And the winner of the dumbest password reset award 2013 is…

Posted by alanduncan1980 on February 17, 2013

BT!

I decided to log into my BT account earlier today to check on a slight discrepancy on my bill however as I rarely log into my BT account I couldn’t remember the password for my account. I knew my username as it’s my BT email log in so I was able to go through the password reset process where I had to answer a random security question. This time it was place of birth. Success! I remembered where I was born. And ‘Congratulations’ say BT. ‘Your password reset instructions have been emailed to your BT account’.

Hang on…

They’ve sent my password to the account that I can’t access, which is why I was going through the password reset process in the first place? This is, without doubt, the dumbest password reset ever! Why not send a text message? Or a voice message to my landline? Or a tweet? I don’t really care how you do it but surely it’s not that difficult to figure out another way to give a customer their password? What actually baffles me more is that this flaw hasn’t been spotted already. I mean BT, they’re pretty big. Millions of customers etc. And I’m sure there are a fair few who fall into the category of ‘enraged of Billericay’ or ‘disgruntled of Dudley’ who complain about pretty much everything that’s wrong with the world. Why haven’t they noticed this fatal flaw and gone all Mike Skinner* over BT?

I’m going to write to BT right now. And I’m going to sign it off as ‘apathetic of North London’.

*BT’s social media response policy was effectively formed on the hop one night, when Mike Skinner was having problems with his BT Vision and was tweeting his grievance to his many followers, who responded and re-tweeted as the Twitterverse inevitably does. Cue much panic and meltdown in the BT engine room however they were able to get hold of Mr Skinner, rectify the problem as fast as possible and subsequently were praised to the heavens by one satisfied customer.

How a crap online experience cost Millets one sale (and probably many more…)

Posted by alanduncan1980 on February 7, 2013

Over the past few couple of weeks I’ve been buying items to prepare me for my Ultra marathon training however in the last week it only occurred to me that maybe I should probably buy something with which to carry life or death essentials, just in case I run into trouble along the way. I hate hate hate running with a rucksack on my back however I was sure that with the wonders of modern technology, someone would have devised an ultra light pack for the long long distance runner. So, I went to the Ultra Marathon running store and found exactly what I was looking for… for £129.

It was a little bit out of my price range so I went to Amazon to search for it there, only to discover it was more expensive. Frustrated I decided to search on Amazon for running backpacks and I found the perfect item – for about £35. It ticked all the boxes; lightweight, liquid pouch, iPod holder, so I clicked ‘buy’.

Prior to finalising the order I realised I was about to be stiffed for an extra fiver on delivery as the bag was being sold by Millets rather than Amazon. ‘Hmmm’, I thought, ‘I wonder if there’s a Millets near by that I could buy this in?’. Hell, even if it’s a couple of quid more than the online price, I’d rather pay it to get it right now that pay a fiver extra to get it in a week.

A quick Google of ‘Millets Holborn’ confirmed that there was a store five minutes walk from the office. So, lunch time on Wednesday I took a wander down High Holborn to their shop underneath Westgate House. Only to discover that there was no Millets there. There was a Blacks (we’re coming to this ok) but no Millets. So I walked down a bit further without success. Frustrated I walked back to the Blacks and decided to have a look to see if they had the bag anyway. No dice!

Thinking that I must have made a mistake, I headed back to the office and Googled Millets again however I was proved right – the store in question listed on the website as a Millets was the Blacks. Out of curiosity I had a look at the Blacks website, which, bar a logo change aside, is the same website! Only with slightly different products. But the same store locator system. Now, I’m sure there are very good brand reasons why they have decided not to align the Millets and Blacks brands but they should be aligned if they are going to claim that Millets stores are Blacks and vice versa.

Feeling really frustrated by my whole experience, I decided to search for the bag on both the Millets and Blacks site. Guess what? It wasn’t there! Fed up by the whole process, I just bit the bullet and paid a fiver more for the bag in Cotswolds.

So what should they do?

They could have started by having a bit of transparency between the brands. They are in effect the same market, and whilst I appreciate that both stores may have a particularly loyal customer base, making it clear that the product line was similar and that a store listed on the Millets website as a Millets was in fact a Blacks, would have caused a lot less frustration.

There should be a greater synergy between their online site and their Amazon marketplace site. You have to be prepared for a customer finding your product in a multitude of places, however where they find it may not necessarily be the most convenient place for them to buy it. Offer purchasing options.

Their mobile site is crap. They should invest in a better mobile site, with improved store locator and possibly even click and collect. I wouldn’t be surprised if the market for Millets/Blacks consisted of a lot of emergency purchases. Check online and reserve instore. It’s worked wonders for Argos.

