Fancy a Curry? The Morning After

I don’t really want to go into the details of curry after effect. No, best not eh. So how are things in unsolicited email land? If that sentence means nowt to you, you can enjoy the Currys experience and song here first, then pop back and continue…

After five months of trying unsuccessfully to unsubscribe from Currys email database, the first Currys blog post, song and complaint letter to the ASA went live on Jan 12th. In 24 hours the song and blog post together received just shy of 400 views.

On Jan 13th some Twitter conversation started when @dixonsdelivery made contact

dixons tweets

On Jan 15th I shared my frustration with the CEO of Dixons Stores Group Retail (who own Currys/PC World). And I contacted @dixonsdelivery. That same day I heard from the previously silent @dixonsops. Coincidence? You decide.

dixonsops tweet

I dropped a line to @dixonsops saying I think everything is under control. Then on Jan 16th I got a follow on Twitter from @MarkWebb_Dixons. I followed back on the 17th and this happened:

Mark Webb Tweets

Yep – we had a conversation, a straightforward, honest and quite enjoyable chat on twitter. Well done Mark. And have the emails stopped yet? Well I had one on Monday – nothing since – fingers crossed.

So once again the power of the song and the social web prevails. And whilst I admit I quite enjoy bashing out these songs about poor service, it doesn’t reflect well on the world of customer service when we have to go to such lengths just to make something simple happen.

 

Fancy a Curry?

Sadly I’m not talking chicken jalfrezi. Currys, the pushy high street retailer has finally pushed me too far.

Rewind to July 2011 and after seeking advice from my Twitter buddies I went shopping for a netbook. I ended up in the Currys/PC World on the outskirts of Croydon. They had the item I wanted in stock at an acceptable price. I bought it. I left, not before asking the cashier to ensure that I wasn’t added to any email marketing lists…please.

Since the date of purchase I’ve been receiving regular sales emails from Currys and PC World. Each time one arrives I click unsubscribe and their web site tells me:

Currys unsubscribe messageThen a day or two later another email arrives trying to flog me a TV, DVD player, microwave, washing machine…I click unsubscribe, they acknowledge, they ignore. You get the picture.

I put up with this for months, man how lame is that? Anyhoo – before Christmas I had a go at contacting Sebastian James, one of the company directors who has a twitter account. I expressed my frustration and asked for help. I got no reply. Maybe in the run up to Christmas wasn’t a great time to contact him so I tried again in the New Year. Nowt, nada, not a sausage. Sebastian clearly uses his Twitter account, though seemingly not to direct and help resolve customer complaints.

A few days ago I hopped onto the Stop Doing Dumb Things to Customers Facebook page and asked for help. Julia suggested that Currys might appreciate a rocket up the backside (my interpretation of what she actually said), courtesy of the Advertising Standards Authority. So today – I’ve registered a complaint with the ASA. How tedious, and if it gets Currys off my back well it will have been worth it.

I’ll keep you posted – and if anyone can suggest a suitably mischievous way I might repay Currys for persistently ignoring my requests, I’m open to suggestions.

Update: Thanks to Julia for suggesting the ICO as another place to get help with removing unwanted email

Outstanding Experience

SDDT 2011 Guests Unconferencing
SDDT 2011 Guests Unconferencing

Budd, Humap and What Goes Around helped to organise and deliver the first Stop Doing Dumb Things unconference on November 23rd. If you missed it, the next one will be on 27th June 2012 – watch this space for more details. The photo above was taken by Martin Couzins and shows some (we couldn’t fit everyone into one shot!) of our guests unconferencing.

One of our guests called me after the event and he simply described the day as “an outstanding experience”. What a lovely thing to say. We’ve been in touch with all our guests and asked them for feedback. Of course many of you have already seen some immediate feedback provided on the Twitter stream, and in the spirit of sharing and continuous improvement, here’s what we’ve learned from our guests so far:

‘I want to thank you for last Wednesday.

The whole notion, the speakers, the range of ideas and approach of the unconference. The food, the location. The organisation, which despite its seemingly chaotic nature at first, all makes sense now and I can’t fault in the slightest! Courage to do it differently. The variety in approach. The quality of discussion. The forum for airing and exploring ideas. Informal, conversational style, audience participation. Saw it more as an ideas conference – flying kites. Quirky venue, shame about the sound and the room could have had a bit more heat!

Thank you so much for being brave enough to put this type of conference on, but don’t settle there, keep pushing the boundaries.’

‘Thanks again for today’s SDDT, had an absolutely fantastic time and have so much enthusiasm to take back to my role that wasn’t there before. Already looking forward to next year!’

‘Thank you for the day, I did not know what to expect, but it was very thought provoking and I am still thinking about it as there was a lot to take in. I wished that I had taken a photo of the art; I hope that it could be photographed and sent to everyone as that is a great way to remember, a fantastic way to take minutes of a meeting…I am glad that I attended, thank you very much’

‘It was certainly different and I did enjoy myself. I hope you did too.’

