They may or may not be beneficial to your health, but stress and panic can be two of the biggest motivators around – particularly with a deadline looming. So why don’t more companies look at how they can answer these problems? As Seth Godin posted a while back, “That thing you’re marketing… Does it add to stress or take it away?”
It seems that there would be a huge marketing advantage in reducing stress and panic across every industry, but some would find it could be their biggest advantage over their competitors, particularly when it comes to markets like insurance or finance.
A great case in point is insurance. I recently needed the insurance documents for my car, which appear to have gone missing when I moved house. And I needed them fast.
So I rang my car insurers at Direct Line. By post the documents take days to arrive. And despite the fact I was personally authorising (and almost begging) them to fax me a copy, it’s against their company policy. (It might be against Data Protection rules etc, but the stated reason was company policy). So their company policy is effectively to ignore the fact a customer is asking them to fax a copy of documents showing details of that customer.
So the next step was to take a look online. Hidden on the Direct Line homepage is an option for existing customers to log in and access and service policies. Which could theoretically solve my problem.
Looking good, isn’t it?
Nope.
Because to register and use this function, I need to include an ‘Online Customer Code’. Which has to be requested and then sent, via post! And to request an online customer code, I need to use my policy number. Which wasn’t in the same location as my computer.
So despite the fact I’ve been a customer for years, and the myriad methods of communication available, I’m still relying on someone printing a certificate, putting it in an envelope, and sending it to me days after I actually needed it.
The solution?
There are lots of methods available, and I’m not a Data Protection expert. But why couldn’t I specify an email address when I first apply for insurance, and have a PDF copy of my insurance certificate emailed to me? I’m far less likely to misplace my laptop/email account than a piece of paper?
Or why not automatically register me for the online service when I set up my insurance? That way, the confirmation would be sent with my certificate (or separately around the same time), and it might prompt me to log in, set a memorable password, and then be able to access it when I really need it?
Either method, or a suitable alternative, would have seen Direct Line get a valid email address to contact me with – rather than having to post endless direct mailings to try and get my home insurance with them (It’s actually already with them, under my partner’s name!), or to take out a loan.
It would have also meant I wouldn’t have rushed around in a panic, turned the house upside down, and now have the stress and panic prompting me to think about changing my insurance company when my policy comes up for renewal. Which is actually just a couple of months away!
And I’d be busy recommending a company that had reduced my stress, rather than made me waste my time on the phone and online to find out my simple problem wouldn’t be solved.
Avoidance:
So to avoid similar feelings towards your company, ignore technology, silos, separate teams etc. And just get together at the start of the consumer/user process and think about what it is that the person will want and need, and also why they might need these things in a hurry at some point. Then just work out if there’s a way to pre-empt these problems without running into legal or Data Protection problems. If so, use it. If not, then make it clear that there is a legal reason for the stress, rather than simply ‘company policy’. Unless your ‘company policy’ is to piss off your consumers.
N:B I fully intended to give Direct Line a right to reply, but it appears you can only contact them via the postal service, or by paying the cost of phoning an 0845 number.
Max Gogarty and The Guardian – From mistake, to farce, to learning
I was ready to lay into The Guardian again, as the whole Max Gogarty controversy seemed to be missing the basic point of blogging. Besides the issues of nepotism, and class, the controversy would have been much less if blogging had been explained and implemented properly, criticism had been pro-actively responded to, and it The Guardian hadn’t decided to sulk and stop readers commenting.
We’ve had a response from the Travel Editor which concentrated on the hiring and class struggle. We’ve had a story detailing the ‘hate mail hell‘ Max has gone through. And throughout it all, there seems to be a lot of surprise about the responses to the blog, both on The Guardian, and throughout the internet.
It went viral because someone decided to close comments. For the same reason that someone banned from their local pub will probably go straight to their next nearest drinking hole, and sit their complaining about the ban. If you want to discuss something strongly, and a website won’t let you, you go elsewhere.
It got complaints because it wasn’t honest and open. Disclosure isn’t an unfamiliar concept to journalists or bloggers, so I’m still amazed it proves so difficult for corporate or company-approved bloggers to understand that hiding things are pointless. You should be honest,
to the point of stating why you can’t discuss certain topics on here. I wouldn’t blog about someone I didn’t like at work, for example, or a top secret project, because they’d be biased, or damaging to that project.
It got complaints because the only response was to close the comments. In later stories, you saw responses from someone claiming to be Max’s dad, Paul Gogarty, and also Emily Bell. And even though there was still blame on the ‘nasty bullies’, and a time limit on comments, you can already see that the nature of the comments changes slightly when there is actually someone listening and responding.
But, it seems like there is some valuable learning. Emily Bell, The Guardian’s Director of Digital Content, wrote a piece on the value of discourse yesterday, which did acknowledge the value of participation.
There is one line that worries me when she writes about ‘representative insitutions’ and mass participation : “we can shepherd refinement into this new partnership”.
Why would we want or need refinement? Do we want shepherds herding us around like sheep? Or do we just want to feel like our comments matter?