Koen’s blog

De immens populaire dienstencheques van Sodexo hebben een ongelooflijke feature: ze geraken nooit op!

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Elke maal dat ik met de spoorwegen geconfronteerd wordt, ben ik wat op mijn hoede. Ik ben wat je zou noemen geen verslaafde spoorreiziger, eerder een gelegenheidsgebruiker. Afgelopen week kwam er weer zo’n gelegenheid. De E19 afgesloten, de N26 afgesloten en wegenwerken op de E40 waren voldoende argumenten om me nog eens op de trein te laten stappen.

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De Standaard heeft de communicatie met haar abonnees de laatste weken een flink stuk verbeterd. Dat gaat, zoals vele ontwikkelingsprojecten, gepaard met wat kinderziekten. Eén ervan was dat ik de eerste dagen geen toegang kon hebben tot de nieuwe portal.

Sinds vandaag is dat euvel opgelost en ben ik dus blij gaan rondkijken naar alle nieuwe features die ik als abonnee heb. En toen voel mijn oog op het zinnetje “Ik wenst mijn abonnement te hernieuwen…”, waarmee de online-redactie van De Standaard nu ook meedingt naar de DT-fout van het jaar:

So, as I told in my previous post, it became obious that I would not have a smooth return home from Dublin. It turned out however, that the situation of my terminal 5 expirience was just about to begin.

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Have a look at my current itinary:

hope to get home tomorrow… maybe…

We beginnen het jaar met een woordje van advies (Lees: de Koen heeft zich laten vangen) : wanneer je klant wordt bij Telenet voor hun digitale televisie, komt daar automatisch een gratis abonnement voor twee maanden op Prime (het digitale film- of sportaanbod) bij.  Echter, indien de klant niet binnen de twee maanden aan Telenet laat weten dat hij dat niet wenst, wordt dat automatisch omgezet in een jaarabonnement. En dat opzeggen kan alleen door een boete te betalen, of het jaar uit te zitten. 

Toen ik vandaag aan de operator zei dat ik dat moeilijk kon geloven, wist zij me te vertellen dat alle advisors aan de klanten zouden moeten vertellen dat dit zo is. Pech dus wanneer je advisor dat vergeet… Geen andere keuze dus dan mijn jaar verder uit te zitten.

Oh ja, en de leukste? Toen de vriendelijke advisor mijn opzeg (die binnen een dikke vier maanden ingaat) had genoteerd, vertelde ze me nog doodleuk dat ik best de dag nadien (dus de eerste dag waarop ik geen abonnee meer zou zijn) nog even terugbel  ”voor de zekerheid”. Ik herinner me niet dat iemand me belde toen ik ineens voor lange termijn klant werd van Prime, zelfs niet voor de zekerheid. 

PS: kan iemand eens aan de owners van het ticketbeheer-systeem van Telenet duidelijk maken dat een case-nummer als “CO80103326xxxx” nogal moeilijk noteert?
 

The Fred Factor is a rather small book that gives the details on how someone can, by its own motivation, get the extraordinary out of something rather common. The book gives an explanation of how the behaviour of someone can change when and if they commit to it. Some of the topics in the book are rather obious, but re-reading them every once and a while makes one reflect again on how we sometimes can go the extra mile and make a huge different.

We all have values. This book is about making sure that we don’t forget about these values when we are doing our job. Let’s all care and have a little Fred in us..

This book is worth the reading.

Koen

The Fred Factor: How passion in your work and life can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary

Tags:
customer service,
motivational,
motivation,
business,
success,
self-improvement,
leadership,
book,
Fred Factor

Hi all,

I’m back on my way to fly to another destination today. The trip leads us to London, where Gartner is hosting the yearly summit on collaboration, portals and content management.

Portals, Collaboration and Content Management

For an innovator and technology scout as me, Gartner is one of those opportunities to discuss parts of our research and the outputs we’ve received in the contacts with our customers over the past months.

All organisations have increased needs when it comes to collaboration, portals and alike. Most companies still struggle to keep up with the rapid changes in these fields. We’ve been very successful over the past years in building practices with customers, to deliver added value in collaboration to their customers, and this conference is one of the many reflection points to ensure that we are still on track.

I participated to this same conference last year and had some good updates there, so it is clear that expectations are high. I’ll keep you posted here and in our customers’ community.

The delay

The trip itself started with a strong delay in Brussels. While I am writing this blog, our British Airways Airbus 320 is parked on an outside stand on Brussels International Airport. When the plane was pushed back and the crew tried to release the plane from the small vehicle that pushed us back, it turned out to be impossible to disconnect the plane from the pole that makes the connection.

