Thoughts in Time

JOIN THIS FACEBOOK GROUP: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12256012493 

IKEA told me that the only way I can complain or possibly get compensation for getting mistreated is by writing to some address in the UK.  That’s no fun, I’d rather find everyone else who IKEA has treated this way and get us together through Facebook.  If you’ve been treated poorly by IKEA, join this group - or if you just want to show a big stuffy corporation that doesn’t value service that customers do matter and that it might be worthwhile to listen to customers rather telling them they “need to write to blah blah UK to register a complaint”, JOIN THIS GROUP- http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12256012493
The rest of the story….

IKEA had told us they would deliver our cabinets on Tuesday(for the first parts of the story see here, here, and here).  Remember, I ordered this stuff in the middle JANUARY.  On Tuesday, we never got the delivery, and finally were told that “they were at your place at 7:30AM, but didn’t know which flat the raised ground floor one was and were afraid to ring the wrong bell so they left” -

Are you serious?  How incompetent can one company (or it’s outsourced delivery reps) be?  So, Kellee called them and  they promised that they would then deliver our order before Saturday, or at the worst, first thing on Saturday (before 9AM).  It’s now Saturday at 5:20… Do we have the order? Of course not.

At about 3, I get a call from DHL saying IKEA has moved the order to some other courier (no reason known).  Sorry, they can’t tell me who or what’s going on - I have to call IKEA.

I call IKEA.  The girl says “I don’t know why your order is being switched from courier to another - there aren’t any problems on your route” - I run out of pay as you go minutes on my Orange phone, and thus get cut off.

top up phone minutes (remembering that IKEA has cost me something like 10-15 pounds between the times I’ve now spoken to them through this drama)

I call back.  A new girl asks me to hold on while she finds out what’s going on. Remembering the pence ticking away as I’m on hold, I respectfully decline, asking her to call me back.  A couple minutes later, I get a call back. “Don’t worry, all the orders will be delivered tonight, including yours. They’re just running late.”

Me…” So, you expect me to sit around all evening as well?  I’ve got family visiting from the US and wanted to take them out.”

“her - I really do apologize”

At this point, I started asking for compensation.  She said they can’t do anything beyond giving me the delivery cost back (which they already had done when they messed it up last time.  I said that wasn’t good enough. I asked to speak to a supervisor.  She put me on hold and came back saying the supervisor said that’s all they can do.

At this point, I was getting very agitated.  I ask again to speak to the supervisor. I’m told I can’t do that.  I ask for a supervisor’s name -I’m told I can’t have it.  I’m told that what I’ll need to do is write to their customer response team (they mistreat customers so often they have staff dedicated to this!)… I try to explain my position to the rep in a way that personalizes it…”what if IKEA told you to come in to work today at 9, had you sit until 5, then said - oops, we don’t need you, we’re not paying you, and your only recourse is to write to some office in Ipswich”… She says - “sorry, I can’t do anything else”.

This is where I explain that I can. I can write about it online, I can start a facebook group, I can become a pain that is going to cost them well north of whatever compensation they could have provided (I would have been happy with even a 50 pound voucher). She has nothing to say, so I hang up.

So here I am - IKEA, you are the first company to make me a determined detractor. I will share this story with anyone who cares to listen, and it has gotten me so annoyed that not only have setup a facebook group, but I’ve budgetd $25 towards buying ads on facebook to spread the word about that group.  That’s right, your service has been so bad that I’m choosing to spend money to tell people how bad it is.  And all this could have been avoided with some reasonable service and someone at IKEA taking responsibility when things did go badly.

I’ve worked with Edelman with Higher One, and have great respect for them as a company.  It’s amazing the business the family and management have built.  I have been privileged to know Renee for a while, and finally got to meet Richard at this event in Mayfair.  I only hope that a company I help found will have such long lasting success. Congratulations again!

VC Adventure: Clarity

I couldn’t agree more with this post. Business to business marketers are notoriously bad about this.

Bill Mosher,founder of echoonline.com - a company that’s similar to BzzAgent, presented the results of their work with Dust Bunny. Although the data had a small sample, there was one result that was particularly interesting. The netpromoter score (NPS) calculated from people who participated was negative 32 (-32). However, when they looked at the reports from participants, the polarity of 75% of conversations was positive. This seemed strange. As they analyzed the actual reports, what they hypotesize is that the negative net promoter score came from the fact that the product didn’t deliver on its advertising message (cleaning everywhere easily), but the positive polarity came from the fact that consumers found cool new uses for the product (cleans hard to reach places really well) that they were excited about sharing. It would be interesting to see if by changing just the brand promise (marketing messaging) for the product, if the NPS would go up.

EDIT - I said echoonline - I meant Echopinion and echopinion.com (as Bill pointed out in his comment). Sorry Bill!

Just got this from a friend… Massive Multi-Player Real World Games (MMRWG) are going mainstream through Amp’d mobile…

PhoneTag coming to Amp’d Mobile

PhoneTag is coming to Amp’d Mobile. The upstart MVNO which targets young users is working with LivePlanet, the company behind Project Greenlight, to release the multiplayer game that combines video action and real life to its users.

