When things go wrong with LoveFilm

LoveFilm (www.lovefilm.com) offers a number of levels of service from conventional movies on a disk to your home through to on demand download services. For movies sent to you at home this model started the death of the high street rental proposition with customers finding it far easier to manage an online list and have these sent to them at their leisure to be returned when they were ready. The thought of venturing out to your blockbuster hiring a film then held to ransom for return the next day seemed outdated. There is a flaw in the customer service for LoveFilm with this postal model. What happens if you don't get the film. If the postal service squirrels away this diamond of entertainment and is watching your cherished copy of "piranha 3DD" in a back room somewhere while you scour the TV guide for an episode of "extreme fishing" you have not already seen three times. The service is pretty simple. You get an email telling you what the film is that is on the way and you wait by your post box for it to come through. When it doesn't it would make sense for a call to action on the email for you to flag a problem. A "press this button if it doesn't who up" piece of customer support. This simple step could improve customer experience significantly. 

The experience of having your email account hacked

On a seemingly more regular basis inboxes are being peppered with viral mails from the most unlikely senders. Why would your sweet old auntie want to send you a link to make your biceps bigger with a miracle pill (and that is one of the more tame ones). The reality is that our personal email accounts are under a constant attack from computer nasties that are trying to get access to your contacts and spread their evil further through the connectivity of the web. As ever this is a strong reminder that anti-virus software is a must and keeping our online profiles secure ever more difficult. When your account has been hacked unless someone lets you know you may well be ignorant to the fact you are firing off naughty messages to everyone you ever knew. Finding out is irritating and frustrating as you have to unpick the mess and heighten your security with a password so ransom there is a good chance you will get it wrong on a daily basis. Email hacking spells pain for the foreseeable future. 

LinkedIn for social selling

LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) has dominated the professional social network space and retained this position in spite of a strong challenge from google+ to lure people away with professional circles that has failed to ignite appetite. The value of LinkedIn is widely under utilised with people maintaining a lose network that they pay little attention to with the occasional endorsement to a past colleague. But is there more opportunity?  Could individuals and indeed firms use this further?  B2B selling is all about relationships and connecting to the right people where LinkedIn can up the value of any interaction. So should firms pay more attention to the Linkedin profiles of their key sales staff? Absolutely. Using tools within LinkedIn to connect your organisations networks means that all those disparate connections can be joined and used for insights.  Finding the husband of the marketing person you are trying to contact is an ex-colleague of your boss is a relationship to get you through the door so your bosses profile could be key to developing that lead, it could be damaged by a profile picture of them in fancy dress.  This process of social selling yields much more success than conventional cold calling that delivers returns of less than 5%. We have been working in this way for many years but have we really been understanding this as social selling and improving the levers that influence this?  Not yet but we are learning and developing this further, as are linkedin who are developing this business model to increase revenue and increase the number of users beyond the current 277 million. 

The Lloyd's TSB split from a customers experience

Lloyd's banking group merged with TSB in the 90's with the two banks adopting the Lloyd's branding and products. Nearly 20 years later and the banks are now split with TSB trying to position themselves as the peoples bank on the high street although in reality coming across more as a throwback from when they were last trading. The Lloyd's arm of the business continues much in the same manner as we have been accustomed to with a slight refresh of the brand and sites. For the customers they have been dumped on whichever half of the business they were linked to from their original sort code. The net result is frustrated customers left with no choice who if they are unhappy with the deal must apply as a new customer. This choice no different to being a new customer at any branch. You can't help feel that the banks will as a result lose customers to other banks as people take advantage of the choice to look for a new bank. Epic fail. It would have been more sensible to ask customers their opinion before dumping them without a choice. 

The valentines day experience

Top 10 things to remember for a successful valentines. 

1) Don't forget. 

2) Really. Don't forget! 

3) Plan ahead avoiding the need for a garage based purchase on your way home. 

4) Go for everything and don't just limit it to a card. Throw the kitchen sink at it as more is definitely more. 

5) Juggle the rest of your diary so valentines doesn't look like number 9 on your list of priorities. 

6) Make it personal as a new Hoover while expensive doesn't really say I love you and know you better than anyone. Same goes for a gift card. Don't expect huge love for an amazon £10 gift card. 

7) Remember what you did last year as you don't want to be beaten by yourself from a previous year. 

8) Start it early. Don't wait for after work and kick it off from first thing and get the ball rolling. 

9) Don't expect anything in return. Anything you get can therefore be considered a bonus. 

10) If all else fails. There's always next year to try again!

Parcel 2 go keeping it simple

Parcel 2 go (www.parcel2 go.com) offers a great alternative to Royal Mail for parcel delivery. The service uses a website to allow customers to enter the details of their parcel and then delivers an aggregator view of parcel delivery with levels of service and corresponding costs. The services include home collection saving you the embarrassment of having to take your life size badger cuddly toy parcel to your local post office queuing with the masses with your irregular sized object. The service from parcel 2 go provides a competitive price and an improved service through home collection and label printing from home. The service could become epic if it gave a more precise time for collection than a whole day but other than this it is a real alternative to fighting it out in your post office. 

Revenge of the cookies

When using many e-commerce enabled web sites cookies are sitting behind the scenes to help you along your purchase path storing nuggets of information that make this a more fluid customer experience. An easily identifiable example of this occurring where you use a virtual basket dropping your favourites into this as you charge around the site looking for more bargains and must have items. A cookie helps your browser remember and have a memory of this as it stores this with your session potentially saving people from needing to be in a logged on state but merely a one time visitor. This genius piece of computer witchcraft came under some scrutiny when companies deployed these cookies to follow you around the internet and trigger placement adverts in later sites and provide analytics back on your interweb movements. As a result all firms have to publish there cookie policy much more openly now and ensure you opt into any such evil plotting. On visiting a site recently I found a website had such dedicated and hard working cookies that it would not allow me to remove things from the basket but kept putting then back. You will buy that polka dot bow tie even though you've changed your mind. Ha. See, it's back in your shopping basket. Now buy it!  Epic commitment from the cookie and demons in the system.