Iain @ Internet

I was shocked today to read this …..about the death of Nick Givotovsky, age just 44.

I first met Nick, along with Mark Lizar, over many beers, in the Sun in Splendour pub in Notting Hill – a few years back. His views were very aligned with mine – and since then every contribution he has made to the Identity and VRM discussions has been rich and perceptive.

Here’s just one example quote:

‘I believe we need explicit, uniform and enforceable and yes, universal rights to our own user-related data. Not just for purposes of privacy, but so that individually and collectively we can use our leverage as rightful owners of what are in fact valuable assets to obtain and enforce a much better “digital deal”, not just for us, but for others not (yet) directly addressed here, who will have to deal with the consequences of our collective (in)actions.

There are indeed technologists fully qualified to architect the infrastructure to enable a better, more equitable, reciprocal, transparent and accountable digital realm, and they have to a large extent already built the tools and system. Now, the application of that prospective infrastructure to systems and services with the potential to change “the digital deal” from the user-centric perspective is what’s needed, and I hope, what’s next.

Going forward, the formulation, creation and assertion of binding identity rights agreements in the context of “leverage” that in turn drives change enabled in the market by market forces is the most pragmatic, short path to something better than a-shrug-a-click-and-a-sigh privacy statements.

It’s exactly the implementation of such use cases to which I think the most beneficial and productive (though not always the most immediately profitable) effort can and should be devoted. We all need a better, fairer, more accountable and credible digital deal. If we are to be “digital citizens” should we not also know the real “digital deal”? Thoughts? Words? Deeds?’

Wonderful stuff – which we’ll now deliver on; unfortunately Nick won’t be here alongside. My thoughts are with his wife and familiy.

Iain

Here’s a nice post that touches on the Mydex social enterprise i’m working on with Alan Mitchell and William Heath. Nice to see we are getting noticed..

We seem to be getting a bit closer thanks to these findings from Germany…

The need for default opt in is described in more detail in the ‘reinvent direct marketing’ paper available here.

I would not even attempt to keep up with the wonderful job the Open Rights Group is doing of providing running commentary on Discgate.

But I would like to compare and contrast the 3 main privacy ‘scandals’ of the last few weeks in order to show the need to manage the problem at both overall level, and at specific component level.

To do so i’ve completed a ‘remote’ Trust Index assessment of Facebook, Sky TV and HMRC.; remote = that which I can assume or glean from outside the organisation.

The three scores are shown below:

Facebook

Sky TV (UK)

HMRC

As we see, this exercise shows that the organisations that organisations may score broadly the same on The Trust Index – but have significantly differing dynamics within that score.

Beyond that, we should not that scores below 50% on the index are poor anyway. Unless organisations are scoring a minimum on 75% on the index then they are not trying hard enough and are allowing other business factors to override their respect for the personal data of their customers .

When O2 first announced that they were to be the first UK mobile operator to have the rights to sell iPhones and contracts, there was a lot of debate as to whether they had paid too much in terms of revenue share they’d have to give to Apple.

I actually thought that they’d do well from it, irrespective of the relatively high share they were giving away. My logic was based on that they were likely to be acquiring ‘happy customers’, i.e. customers who, on average, would be advocates – of the phone and by default of O2, until such time as their exclusivity runs out. As input to that, I had considered the USA launch, noting that despite locked phones, the post launch price cut, and relatively poor mobile service from AT & T, the vast majority of existing customers are still massively positive about the device – and sales figures continue to look good.

I even pondered for a moment that O2 might have taken this acquisition of happy customers into account in their calculations and that they had figured out the ‘net promoter’ impact to show an overall positive return. Of course that would therefore mean that O2 were in full control of the launch plan, had designed the perfect customer experience around it, and all they had to do was hit the on button on 9th November……and that was where my assumptions seem to have fallen apart.