The head of the cabin crew announced that the best way to live this delay was by opening the bar. So the crew is now busy serving us a drink. The pilot announced that the engineers brought in the big hammers and it turns out that, if flight control is not dramatically changing our flight pattern, we will get to London with a little over an hour of delay.

It was a relief to be updated by the crew in such a consistent manner. We had an update from the flight deck on the status, planned actions and consequences to our timing. In the (literally) hundreds of thousands of air miles this year and the associated delays, this one could serve as an example to many other airline companies. To complete a tma (tutor marked assignment) for my MBA, I was looking for an example in customer service and see… delivered. (Dear people at BA, don’t see this as an invitation to have me live any more delays, even if I appreciate the care-taking)

I’ll enjoy my free drink, sit back and hope that I’ll be soon enjoying the journey!

Koen

Tags: travel,
BA,
British Airways,
technology,
flight,
delay
Customer friendly,

Oh, have you heard the story that an unhappy customer will tell it to 9 others? As I think it is not more than fair to tell it when it’s really bad, I think the customer services experience that left us with a thrilled and positive sensation, deserves a place here as well.

This story is about our last stay in New York. We stayed at the W Hotel on Times Square.

The second day of our stay, V suffered from a major flue and a jetlag. She had to stay in bed while I had to attend some meetings. So we called housekeeping so we could arrange a fixed time to clean our room. After explaining the situation, the housekeeping manager came up to our floor and discussed possibilities with me. He showed a real will to help and accommodate as much as possible. The maid that cleaned our room really took care of things in such a way that V was as less as possible interrupted, but still serviced very accurately.

This same day, a few minutes after the cleaning was done, V received a phone call in the room from the room service people. They had been informed that she wasn’t feeling OK and asked if she would be helped with some soup and toast. This was exactly wad she needed at that moment.

It’s great to know that there are still some people in their job that puts the little extra in the execution. And that’s even more appreciated when one is suffering from fever in a strange hotel bed!

The W Hotel

Most readers of the blog (and everyday there seem to be more of you tuning in here) know that I have a rather strong emotion against bad customers services. So I would like you to be part of my latest customer services encounter, as promised yesterday:

Preface

As we knew that we would have less than 22 hours between our arrival in Belgium coming from New York and our departure to Madeira and anticipating that fact that we would be exhausted by the jetlag and the flight, we decided to spend the night at the Sheraton in Zaventem. This way, we didn’t had to worry about dinner, could sleep as long as possible and be assured that someone would wake us up. We had done this before, much to our comfort.

The check-in

At check-in, we encountered the first issue: there was no reservation for us. The Starwood Preferred Guest program changed it website recently and checking on current reservations wasn’t possible. Fortunately, the lady at the reception was kind enough to understand the issue and to arrange us a room. Issue solved. During the process of checking in, we had the wake-up call (at 4 o’clock in the morning – brrr) confirmed. We knew that room service was available 24/7, so we headed to our room.

The key

I must have had some very bad vibes that day, because once we arrived at the room, the key would only show a red light when inserting it. After trying a few dozen times, I went back to the reception. The lady at the counter checked the key, re-initiated it and I was back on my way to the room. The key gave me the infamous red light again. So I managed to call the reception to get some assistance. Thanks god that our key worked after more than 100 retries, because the person that was on its way to “immediately” assist us, never made it to our room.

The red burger

As it was getting late now, we choose to eat light and to get some sleep. We ordered a burger and some toast. I’ve been cooking some burgers in my life, but I’ve never managed to get the same result as did the night cook at this hotel. The burger was black (looked and tasted like coal) on the outside and red (raw meat) on the inside. Can someone please inform the gentle staff at this hotel that taking a frozen burger on then overheated grill might return some unseen results? Anyway, I wasn’t overeating that night and it was getting too late to have another one ordered … so we went asleep.

The not so waking up call

At a certain point, I woke up and looked at the television set in the room, which carried a clock. When I realised the time mentioned was 05:06, my heart stopped beating. Our plane was supposed to leave a little after 6 o’clock. I pushed V till she was awake as well and in less than 15 minutes we packed, went down to the ground floor, collected our stored luggage and pointed at the check-in-desk in Zaventem. I’ve been irritated by some lack of service in the past, but missing this easy wakeup-call makes it in my top three.

The service after

After passing security in the airport, I called the reception from my cell phone to tell them we had checked out and that I was absolutely displeased by the lack of basic services. The experience was completed by the response I had on the phone after explaining why I was annoyed with Sheraton. The man on the phone just said: “Oh, you have checked out already. Did you have anything from the minibar, sir?”

This ultimate unexpected response left me baffled.