Every six seconds…

Posted by alanduncan1980 on January 31, 2013

I thought there was a great irony earlier this week when the big news story surrounding the launch of Vine, Twitter’s new six second video update service, was the accidental selection of a porn clip as the video of choice of the editor…

Anyhoo…

…Vine, quite simply is the new App from Twitter and enables the user to record six seconds of video content to attach to a Tweet. Six seconds? That’s not a lot is it? Well, neither is 140 characters and that hasn’t stopped Twitter has it? What Twitter Vine actually does is encapsulate a moment. With Twitter you can update your followers on what you’re up to, but you’re going to focus on your phone for about a minute or so as you type out your Tweet. In a way, losing the moment. What Vine enables you to do is to capture that moment of passion, elation, and history, for you to share. I remember fiddling on my phone trying to capture a photo of David Goodwillie scoring the opening goal in the 2010 Scottish Cup Final or Dimitar Berbatov scoring a penalty at the Emirates earlier this season, and thinking how crap the results were.

Well, just imagine capturing that moment on video. You only need six seconds. Six seconds to capture that moment, turn to your friends and capture that elation. Yes, yes, there will be a lot of boring crap uploaded by self publicising idiots.

Like this…

And this…

But, idiots aside, just imagine capturing the moment at a gig or game, or any other event? Give me until the weekend and I’ll try and capture Berbatov scoring the winner against Manchester United on Saturday… On top of idiots uploading crap, I can see this being a great tool for brands to build engagement. Short sharp bursts of audience engagement and participation with your product? Yeah, that’s an easy engagement win.

Going somewhere?

Posted by alanduncan1980 on January 27, 2013

Finally feeling like I’m getting my head above water, so expect a few new App reviews over the next couple of days. I’ve been playing around with the updated Blippr, Summly and other assorted grammatically challenged Apps but first I’m going to share my thoughts on the updated Skyscanner App.

Skyscanner, if you don’t know already, is an Edinburgh based search engine for flights across all airline websites and helps you find the best price/ route that suits you. The App was updated in mid December and is optimised for the iPhone 5 however it works perfectly well, with a little less functionality, on the iPhone 4/ 4S and is now available in 27 languages. So, let’s get testing.

So… I want to go skiing. In March. To Switzerland. And I want to fly from London City, which if you don’t know, is the world’s greatest airport. So efficient! Just a shame that it’s fairly limited in terms of destinations. As you can see, all I need to do is insert where I want to fly from, where I want to go to, and within a few seconds Skyscanner is able to bring up the latest prices and times from all airlines that service the route in question.

And wait, there’s more. The above functionality is pretty basic and minimal however the below functionality allows you to add a few filters to your selection. So if you’re going long haul, you can minimise length of waiting between connections, select times of the day that suit you and if you’ve had a bad experience with an airline previously, filter them out of the search results.

Once you’ve selected your desired flight, just confirm your details and complete your transaction. And I feel I should reiterate the speed of the service. Look at the times of the screenshots. Seriously, 3 minutes from loading up the Skyscanner App to purchase. Pretty sweet eh? And perfect if you’re on the go. Some people might like the misery of trawling websites for flights. Not me. Some people might even like spending hours waiting for Travelsupermarket.com search results to load up. Again, not for me.

So, in conclusion, I really recommend this App. It’s really fast, clear and simple. The layout is easy on the eye however the only negative point is that once you’ve selected your flight, you have to conduct the transaction via the Airline’s own website. In this above example, I chose to fly with Swiss Air however as Swiss Air’s website is not optimised for mobile devices, you’ll need to pinch and poke on your screen to complete your transaction. But you can’t blame Skyscanner for that. Can you?

Blame the internet!

Posted by alanduncan1980 on January 17, 2013

We’re not even 3 weeks into 2013 and we’ve already seen Jessops go bust and HMV fall into administration. And that’s on top of Comet collapsing in the run up to Christmas, and other high street brands such as Zavvi and Woolworths fall by the wayside since 2008.

What caused these businesses to fail? Isn’t it obvious?

Clearly it’s all the internet’s fault!

Or at least that’s what the music industry would like you to think. There’s an editorial piece on the NME website that blames Amazon for the downfall of HMV. Really? Really really? The downfall of HMV, and in fact Zavvi,EMI and the music industry as a whole is not down to the rise of the internet behemoth Amazon. Nor is it the fault of Apple and iTunes. No, the blame lies squarely at their own door. They became too big, too bloated and so stuck in their ways that they were not flexible or adaptable to change.

Who remembers the 90′s? Do you remember what music used to cost? As a quick refresher, a CD single used to cost £3.99. A standard CD release would cost between £11.99 and £15.99! Seriously! When was the last time you paid more than £10 for a non special edition version of an album? Yes, these were the glory days for the music industry. More and more people had disposable income and record sales boomed… with record profits. And obviously the artists profited spectacularly through this period. Erm… well some did. So, who made the money? The record labels and the stores of course. And they were all powerful!

