Customer Experience

My Kindle just arrived. It came in a brown cardboard box, Amazon style, except that this was a different model box from the standard ones – more classy, somehow, with its black band across one end. Tear off the strip of perforated card at one end, and the lid lifts up to reveal the object of your desire: THE Kindle. There’s something of an Apple feel to the experience – white, smooth – lustrous, even? – hard, moulded plastic inside, no frills, and the dark matte grey device nestled, pod-like, in the box. Basic instructions on the screen clearly display a diagram of the device, its USB/power cord and how to plug it in – so clearly in fact, I first thought this was printed on the protective plastic film, and so did a couple of other people I showed it to. So far this is turning out to be a rather good customer experience.

With something like reverence, I take it out of the box.

It is thin, it is light and it feels quite solid. Maybe a tad bigger than I expected – one gets so used to mobile phones – but not much. Definitely an improvement on the brick-like paperbacks I’ve carried around before.

Hiding underneath the device, a concertina leaflet – brown, recycled-like thick paper, adorned with a jumble of printed letters surrounding “Amazon Kindle” and “Quick start guide” – a very understated design – which describes getting started. Beneath this, a deeper recess holds the power/USB cable, also in a brown card wrapper. Full marks for branding and packaging.

The first surprise is that the display does not look or feel like a screen – and this was also experienced by the few people I showed the device to – both asked whether it was on or just the “dummy” print on the plastic cover. By comparison, my computer screen seems positively garish. It really is quite an amazing rendering of black and white text and images, very close to what one experiences on paper.

I’m not saying that the device is perfect. By virtue of being so thin, it takes a while to find the best way to hold it, though one’s fingers do tend to naturally be positioned over the “next” buttons on either side. Unlike a book one holds open, with both hands far apart and holding on to something, here both hands are quite close together (both hands need to be involved, since you need to press the “next” button to turn the pages). It is unfamiliar, but not uncomfortable – though this remains to be tested for an hour at a time. One solution is to invest in a Kindle cover: the drawback is the added cost and weight, but the form factor makes it more comfortable to hold, and also protects the screen from various hazards in my purse, such as keys and pens and sundry items.

The books I purchased on the Amazon UK Kindle store are already loaded, with no delay – since the device was on in the box, they must have loaded as soon as I purchased them online, over the 3G connection. I’m looking forward to reading on the Tube tonight…The actual buying process and usability of the device will be covered in my next post – so stay tuned!

A  few weeks ago, I opened the amazon.co.uk home page to find a splashy ad for the all-new Kindle. A few buzz words caught my eye – free 3G, slim as a pencil, 3500 books, read in sunlight, UK-Kindle store…having so far resisted buying one of these devices (see my earlier post) but with both a professional and a personal interest in them, I read on. Call it great marketing or just the product finally hitting my sweet spot, but I was hooked and ordered one on the spot. Seems I was not the only one: the product is already sold out pre-shipping (launch was announced for August 27) and current orders can expect delivery in the second half of September. Read more about: From sceptic to convert. I am getting the new Kindle!

National Complaints Day: The need for ‘honest listening’, re-inventing corporations and Club Penguin…

Today, apart from being Friday 13th, is also National Complaints Day. Research conducted by ComplaintCommunity suggests that over the course of today more than one and a half million complaints will be lodged across the UK.

Against this backdrop, I was fortunate enough to bring together a variety of people from the public sector, retail, financial services, customer experience and social media monitoring to discuss the impact of social media on complaints specifically, and customer service more generally. Read more about: The need for ‘honest listening’

This Friday it’s National Complaints Day. A day set aside to celebrate complaints. Who would have thought it?

Up until a few years ago, complaining, if done at all, was a closed interaction between me and a company. I could write a letter, send an email or make a call to let a company know how they had let me down. But there was a disconnect.

Organisations for the most part were not set up to treat complaints as anything other than a commodity or product in itself. The interaction was functional, prescribed, scripted. Whilst my complaint might be acknowledged, the outcome was inevitably ticketed and soulless. Where I might express a whole range of emotions from anger to frustration, to annoyance, to disappointment, even the occasional surprise, organisations for the most part were not geared up to listen, to hear, to empathise. Read more about: How will you mark National Complaints Day?

“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.” Joseph Campbell.

I read a piece of research sometime ago that looked into the different behaviour people exhibited in the way they got from one location to another. The researchers set up two different scenarios. In the first they created set pathways across a square in a university campus. In the second they created no paths and simply observed how people crossed the square to get from one location to another. Read more about: Social media customer service: Whose path do you take?

Have you ever wondered what it might be like to browse a website with a visual impairment? Or wondered how your website is perceived by a person with a vision disorder?

There are many different types of vision disorders that can affect a user’s ability to view web pages and way too many to cover off here. However, to give you an idea, I have simulated how the Foviance website homepage might look to someone with cataracts, macular degeneration, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy. These are four of the most common types of vision disorders. Cataracts is the leading cause of blindness worldwide and in the UK, 2 million people are visually impaired with macular degeneration (40%), glaucoma (13%) and diabetic retinopathy (8%) being the three most common causes. Read more about: What’s the sight of your site?

I recently blogged about the iPhone4 and hoping to be a proud owner, set the wheels in motion. After a gruelling two hours of being left on hold and almost giving up, I finally managed to place my order for the iPhone4 on 24th June 2010.  Despite this terrible telephone customer experience, the new toy was impressively delivered within 24 hours and I got my hands on it. Read more about: iPhone4 review

About a year and a half ago I wrote a short article describing the Japanese market as being the spearhead of the mobile Internet world. Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to go to Tokyo for business and see with my own eyes what their mobile technology is like.

The first thing that struck me is the type of phone Japanese users own. Read more about: Watch live TV on your phone in Japan