Consider what has actually happened in my case:

- I am a long term O2 contract customer, on a reasonably high tariff, and they regularly tell me how important I am to them, and how I have my own special ‘select’ number to call if I want to talk to them.

- When the iPhone deal was announced I phoned them up to see what the deal/ options were going to be; their answer…….go to our web site and have a look, we can’t tell you anything over the phone.

- Fair enough I thought, their call volumes will be very high so I can understand their logic, although I thought the might have a programme to allow existing customers to talk to someone.

- As time went on, there were no more details announced, so I thought I’d phone up again to have some specific questions answered. On that call, the penny dropped for me….there is no designed customer experience, or at least not a good one, there is no segmentation in place that differentiates between existing and new customers…..and that the all my thoughts about O2 acquiring advocates were about to fall by the wayside.

In fact it’s worse than that – the 1600 minutes I have stacked up in credit with O2 will disappear if I merge my existing account with an iPhone account. So as an existing customer it costs me more to switch to an iPhone than it does for a new subscriber. And when I then look at how I come to have 1600 minutes built up, I realise that the O2 proposition that supposedly keeps me on the right tariff is not worth the paper it is written on

So – what does that tell us (other than that I will need to spend most of this week on the phone to use up my credits)? I think it tells us that:

1) O2 are going to miss out on the chance to buy/ convert a load of high value, customers who could improve the advocate balance of their customer base (which according to Reicheld is the only metric that matters).

2) That there is obviously some weirdness going on behind the scenes in which O2 and Apple, whilst partnering, are squabbling over the customer experience – and Apple won.

3) That there is a strong danger that O2 will negatively impact trust and quality of relationships in that segment of their customer base that is already a loyal customer, and which switches to an iPhone.

Come on O2 – you’ve got 3 days to at least notice that you have ignored your existing customers. You seem to be able to send me text messages about all sorts of irrelevant stuff – how about one about my iPhone and how to avoid losing my credits????

Saw this today on one of the marketing newsletters – what a farce…..

Direct Line has come under fire for using misleading comparison figures on its website.

A table comparing competitors’ rates with those for Direct Line’s direct access savings account showed rates for Halifax, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide and Abbey that were a year out of date.

Direct Line was alerted to the error when it was contacted by a tabloid newspaper. The table has since been removed from the Direct Line savings website and the gaffe has been blamed on human error.

This embarrassing blunder comes at a time when Direct Line is running an advertising campaign claiming that price comparison websites are unreliable.

The Financial Services Authority states that all financial promotions must be “clear, fair and not misleading”.

I was trying to renew one of my domain names that was bought originally through this lot. Despite sending me e-mails regularly, their customer log-in (which uses e-mail) refused to recognise my e-mail address so I could not get in to renew.

So….I had to then phone them up at a cost of 10p per minute. After 40 minutes on hold I got through to Peter – he said that he had to look up some information and that he’d call me back after 2 the next day – by which point I had one day left before the domain expired. From our discussion, I had very little confidence that this call-back was in fact going to happen – so I checked with Peter who re-assured me that he would indeed call back the following day to progress.

……guess what…..no call back. Thankfully I then found a way to renew the domain through the reseller I use who have an account with 123reg.

Needless to say, any business I have with 123reg is now about to be shifted.

This ongoing court case over bank charges looks set to rumble on for a while – although I don’t see how any can doubt that the bank charge regime quoted was based on excessive profits.

The much bigger issue, I suspect, will be this – the UK Information Commissioners investigation into practicies within Barclays call centres. There must be a lot of call centre managers panicking at present – Barclays are unlikely to be the only ones whose practices merit investigation.

This article just begs to be read time and again…..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6476155.stm

Mis-selling is ‘rife’ at Barclays

By Amanda Egbujo
Undercover reporter, BBC Whistleblower

A nine-month investigation by BBC reporters working undercover in a leading British bank has revealed a culture of ruthlessness and lies which will shock their customers.

