POST* Communication's Blog

It would appear that the UK’s Prime Minister (as I write this, anyway) isn’t the only person with foot-in-mouth disease. Boeing appears to have caught a corporate version of it.

Eight year old boys like planes. One of them, a lad from Colorado named Harry Winsor, was enthused enough to send Boeing a rather splendid drawing of a plane he’d designed that puts out mid-air fires. Now that’s the sort of thing that should get a warm response (sorry – bad pun) from a Boeing Customer Services manager, a couple of I Love Boeing stickers and a few smart brochures as a thank you. But no.

This is the response young Harry apparently got:

“Like many large companies, we do not accept unsolicited ideas. Experience showed that most ideas had already been considered by our engineers and that there can be unintended consequences to simply accepting these ideas. The time, cost and risk involved in processing them, therefore, were not justified by the benefits gained.”

What? At 43, let alone 8, I’m struggling with what that means. This is the sort of response for which the word “inappropriate” was invented. What on earth was going on at Boeing HQ? Clearly, someone somewhere failed to engage brain before hitting the button marked “standard reply No. 219 – print”.

Corporations could just about get away with this sort of stuff before the internet came along and made everything public. Now, young Harry’s design and Boeing’s response is up to 10+ pages on Google and a few hundred Twitter mentions. Oops.

To be fair, Boeing have responded superbly and gathered some good PR points in the process. But – yet again – it goes to show that any customer services communication now has the same potential visibility as an organisation’s above the line advertising. That means it needs the same level of investment in thinking, planning and care.

Who’d be a banker? If they’re not getting a good kicking about bonuses they’re getting rapped for poor customer complaint handling. That’s what the FSA’s been talking about this week. Apparently, according to the regulator, the banks are as good at handling complaints as Gordon Brown is at switching off microphones.

So what’s the beef? The FSA’s director of conduct risk, Dan Waters, said “While we found some good practice, there is clearly evidence of unacceptable standards of complaints handling in banks.” The reason’s simple – complaints have always been seen as an irritation rather than an opportunity. We think that’s a mistake.

Harvard Business Review pointed out a while ago what we already knew: that an effectively handled complaint turns a customer into an advocate. As the focus of financial services moves more towards retention over acquisition, that’s worth investing a little time and budget in doing. And it doesn’t have to involve paying compensation…

The FSA has criticised the banks for being too focused on cost-control when handling complaint compensation. We’d argue that this is starting from the wrong place. In our opinion, compensation is a sop and a way to avoid really handling the issues raised. Most customers would rather see a proper letter or e-mail from a human being that recognises their concerns, explains how the bank will deal with them and that doesn’t lecture, patronise, baffle or bamboozle. That’s got to be better than a desultory £20 compo cheque.

It doesn’t have to be hard either. Just auditing and reviewing the letters, standard paragraphs and e-mails you use now is a start. We suspect, from experience, the results may not fill you with joy, but at least you’ll be aware of the problem and how you can deal with it. Just making a few, significant changes to the tone of those letters, e-mails and standard paras makes the difference between customers becoming advocates or simply walking away.

I would not want to be David Cutter, Skipton Building Society’s Chief Exec, this week.  I imagine that if there was a popularity contest between Ghengis Khan and Mr Cutter, the leader of the Mongol hordes would be romping home by several lengths.

Skipton’s decision to trigger its ‘exceptional circumstances’ clause and raise its formerly ‘guaranteed’ mortgage rate from 3.25% read more »

Ever since good old Kotler, everyone knows that marketing is the whole organisation’s responsibility – from the Chief Executive to the receptionist. Some companies have got this cracked. At BMW in Bracknell, even the car park is part of the marketing effort.  Pull up in anything but a BMW and you’ll be shown to the back lot.  The front of the building is reserved for an outward-facing arc of gleaming kidney-grilles.  It’s strange, though, that Kotler’s idea hasn’t made it to the way we communicate with customers.

Marketing and operational comms – what’s the difference?

Most organisations still have a very firmly drawn line between marketing communications and operational ones.  In other words, you’ll get a well-crafted, on-brand letter or e-mail if you set off a marketing trigger, but the letter reminding you your direct debit has bounced probably hasn’t had any brand input, is barely literate and probably couched in language that last saw the light of day when Dickens was a lad.  Stuff like; “thank you for your cooperation and we look forward to resolving this matter promptly.”  But why does it matter?  That’s just admin stuff, isn’t it?