PhoneTag uses location-based capabilities, mapping and messaging to create the game. Players have to capture a specific target by getting close to it without getting captured by another player. It’s a war of attrition – the last player standing wins. Players will be able to enter games set up by Amp’d, set up private games for their friends, or enter tournaments.

Users will pay a flat monthly fee that hasn’t yet been determined. LivePlanet will be looking at in-game advertising opportunities to generate additional revenue. They will also be looking to license it to other carriers.

The game will be released in the second quarter of this year.

For the first time I saw two ads that actually encouraged consumers to do independent research on their products. The first was for GMC trucks. They encouraged consumers to confirm their claims by visiting Kelly Blue Book online at KBB.com. The second was Pontiac. They encouraged consumers to “Google” “Pontiac” and find out for themselves. They even showed a screenshot of the google homepage with “pontiac” in the search box!

I had never seen this before. Essentially the companies where saying, “trust us - go do the research and you’ll find that what we said in this ad is true.”

Recently in the advertising management class that I am auditing (taught by Dina Mayzlin), we discussed product pricing, online price comparison services, and search costs. Car purchases are significant and consumers are willing to do research to find the best deal. Studies have shown that informed consumers have lowered dealer margins. It’s interesting to see companies encouraging consumers to do online research. Perhaps it’s a case of if you can’t beat them, join them. They know consumers will do the research, so why not encourage it and build brand trust and hopefully increase market share… Interesting to see if this becomes a trend.

WOMBAT #1.10

Check it out… Word of mouth is a big part of Higher One’s ongoing success.

Spot Runner : Here’s how it works.

This is a very interesting concept forwarded to me by Miles. Word of Mouth supporters as well as interactive marketers claim that Mass Media is dead, but here is a new way of reaching people through traditional mass media - but in a highly targeted format. The democratization of TV advertising? Is this a good thing? It will be interesting to follow this trend.

Recently, as we were launching our program with East Carolina Univeristy several students found some innacurate information on the web about Higher One and started spreading it around campus. I was confident that by delivering on what we promised through our program “Faster access to their money,” ultimately students would embrace the program as they have at our other clients. Through communication with students, and the assistance of students on campus who were part of our B-4 program we were able to help educate many students and address the misconceptions prior to launch. However, many students still remained skeptical of the program based on the fear that had been created. The program has launched succesfully, and students got their money faster than ever before. Almost instantly we started to receive positive word of mouth. Here’s an example from a student oriented bulletin board site:

PAVLOV63070
campusblender.com
Veteran
139 Posts
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edit post I got my money today. Which is 2 days sooner than what I was told
1/6/2006 4:15:08 PM

phreaky dave
partyeastcarolina.com
Beer Me!
8451 Posts
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edit post ^Please don’t let that become a connotation that Higher One is good.
1/6/2006 4:28:16 PM

PAVLOV63070
campusblender.com
Veteran
139 Posts
user info
edit post I hated them at first just as everyone else; but they came through. I feel I may have jumped the gun in not giving them a chance.

I received an email from a friend that many people have probably received. “Is this true? I really hope not…”It asked. Below was a forwarded email talking about how Osama Bin Laden was identified by Ollie North at his hearings as being evil and that north had suggested the US assasinate Bin Laden. With about 20 seconds of research I was able to ascertain that the email was not even close to true. North did not mention Bin Laden, but rather Abu Nidal, and certainly did not suggest an assasination. Further the email claimed that the questioner was Al Gore - again, not true at all. But here was someone I know is smart forwarding me this message, very willing, in fact kind of wanting to believe that it was true.

This got me thinking more about the power of word of mouth and star wars. This will sound funny, but if WOM is “the force” that is the most powerful persuader of people to believe in a cause, buy a product, or choose one service over another, then there are certainly is a dark and light side to “the force”. Because we are much more willing to accept, and trust information that we receive from a friend, colleague, or contact WOM is a powerful engine for spreading false rumors. Fast Company, in their cover article on blogging really honed in on this fact. When a rumor is circulated and spread from person to person, blog to blog, people are willing to accept it with almost no research. When an authority (newspaper, company the rumor is about, person who it’s about, expert) refutes the rumors, they are almost universally questioned. The information that comes from a friend is accepted as true with little or no fact checking while the information from a source that has everything to lose if they lie is questioned… This leads to an interesting dicotomy. Companies like Higher One use WOM in our advertising, work with an organization like WOMMA to define a code of ethics, and use it and promte it to others. Individuals do not have this code, or any sort of governing mechanism. There is the essence of an idea here - at least for blogs. Perhaps what we need is better self regulation. We need a “personal WOM” code of ethics, and then an enforcement mechanism. Since blogs seem to be a way that the dark side of WOM gains a lot of power, perhaps a plug-in / truth / community rating tool is what’s needed. There is more here, but understanding how powerful WOM and it’s dark side is a good start.