Shortcuts
Posted: Tue 30 September, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky, Thoughts Leave a comment »When Firefox 3 came out, one of the things they trumpeted about was the ‘intelligent address bar’. In short, when you typed in a web address, it also checked through your history and bookmarks in order to save time typing – if you’d been there before (in the duration of the history) then the site name would come up.
Until recently, I found this quite annoying – if I wanted a site called (for example) the admin section of one of my sites, and started typing the first two characters of admin, I didn’t want to know that I could also go to D4D’s Add a post page, or Norfolk council’s Adult education page.
But I’m slowly coming round to the function, and seeing where it can be useful – well, so long as you set up the bookmarks correctly in the first place. For example, if I want to look at the news from one of our local papers, I don’t need to remember that it’s at the (fucking stupid) http://new.edp24.co.uk URL, I type in EDP and lo, Firefox has got it there, ready and waiting.
It’s not perfect – but I’m starting to see the use of it. Now if the bookmarks have been titled properly/usefully, I can type in a shortcode that actually works. (And of course I have to remember that, for example, my internet banking is done at RBS, not just by typing in banking, or internet banking – well, until I edit the bookmark, anyway)
Pharmcist vs. GP
Posted: Thu 25 September, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts 3 Comments »Another survey, another news story filed under “No shit, sherlock”.
Today’s gem is that apparently staff in a pharmacy don’t give advice as good as a GP, and gave ‘unsatisfactory’ advice in one-third of the cases. (Which might sound impressive, but let’s not forget that’s only in a sample of 101 pharmacies)
But it’s hardly surprising, is it? At the end of the day, the people selling the drugs in a pharmacy are shop-assistants. That’s it. They’re not health professionals – in fairness, they’re not even health amateurs – and anyone with any common sense wouldn’t treat them as if they were. Asking a pharmacist/ (Edited, as I was wrong to say pharmacists) pharmacy assistant for medical advice (one scenario in this test involved a customer saying they’d had diarrhoea for two weeks since being abroad) is the equivalent of asking a member of staff in Tescos what the best diet is.
As always, if you ask advice from amateurs you should expect to be misinformed. Simple as.
At Long Last
Posted: Sat 20 September, 2008 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Domestic Leave a comment »We’ve finally received confirmation from Anglian Water that we are now allowed to use our water again.
This farce has only been going on since mid-April.
About fucking time.
Vindication
Posted: Fri 19 September, 2008 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic 1 Comment »Sometimes (as I’ve said before) you get a customer services call, and you just know that it’s going to be fun. (You may also want to hover over the links to see the full URLs for them. Up to you, of course.)
Today’s example:
“Hello, is that [Lyle]”
“Yes”
“A couple of weeks ago, you called Anglian Water. Do you mind answering a few questions about that?”
[rubs hands in glee]
“Not at all.”
“Ok. Now, what did you call Anglian Water about?”
“I called because Anglian Water had sent me the half-yearly bill for water rates. Considering Anglian Water has insisted that we can’t use their water now for six months, I thought that was taking the piss. So I called the customer services people.”
“Ah. And did the call go through immediately?”
“No. Once we’d gone through the AVR system, the phone rang for a good ten minutes before getting answered.”
“Oh. And was the customer services person helpful?”
“No. In fact, he was so sarcastic, I lodged a complaint about him with his supervisor. Who, in fairness, has been very very good.”
“Ooookkkkkk. So would you say that Anglian Water‘s customer services handled the call well?”
“Well, that depends. If it were any other company, I’d say that their handling of the call was abysmal. But with my experience with Anglian Water, I’d say that this call was about normal.”
“[laughs]. So you’re not a fan, then?”
“Put it this way. I currently think Anglian Water‘s sole purpose on this planet is to give estate agents someone to look down on.”
“OK, thanks”
“You’re not going to put that on the sheet of paper, are you?”
“Oh, I have done. Thanks, you’ve been very entertaining.”
Organisation of the Festering Season
Posted: Wed 3 September, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Festering Season, Getting Organised 3 Comments »Today, I’m deeply deeply traumatised. We’re already organised for what’s happening on Christmas Day – and that’s a truly depressing thing to have happened by September 3rd…
It had actually started being discussed on Sunday, and then on Monday we got a brochure from the place we went to last year. A quick email of the menu to other interested parties, and it was agreed that we really should go back – everything had been really good last year, and everyone had come away deciding that it was a really good way to do the Festering Season.
So I called them yesterday, and it’s all booked. Of course, we still have to pay for the bugger, but this way we don’t have any of the late-November “Who’s doing what, where, and when?” discussions and last-minute plan changes as well as all the stress of anyone having to be up at 6am to start off cooking etc.
All the same, it’s pretty depressing to have got this all in place in September. I swear I’m never this organised usually…
Pants
Posted: Thu 28 August, 2008 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Cynicism 1 Comment »On the BBC today, this story of a man who found his phone banking password had been changed made me laugh.
Pissed off with the twunts at Lloyds TSB, the man changed his password to (a remarkably tame) “Lloyds are pants”. And someone within Lloyds changed it to “no, they’re not”. Even better, he then wasn’t allowed to change it back, and wasn’t allowed to have “Barclays is better”.
“The rules seemed to change, and they told me it had to be one word, so I tried ‘censorship’, but they didn’t like that, and then said it had to be no more than six letters long.”
Now if it were me, at that point I’d have chosen “Fkwitz” and insisted that it was my great-grandmother’s maiden name. But then, I’m malevolent like that.
Also, no-one has yet raised the issue that actually, it looks like Lloyds TSB staff can see your entire password. Which isn’t particularly secure, is it?