That’s exactly why it DOES matter.  Admin communications are just as much part of your marketing as the more overt, offer based stuff.  Why?  Because, like your receptionist, everyone who comes into contact with them takes away an impression of what you stand for, how much you care about them and what you really think of customer service.  And nothing shows it more clearly than the basic, functional comms you send your customers and clients.
But it’s not only the tone and brand that matters, it’s the result you get.  So much customer communication is written purely from an operational position.  People engage with your operational letters and e-mails in a way they don’t with your marketing material.

Customers engage with your operational comms in a way they don’t with marketing stuff

Operational letters have a very definite function to inform or initiate an action.  It could be anything from asking customers to call to confirm a detail to stopping them going into arrears.  That means those customers will engage with the stuff you send on a far deeper level – it’s functional.  These are also the letters you use to pass on bad news (rate rises or cuts), or changes to terms and conditions.  People may dismiss marketing material as irrelevant – but they sure as hell won’t dismiss an arrears letter or a fee increase.

Take a look at your operational stuff. Make sure you’re sitting down first

And the state of most customer communications is truly, truly awful.  Don’t believe me?  Drop your Head of Customer Services a quick e-mail asking for copies of the last fifty letters that went out this morning and I’ll bet you a decent bottle of champagne you’ll be horrified.

So who’s job is it?

Organisations tend to shy away from doing anything with post-sales communication because it doesn’t fall within anyone’s remit, because it’s too expensive or simply because acquisition (rather than retention) is thought more important.  In fact, because any communication that goes out is a marketing one, the marketing department is often well-placed to sort the problem out.  So far, we’ve found that the costs of a post-sales comms project often get met easily from cost-savings (fewer communications, better crafted) and improved retention.  And retaining customers is always a lot more profitable than finding new ones – back to Kotler again.

I was amazed to get a letter from my bank this week.

Imagine this little scenario…

You’re the marketing director of a bank.  You give a damn about your business.  You know that recruiting new investors, savers and policyholders is incredibly tough at the best of times – let alone in a recession.

So, let’s say you acquire a new investor.  They buy an equity ISA from you.  Good news indeed.  Think of all those opportunities to cross and upsell – they’ve clearly got a bit of money, so they’re ripe for protection products, maybe even a call from one of your client services representatives.

But something goes wrong – as things often do even with the best of systems.  For some reason their ISA investment gets lost.  The new client rings to find out what’s going on – and your operators aren’t quite as helpful as they could be.  So, the new client writes to your bank.

To get someone to write takes a lot of doing.  It takes a cock-up of truly gargantuan proportions.  People hate writing letters – it’s tedious, takes effort, you have to find a stamp, an envelope, trek to the postbox.  You have to be properly angry.

So there’s your new client, quietly fuming and waiting for a response from your bank.  To whom do you delegate the task of dealing with their letter?  Who gets the client services equivalent of a bomb-disposal job?  Cut the wrong wire and it’s going to go off big style.

Well, if you’re a certain bank based in “Leeds City Centre”, you’ll delegate that vital, deeply significant job to this person:

Complaints Administrator £14,786 Leeds, LS1

Complaints Administrator with extensive letter writing experience urgently required to join a large financial company in Leeds City Centre. You will be required to respond to any correspondence from customers through writing bespoke letters, experience of this is essential.

· To deliver excellent customer service by responding to high level priority/complex correspondence from customers through writing of bespoke letters.
· Taking appropriate action on accounts where special conditions are highlighted in order to maximise collections performance.

Skills & Experience

· Excellent letter writing skills to a high level.
· GSCE ‘B’ in English Language or equivalent.

Did you see that salary?  £14.7k.  And, the delicate phrasing you’ll need to defuse angry customers is so important that you only think it needs a B in English Language at GCSE?

Dealing with customer complaints is one of the most significant and important jobs in your business.  Get it right and the customer will be even happier than they were before the complaint – you’ve listened, taken action, treated them like a human being.  Get it wrong and they’ll never, ever come back.

I’d suggest that leaving the retention of your most vital asset to someone earning £14k with a B in GSCE English is like delegating bomb disposal to someone with a lump hammer.