‘I liked the flow of the day and the focus on the issues that people wanted to talk about, but some of the conversations in the afternoon ended up being very similar, and sometimes too definition focused. If I was being critical there were a lot of “nice” conversations i.e. people talking about the same challenges without any “well how do we change?” what do I make the changes in the organisation to make these things happen. Talking about similar issues has a lot of benefit and it’s good to talk to other professionals outside of one’s own organisation, I like to take away something about the practical actions to make change and the session that you kicked off started that, so perhaps that element could be the focus of the next meeting?

the venue was great, a non-office or hotel environment added to the day, as did the non-use of organisational names..

I thought the “Art minutes” was a fantastic idea and could really be exploited.’

‘Thanks for a great day – hope to come next year. One suggestion – maybe you could ring-fence an hour on the day for people who want to be able to facilitate discussions they want to lead. They could do a 30-sec pitch and wander off to different corners and people could come and join in. Lightening talk sessions could also be good. Although I felt the collaborative approach worked in determining the topics, it did feel that the conference missed some straight forward presentation with Q&A. Finding a way to empower people (as some interesting people there) to share what they want, how they want, would be good. I did find it surprising on the day how restricted many of the attendees were in their place of work and lack of buy in to the customer experience within the wider business.’

‘I really enjoyed the unconference. The opportunity to meet so many like-minded people was really great. In your own environment you can get really blinkered, and fresh ideas can seem to come rarely. I left SDDT with so many fresh ideas, so much future hope and real inspiration to help more people discover a facilitative, autonomous approach to tackling issues. I gained some great advice and contacts.

You’ve been a real inspiration, thank you for having and helping me. I really hope I can come again next year!’

‘Thanks again for an inspiring day last week.

Never been to an unconference before, and I am quite shy/outside my comfort zone at these sort of events (I am really a techie – should explain everything). The people made it – but then in hindsight I think you can’t go wrong at an unconference about engagement – you’ve got people attending who want to engage about engaging…. After the first table of the world cafe I knew I was going to enjoy the day.

1) World Cafe at the beginning was very good for getting into the swing of things. I enjoyed that. At one point the table I was sat on we weren’t too sure what the aim/question was – I think it was a result of each of us having had different discussions/perspectives – and last table I sat at I think we were taking the conversation more where we wanted to (I think). Which was fine (and interesting).

2) I joined the measurement and feedback discussion and it got hard to hear the discussion – I think just because the size of the group especially if someone was more softly spoken. But also the group was probably too big because the discussion was dominated by a few although most others did join in. There was no leader/chair and I didn’t have the confidence to chair the talk. There was some good stuff covered, and some not so relevant to me (goes with the territory, it’s fine), but our summary was weak and I came away feeling like good conversation, interesting, can I remember any of it? Little nuggets…

Thinking about expectations – I wanted to hear what was on others minds, so the “not so relevant” was more than fine. As we frequently say about our work/clients – we’re low down the list of priorities to our clients, and the whole day was really useful just seeing the bigger picture, various things that don’t get discussed between our client and us when it comes to them saying “I’d like to do this customer survey…”

One other expectation. I expected more H.R. people present, but I think it was more customer focused? As we found out on the day, engagement means so many things to different people!

3) Lunch very good. Happy with the produce, quality, quantity, format…
4) After lunch – what works was the weakest. It might work better next year if some of us are prepared for this sort of session – e.g. little things we can share that have worked for us/our clients?
5) The 10 minute problems session was surprisingly very good. I feel I helped the people I conversed with, and I asked a genuine question that sort of arose during the day. I felt not alone, and good karma!

Other things. The cartoonist was a nice touch, fun, curious to see at work. Also the twitter feed (essential these days). I think your communications before the event were good and helped prepare us. I would really like a list of names/companies/twitter contacts who attended (I didn’t give out my business card but I think I should have – my naivety(!) – there were a couple of conversations that I’d like to try and pick up and I thought I’ll find so-n-so on LinkedIn or Twitter. It’s not that easy!) – that’s a lesson for me next time.
What did you get that you expected to get? Different perspectives, better understanding from the company viewpoint (rather than my service providers pov)

What did you get that you did not expect? More than anything, confidence.
What didn’t you get that you expected?Nothing (I didn’t expect a lot)
What did you learn that you can use? What others struggle with – we’re thinking hard about – how can we take account of that (their challenges) in feedback and measurement (help them solve those challenges). I don’t think I can explain this in an email properly! It’s sort of intangible.

Overall, excellent. Consider my response to have ticked the top box or given an NPS score of 10! I’m keeping the 27th June free.’

We think we helped to do a good job and we know we will do even better next time. If you attended or listened in via Twitter and you would like to add further feedback, we’d love to hear from you.