular) and sports clubs need to bear this in mind when placing demands on parents.
If we use some basic economic theory, the following points are clear:
- if parents attend an event and get to see their child singing/dancing/ speaking/ playing/ running/ swimming sufficiently, they are likely to attend a subsequent event;
- if parents attend events, their children gain in self-esteem and often perform better at that even and in other areas;
- if they leave an event having been bored silly with sales pitches and dull speeches, or their child is on stage for three minutes in a one hour show, they are unlikely to return;
- if their child is a reserve in a sports team, and they get very little game time or possibly no game time at all, the parent may pull the child out of the sport completely, or possibly change team or club.
There is an accounting concept for measuring the value gained from a project, called "Return on Investment" (or ROI). If we take the time when the child is doing their thing compared to the time attending the event we get a percentage. Some events display an exceedingly low ROI for parental support. Some examples include:
- a dance show of two and a half hour duration where the average dancer is on stage for less than ten minutes (6.7%);
- a swim meet that takes four hours and a swimmer enters two events, and even if they make the final of both they are in the pool four a total of less than four minutes (1.6%);
- a school performing arts showcase where three classes perform, each for half an hour, and each class has about eight kids performing at any given time (9%, including taking a bow);
- a rugby match where rolling substitution is not allowed. A squad of 19 with 15 on the field. The four subs get between 5 and 20 minutes on the field towards the end of a 55 minute game (9-36%, sometimes 0%).
- cricket matches are tricky, because involvement depends heavily on the role in the team, but batsmen that go out early and don't bowl basically spend about four hours in the field and three hours fifty five minutes annoying people waiting for their batting innings to finish (could be 1%, 2% or 52% depending on how you measure the fielding. Could go as high as 75% for an all-rounder who bowls a lot and bats the entire innings).
If a parent considered their available time to be a scarce resource, and the return on investment of the above events, they would not be incredibly keen to continue supporting such events.
Astute parents might also consider the cost of taking part in a given activity, if it does cost, alongside the time return as well. High cost activities such as dancing could therefore suffer even more so.
Compare these numbers to the following:
- a soccer match, a squad of 14, with 11 on the field at a time, playing 55 minutes in two halves with rolling substitution (and assuming you arrive half an hour early for warm-up) (48% even if you measure their field time over the duration of the whole 90 minutes, 78% if you don't count warm-up).
- a tennis match, where you show up for their matches, which occur with an hour gap in between two hour long matches (66%).
Assuming that the greater good requires us to encourage children to take part in a wide range of activities, then the ROI for these activities needs to be considered.
One might assume that someone who comes up with such concepts has too much spare time on their hands. In my defence, I would like to say that it came to me whilst sitting there watching everyone else's kids do their thing while I was waiting for my own child's moment in the spotlight. Many of the examples above are completely accurate, from my own experience.
Am I being selfish? I don't think so. I think this is common sense and more relevant than ever in the days of two working parents and mind-bogglingly busy children.
Parents these days are busy people. Some are busier than others, some are just not very interested. Either way, Schools (in particular) and sports clubs need to bear this in mind when placing demands on parents.
If we use some basic economic theory, the following points are clear:
- if parents attend an event and get to see their child singing/dancing/ speaking/ playing/ running/ swimming sufficiently, they are likely to attend a subsequent event;
- if parents attend events, their children gain in self-esteem and often perform better at that even and in other areas;
- if they leave an event having been bored silly with sales pitches and dull speeches, or their child is on stage for three minutes in a one hour show, they are unlikely to return;
- if their child is a reserve in a sports team, and they get very little game time or possibly no game time at all, the parent may pull the child out of the sport completely, or possibly change team or club.
There is an accounting concept for measuring the value gained from a project, called "Return on Investment" (or ROI). If we take the time when the child is doing their thing compared to the time attending the event we get a percentage. Some events display an exceedingly low ROI for parental support. Some examples include:
- a dance show of two and a half hour duration where the average dancer is on stage for less than ten minutes (6.7%);
- a swim meet that takes four hours and a swimmer enters two events, and even if they make the final of both they are in the pool four a total of less than four minutes (1.6%);
- a school performing arts showcase where three classes perform, each for half an hour, and each class has about eight kids performing at any given time (9%, including taking a bow);
- a rugby match where rolling substitution is not allowed. A squad of 19 with 15 on the field. The four subs get between 5 and 20 minutes on the field towards the end of a 55 minute game (9-36%, sometimes 0%).
- cricket matches are tricky, because involvement depends heavily on the role in the team, but batsmen that go out early and don't bowl basically spend about four hours in the field and three hours fifty five minutes annoying people waiting for their batting innings to finish (could be 1%, 2% or 52% depending on how you measure the fielding. Could go as high as 75% for an all-rounder who bowls a lot and bats the entire innings).
If a parent considered their available time to be a scarce resource, and the return on investment of the above events, they would not be incredibly keen to continue supporting such events.
Astute parents might also consider the cost of taking part in a given activity, if it does cost, alongside the time return as well. High cost activities such as dancing could therefore suffer even more so.
Compare these numbers to the following:
- a soccer match, a squad of 14, with 11 on the field at a time, playing 55 minutes in two halves with rolling substitution (and assuming you arrive half an hour early for warm-up) (48% even if you measure their field time over the duration of the whole 90 minutes, 78% if you don't count warm-up).
- a tennis match, where you show up for their matches, which occur with an hour gap in between two hour long matches (66%).
Assuming that the greater good requires us to encourage children to take part in a wide range of activities, then the ROI for these activities needs to be considered.
One might assume that someone who comes up with such concepts has too much spare time on their hands. In my defence, I would like to say that it came to me whilst sitting there watching everyone else's kids do their thing while I was waiting for my own child's moment in the spotlight. Many of the examples above are completely accurate, from my own experience.
Am I being selfish? I don't think so. I think this is common sense and more relevant than ever in the days of two working parents and mind-bogglingly busy children.
Monday, October 2, 2006
Store Open Now!!!
Picture a sunny Sunday morning. We needed some swim togs in a hurry. The Henderson Rebel Sport store was very close to the West Wave pool, so we popped over to get some at 9:30. It was shut. Steel roller door down. Big sign above the door saying "open now".
We figured maybe they opened at 10am, so we hung around. Other stores opened. We saw no action at Rebel. Five past ten we gave up.
After the swim session, I returned, it was open. The sign saying the opening hours was prominently displayed in the window, conveniently located in a place where it can be obscured when the store is shut. This is a classic touch. Tell the customer when you are open, but only when you are open (when they could clearly work it out for themselves, and ask a salesperson if they were that interested). It reminds me of my favourite quote from Tom Peters:
"God help you if you are open when the customer is around."
Later, I went to their web site to see if I could establish their opening hours. I couldn't.
POST SCRIPT
I checked the site again, if you check on the individual stores in the store locator you can now tell when they are open. Interestingly, the opening hours for Sunday are now from 9am.
We figured maybe they opened at 10am, so we hung around. Other stores opened. We saw no action at Rebel. Five past ten we gave up.
After the swim session, I returned, it was open. The sign saying the opening hours was prominently displayed in the window, conveniently located in a place where it can be obscured when the store is shut. This is a classic touch. Tell the customer when you are open, but only when you are open (when they could clearly work it out for themselves, and ask a salesperson if they were that interested). It reminds me of my favourite quote from Tom Peters:
"God help you if you are open when the customer is around."
Later, I went to their web site to see if I could establish their opening hours. I couldn't.
POST SCRIPT
I checked the site again, if you check on the individual stores in the store locator you can now tell when they are open. Interestingly, the opening hours for Sunday are now from 9am.
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