Customer Experience

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…

Rumours of the Apple iPhone4 have been circulating for months and for so long I’ve been waiting to make my free phone upgrade worthwhile, I’ll finally get my hands on an iPhone. Now the launch date has arrived and I only have a few more weeks to wait.

So, what are some of the new features of iPhone4 that are going to be so special? For me forward facing video calling, is going to be a really good feature (in the main). A number of my close friends live all around the UK so being able to actually see their faces when we chat will be a real bonus and make them feel much closer. This is great. But, I don’t want all my friends, family and colleagues to be able to utilise video calling. Read more…

I took the  iPad home for a few days and carried out some basic usability testing and below are some of my findings:

• Connect to my wireless network. All fine, except main CTA (after writing password) was amongst letters and looked equally grey)
• Watch YouTube videos – Eddie Izzard – great experience with the iPad sitting on my legs, picking it up every so often to show my husband who could also participate at a distance.

Read more…

Recently, I had to make a BACS transaction so I rang my bank and made the transfer of funds without any problem. However, within a few minutes, my mobile started to buzz – it was a text from my bank confirming the BACS transaction. My first response was surprise, as my bank had never contacted me this way before. My thoughts then turned towards security, wondering if this was some sort of scam or SMS advert. Read more…

Welcome to your latest edition of the Foviance newsletter. This issue sees the whole team mobilising to gain a more footloose and fancy-free perspective on the customer experience.

Frank Ma, our man in China, offers a fascinating insight into the mobile state of play in his own vast marketplace. Chris Holmes takes Apple’s latest toy home for the weekend but fails to be seduced by its good looks and charming first impressions. Jamie Barnett examines why Betfair is odds-on to turn its first-to-market mobile betting advantage into solid returns. And finally, Guy Stephens explains why ‘on-the-go’ points to a bright new future for customer service.

I would be very interested to hear from you directly with any feedback.

Paul

In this issue:

Mobile habits made in China

My weekend with the iPad

Gaming cuts loose

Customer service ‘on-the-go’

Of all the idioms, my favourite is the Law of Unintended Consequences (LOUC) – which basically states that when solving a problem, no matter how thorough your thinking and planning, there will always be outcomes that cannot be anticipated or conceived. It is sometimes known as the Streisand Effect, where the attempt to prevent the publication of an article or photo of little or no interest suddenly makes it vastly more interesting and appealing than it ever would have been if no one had made a fuss. Read more…

Even if you’re not a Facebook addict or regular Twitter user, you’ll know how difficult it is to escape social media. Why? Because social media is revolutionising the way that people consume content.

Social media is opening new channels of communication between brands and customers and there is a lot of potential in the social web that marketers can tap into. For example, a study earlier in the year by Penn State University showed that 20% of all tweets mentioned a brand name. Sales and marketing professionals need to be aware of these significant media consumption trends so they can tailor and target their messages as effectively as possible across a changing landscape. Read more…

Anyone else miss this? In January this year Google announced that hackers had managed to steal information from their computers, but they were pretty vague on the details of what was actually stolen. It has recently been revealed that the hackers managed to get their hands on something pretty significant: Google’s password system, called Gaia, which controls access by millions of users worldwide to all of Google’s web services, including email. Read more…