Barclays says that it treats customers fairly

BBC1′s Whistleblower

With a touch of glee, my bank trainer told a classroom full of call centre trainees that he “loved” getting customers complaining about bank charges.

“They’d phone up, start crying and blaming you and telling you their kids are going to starve. And I’d be like, ‘I don’t know you – I don’t care’. I was just thinking ‘you’re not getting it back’. I was a right git.”

This was an early insight into how life might be working inside a Barclays call centre in Doxford, Sunderland.

I have been undercover in one of the top British banks for the last five months – and it has been an extraordinary experience.

I’ve seen customers misled, lied to and treated with contempt.

I’ve seen people charged for financial products they neither asked for or knew they had.

And in a separate investigation I’ve also seen evidence of bank employees working with criminals to commit fraud.

People know we are a good bank, we’re trustworthy, we do the right thing, we treat people with respect
Barclays spokesman

All this in an industry which claims it operates to the highest standards of care and trust.

At the call centre in Doxford I was one of 1,800 people who work day in, day-out selling Barclays’ products.

Staff often gave the impression that customer service lay at the bottom of everything we did. But that wasn’t always the case.

The lie began the minute we got through to the customer. “Hello, my name is Amanda Egbujo and I’m an account consultant.”

I wasn’t anything of the sort of course. I was employed as a “sales adviser”. But as one of my colleagues told me: “You have to lie a lot,” if you want to get into the call for long enough to start selling.

Yet banks are supposed to operate under strict rules imposed by the Financial Services Authority to prevent customers being misled.

‘Cynical attitude’

But this cynical attitude to sales – and to customers – permeated every aspect of my work with the bank – both in the call centre and later when I transferred to a high street branch of the bank in Guildford, Surrey.

As my trainer Simon Pickergill said: “I hate it when they say the customer is always right. It’s just ridiculous. Someone was stoned when they made up that policy.”

Remember this isn’t just anyone, this is a man who Barclays had chosen to teach us, the bank’s new staff, how to behave.

Barclays, like most banks, has a system of targets and bonuses to encourage its staff to sell.

I hate it when they say the customer is always right. It’s just ridiculous
Simon Pickergill
Barclays’ trainer

I saw the effects of the ruthless target-driven environment.

In just four weeks in my branch, I saw one of my colleagues break down in tears because of the pressure to sell and I heard about another from a different branch being suspended, accused of a series of misdemeanours – including moving more than £200,000 from one customer’s account to another, without permission, purely so he could get commission.

Mis-selling seemed to be rife.

One manager admitted that the bank’s “Additions” accounts are one of the “most mis-sold” products in the bank.

Additions’ accounts can cost around £150 a year, in exchange for which the customer gets a range of benefits.

They are worthwhile for some customers, but even more worthwhile for the bank – raking in tens of millions of pounds a year.

To encourage us to sell them we are paid a bonus of £10 for each one we sell.

The problem is that if the customer already has an account with us they don’t have to sign for the new account.

And as the manager explained it often happens that staff, under pressure to sell, simply give the customer an Additions account without telling them and many may not notice the extra charge on their account for months.

‘Not representative’

Indeed just a week after that manager described this to me, I was there when an angry couple came into my branch complaining that just that had been done to them.

Just a few weeks ago Barclays announced record profits of £7 billion.

What I saw there makes me feel very uneasy about how they made at least some of that money.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6476155.stm

In response to our allegations Barclays Bank said: “We are not in the business of encouraging or condoning mis-selling or inappropriate sales in any way whatsoever, and we stamp on that when we find it because it is completely inappropriate behaviour for a bank.

“We pride ourselves on being a responsible institution that puts its customers first.”

It added: “People know we are a good bank, we’re trustworthy, we do the right thing, we treat people with respect.

“I don’t think what you’ve seen is any way representative of the way in which Barclays does business, and I’m sure our millions of customers would tell you exactly the same thing.”