So what did they do? Absolutely nothing. By the late 90′s the internet was on the rise and flexible online retailers with less overheads, such as Play and Amazon were starting to emerge. Rather than embrace and invest in digital channels and platforms, they just stuck their head in the sand and dismissed online retailers as a dot.com fad that would eventually burst. When HMV entered the online retail space they were so far behind, with an inconsistent pricing model, and, wait for this, postage charges, they were never going to catch up.

And then they slit their own throats. Look at all those nostalgic photos of HMV doing the rounds? People browsing record stores? People listening to music at listening stations? People at instore performances and signing sessions? Clearly there is an experiential element to visiting a record store. Consumers are happy to buy music in a shop like Rough Trade, not because it’s more expensive than the internet, but because it’s such a great experience to shop in Rough Trade. So, what did HMV do? They hauled out those A-Z CD racks, moved them upstairs or to the back of the shop, put discounts and promotions at the front of the shop and filled the free space with DVD’s, t-shirts, electronic goods and games… and effectively killing the record store experience that consumers craved. And not only had the killed the experience, they had replaced the experience with products that were also dying out thanks to online channels.

I read the other day that the founders of Play were terrified of the day that HMV turned its guns on them. But the day never came. Play went from strength to strength and just days before HMV fell into administration, Play announced that they were winding down their entertainment retail offering, not because they are in trouble, but because the business is changing and Play is moving into delivering product to its customers via digital channels.

I feel incredibly sorry for the staff at HMV, and also for those who have vouchers that cannot be exchanged, but let’s face it, HMV has had this coming for a long time. If your business does not adapt to the market and the needs and requirements of your customers, your business is doomed to fail. It’s no coincidence that traditional high street retailers such as Dixons Group and Argos had a good 2012, considering the way that they were able to blend an online offering into their offline brand. The Argos click and collect model where you can pay and reserve purchases online would have been perfect for HMV. I remember browsing the HMV website about 10 years ago, looking to buy Kill Bill vol 1. It was advertised on a special offer of £10.99. Wow! I thought. I’ll just pop along to HMV and pick it up tonight. Only to discover that it was £4 more instore. Did I buy it? No, of course I didn’t. In fact, I went home and bought it on Play.com…

Ding dong, the witch is dead! Which old witch? The Apple maps witch!

Posted by alanduncan1980 on December 13, 2012

Hallelujah! Brothers and sisters! Praise the Lord! Or praise Google!

Why? Because this morning I woke up to the news that the Google maps app for iOS6 was now live! Ok, maybe a bit of hyperbole in that first line as this is not solving world hunger or Syria or other bigger issues, but for users of Apple devices running on iOS6, it’s pretty big news. Back in October, Apple upgraded the operating system for the iPhone and iPad, and killed off a few apps such as Youtube (good!) and Google maps (bad!) replacing it with Apple maps. This was not a good thing as it replaced an app that whilst not perfect, 95% of the time worked. Which is pretty good. Can’t expect a map of the world to be 100% accurate can we? However this new Apple maps. Oh dear. Non Apple users have undoubtedly heard of its Aussie killing plans, where the police in rural Australia are actually advising people against using Apple maps as it’s so inaccurate, it’d left people stranded in the bush for 24 hours. Whilst the majority of people have not been led to their certain death, like some sort of child catcher app, offering you a map to a lollipop, I haven’t encountered an Apple map user who doesn’t have a story to tell. Personally, my worst experience with the app was trying to find directions for a 3 mile journey in Brussels… where I was offered a route that was 432 miles long! So, news of Google maps = good thing.

So what does it look like?

Well, first impressions are that it cleaner than not just Apple maps but the original Google maps. It’s a lot more responsive, offers a lot more detailed data regarding what’s really going on in the world, and it’s a lot more engaging, with clearer engagement points.

It also offers far more impressive live transport information, using information from Transport for London. On the left, you’ll find directions from my flat to Brixton, using live traffic updates (however to be fair, when is London traffic not heavy?) or detailed directions for taking the tube (maybe not the best example as it’s one tube line, but it’s got great integration with TFL’s information.

Obviously it’s only just gone live, and I’ve got to do a lot of testing however it’s instantly a better experience than not just Apple maps, but the original Google maps. Time will obviously tell how successful it is in the long run, but the good news for iOS6 users is that it’s over. Hopefully never again will you be scorched in the Australian sun or directed away from Angel tube station.

In next week’s thrilling episode of my blog… will Nokia maps kill everyone?

Digital thoughts and insights