Events
Customer Service - why the future is BEGGING you to get it right today
Wednesday 24 November 2010
Another stream of consciousness on the customer service theme that I come back to frequently. If you've ever received one of those scam emails from say 'the past Minister of the Immigration and Business Department in Nigeria' seeking your assistance at repatriating funds for which you'll be paid a fortune, or those other scams claiming to be from your 'bank' or other financial institution that start off with 'Dear Sir/Madam' or 'Dear Customer' and go on to ask you to log into your account to address security issues or issues to do with freezing of funds, along with the veiled threat of penalties should you choose not to act, then you know how tiresome they can be. And today I received one that started off with 'Dear Customer' and contained a threat of action regarding suspension of my account. 'So what's the problem?' I hear you asking yourself. Well...
The problem is that this email was NOT from some spam merchant or scam merchant or phishing expedition looking for suckers - it was from an actual 'customer service' department of a genuine business here in Australia. To which I've responded requesting additional information:
1) Proof that they are who they say they are; 2) An indication that they know my name; 3) Details that would enable me to address the issue they say I have.
I couldn't email them directly as their initial 'spam/scam' email set up was from a 'do-not-reply' email address (one thing that suggests this email is probably genuine -scammers really do want you to reply to them) and I had to find another email address from their website to stick in the reply address.
I then received an autoresponse email saying they'll get back to me within two days. I'll give them a bit longer and if they haven't responded by them will tell you who they are, as well as suggesting other ways they are making it VERY hard for their customers to do business with them, which you can use as a thumbsketch of 'what not to do when business is tough' as part of your Customer Service Excellence file. Because if you don't get your customer service right, later or sooner you won't have a business to worry about
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Events
Tuesday 8 May 2012
Have just spent a few hours discussing the Future of Money, hosted by James Bibby at Microsoft in Sydney and facilitated by Peter Vander Auwera from SWIFT/Innotribe. I'd like to flag that everyone understood that the session was way too short for such a big topic and everyone would agree that we just scratched the surface (not that the scratch would leave too much of a mark just yet). The session was a kick start for a group from a wide variety of interests: banks, payment providers' IT specialists and some specialty consultancies.
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Wednesday 2 May 2012
Ernst & Young and GreenBiz have completed a survey of business executives looking at the development of Corporate Sustainability around the world. The report shows that there has been a clear rise in awareness; that employees are a core source driving sustainability actions; that reduction of costs is a core appeal and that return on investment in sustainability actions is required to be judged in the same way as other corporate investments. For me this poses a dichotomy of thinking - the environment was built up over millennia and our use of it has taken just a couple of centuries yet we judge sustainability actions at the same 'speed of delivery' criteria. That poses a challenge and is perhaps an unrealistic set of expectations.
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Tuesday 24 April 2012
On the eve of ANZAC day here in Australia ABC Radio Darwin's Vicki Kerrigan chats with futurist Marcus Barber on the future of war - what the future triggers of war might be and how war will be fought
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