Waiting for the fat lady to sing: the fine art of forgetting the customer

Despite the fervent dreams of Nicholas Negroponte, the entire world has not quite come to terms with ‘Being Digital’. (Not a bad book, but one that got carried away with itself.) We do however live in a world where lumps of flesh (us) order piles of atoms (books, DVDs, electronic gismos, frozen peas and so on) over the Internet. We‘re working longer hours, the Internet is everywhere, and it’s convenient. Vendors need to ensure order fulfilment, so they often outsource this to delivery companies. So far, so good – and entirely (to use an adjective we might, to be honest, try to see less as a badge of merit) logical. Until lack of customer-focus or thinking that hasn’t adapted to the times kicks in.

Jeff Bozos, founder of Amazon, seems to understand the importance of this in the 21^st century very clearly:

If you make customers unhappy in the real world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends. “

To be entirely fair to Amazon, I have had great customer service from them from time to time. I happen to live and work just a few miles from their main UK depot: their time-honoured distribution and fulfilment channels still apply, even if it would be handy if I could simply nip in and pick the order up, but I’m not complaining about that. Once they delivered me completely the wrong book and, unable to quickly locate a queries email address, I phoned them. One brief helpful and polite conversation later, someone turned up in my office within the hour to swap the wrong book for the right book. (The right book also contained a handwritten apology, and a voucher for a few quid off my next order: ok, I was nearby, but that was still good. Gold star to Customer Services.)

Amazon, of course, allow me to stipulate alternative delivery addresses. They’ve mastered e-commerce to the extent that the goods don’t have to be delivered to the address my credit card is registered at. This is modern life; we’re busy, we’re mobile, we’re on the move. And we don’t talk to our neighbours, so we can’t get stuff left next door anymore. (Although, to be honest with Amazon, the third-party delivery service they called in during the postal strike just before Christmas who threw my order over the back fence where it lay in a puddle for several hours didn’t rock my world in what I’d consider a good way. Normal service seems, thankfully, now to have returned.)

Amazon aren’t the only ones who get it right. Ocado deliver between 6am and 11pm. Tesco can deliver your groceries between 9am and 11pm Monday to Friday, 9am and 8pm on Saturday, and between 10am and 3pm on Sunday. To quote another chief executive, Tesco’s Sir Terry Leahy: “Follow the customer, if they change… we change.”

But take this example. I order a gismo off e-bay. Nothing unusual there. I paid by PayPal. No provision for alternative delivery address, but hey ho, it’ll come via International post (from Singapore) and I can pick it up at the nearest post office when it comes. I read about the trials and tribulations of the postal system and shake my head, no matter how attached I am to red pillar boxes and convenient local post offices. It’s not ideal, I thought, but it’s 10 minutes walk on Saturday morning: that’s liveable. No such luck.

As the customer, I didn’t get a say in delivery mechanism: the third party wasn’t down to me. This was where it all went what Ocado or Tesco Home Delivery would correctly identify as pear-shaped. A certain international courier and delivery company was engaged on my unknowing behalf. Impressively, within 48 hours I had a piece of card through the door. I felt quite positive till I read it. The delivery driver hadn’t bothered filling it in, so I just had a tracking number. They would try again tomorrow, but they deliver only Monday to Friday, 9 till 5.30. (I’m at work then, earning the money to pay for gismos and delivery company overheads.) No option to deliver to an alternative address. (See previous brackets). Their office shuts at 5.30 too. (It was 7.30; they’d provided no answerphone service, no automated message service, nothing. No email address either.) I tried the website, even if I couldn’t tell it to send something I reckoned that I now owned somewhere else. It didn’t recognise the tracking number: my parcel didn’t exist. Not encouraging, considering my card had already been charged for the purchase.

I was left with three options: a) persuade my partner to drive 84.2 miles (Google Maps – a worthy online service) on a roundtrip to the delivery company’s nearest depot before 12am on a Saturday with three forms of ID, b) catch four trains and walk 2.8 miles at a cost of £10.20 and a total time of 5.5 hours to deliver myself there by train (all figures from www.nationalrail.co.uk/, which took less than 2 minutes to provide them, or c) phone them in the morning and swear at them. If they answered, of course. (In the meantime, I emailed them a complaint. Two days later, the email – sent with a delivery receipt request – has not been opened, let alone received a reply.)

Luckily for them, they were prompt, non-automated and polite. (My office colleagues were already braced to hear one end of a tirade. And not the nice end.) It could be delivered somewhere else. But I couldn’t authorise that, and neither could they. But the vendor could. They didn’t have their details; did I? Through clenched teeth, I acknowledged that I did. And breathe …

So I emailed the vendors. I was nice – they had shipped my order within minutes of receiving payment, and got it to the UK in under 24 hours. Better yet, they respond to emails, in impeccable English, 24 hours a day. And they were unbelievably apologetic that the delivery company was going to charge them $10 Sing (about £4.50) for changing the delivery address. As the cheapest way of taking possession of my possession, I acquiesced. Touching wood (the forehead of a delivery company process engineer, perhaps?), I may even receive it this week. But surely there’s a lesson or two here?

The old adage about losing control of processes and effectiveness once you outsource had been underlined. Twice, in thick-nibbed fluorescent marker pen. The vendors are now reviewing their choice of shipping agent, by the way, and still apologising – although I have no grievance with them. Tremendous price on the item, and prompt, polite service at all times. What’s riled me is the delivery company. It’s already fairly clear that ‘follow the customer’ has been stood on its head: my role in proceedings is not to be followed, but to actively pursue the item.

This is a world in which social patterns are changing: we work in multiple locations, at odd hours, and are constantly in motion – often geographically. We can hot desk, we can use VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phones where our telephone moves with as we change location. Countless companies have adapted to the changing environment. Companies survive and prosper, after all, through innovating and providing services that meet the needs of customers. They review processes and practices to ensure they remain cost effective – my one feeling of triumph is that the vendor was quoting free international shipping in the first place! – but the good ones recognise that the service still needs to be met.

I applaud companies that pioneer: it’s what keeps our world turning. The company in question’s website also makes quite a colourful song and dance about ‘a changing world’, but the customer experience has left me wondering if they’re actually living in it. Am I the only one thinking that a delivery service that can’t actually deliver is an innovation too far?