Comments for Blog

Comment on What would you do if you only received one complaint a year? by Huntswood

Huntswood — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:50:24 +0000

I think this is a really valuable perspective on customer complaints. The challenge is, if you have thousands of complaints, rather than just one, how do you deal with each complaint in this individual, intensive and time consuming way?

John Howard, Huntswood Advisor

Comment on Great Ormond Street, Kayaking and Corporate Social Responsibility by White water rafting in kolad

White water rafting in kolad — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 07:31:04 +0000

Good initiative by Paul and David .

Comment on The UK Consulting industry – buying trends update by Christian Fielder

Christian Fielder — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:11:35 +0000

Very useful and informative. Thank you, I would be interested to know the related facts for change managenent as a service line.

Comment on Huntswood’s Favourite Kayaker, Paul Wycherley, Fires Up by Huntswood celebrates as Olympian employee breaks cross channel world record attempt and raises £100,000 for charity. « Blog

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:40:48 +0000

[...] The promotional video for Paul Wycherley, Huntswood employee and 2012 Olympic hopeful has been released. The video shows images of Paul’s training, and aims to encourage donations towards Paul’s and Huntswood’s Cross Channel Challenge, in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital and The Prince’s Charities. Click here to see the video. [...]

Comment on Empower employees to deliver a dynamic customer experience by Tarek Reda

Tarek Reda — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:03:43 +0000

I agree, the companies’ communication strategies should be centered around customer experience. Nice post.

Comment on Empower employees to deliver a dynamic customer experience by Néstor Montoya R

Néstor Montoya R — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 02:31:25 +0000

Very good way of analyzing the issue, an interesting case study.

Comment on Is energy mis-selling the next PPI? by John Howard

John Howard — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 12:57:22 +0000

Sadly too many firms still don’t see that fair treatment of customers is a business bonus.

Social media and the internet are already active with numerous websites prepared to name and shame bad firms but the problem is getting compensation when things go wrong. Simply producing bad publicity itself won’t always get you a credit to your bank account, especially if your attempt to get publicity on the web is lost amongst thousands of others. So there are still roles for regulators and ombudsmen.

On the ‘banking’ or ‘just society’ issue I do think the banking collapse and the PPI case have given regulators the confidence to be much more intrusive than before because the politicians got so upset about it and the public were clearly outraged too.

Comment on Is energy mis-selling the next PPI? by Graham Luckett

Graham Luckett — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 08:29:47 +0000

All regulated business in all sectors will increasingly feel this, be it FS, Energy or whatever.

It’s not a consequence of the banking crisis or the PPI scandal as the correspondent says. It’s societal. Or, put another way, it’s just how it is now.

Generation Y has been brought up in a world where things like the blame culture and consumerist attitudes prevail. Social media (it only takes one voice and it’s viral) multiplies transparency by factors we probably can’t even comprehend yet.

In the coming years compliance strategy and customer strategy will converge (why isn’t it already the same?). The frankly rotten business practices subject to these types of scrutiny will not prevail. Not because of the current wave of regulatory intervention and tougher supervisory approach. It will be because customers are increasingly aware and will not accept such behaviour.

Customers will deal with someone they trust. Businesses need to work this out quickly and put their hearts and souls into doing a good deal for their customers. The businesses that win in the future will care, they will be transparent and they will communicate to their customers (and their customer’s friends and contacts) in the huge social media space. If they don’t, they won’t hear what’s being said about them, won’t be able to do anything about it and won’t be able to tell their side of the story. The banks left PPI to rumble on says the blog – nowadays the customers will walk and the business will be irrevocably damaged long before Mr Lewis, swiftly followed by a new breed of tough regulators, arrives to finish the job.

Comment on FSA Will Ban Detrimental Products by John Howard

John Howard — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 08:34:05 +0000

David the Granny test is a good one as long as the person is not prepared to sell their Granny for a profit. A variation of this would be, “If I was the buyer would I buy it?”, which then cuts out the Granny sellers. In fact what appears to be the new FSA test, “Is there any detriment associated with this product?”, although more prosaic than the Granny test, seems to be expected to catch all unfair sales.

Comment on FSA Will Ban Detrimental Products by David Physick

David Physick — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 16:04:24 +0000

Perhaps a simpler and more honourable approach would be that used by a colleague at Barclays many years ago. Any product development proposal was subject to his “Would you sell this to your Granny?” test. As the significant majority love and respect their Nans, anything dubious about the product was quickly ironed out. A more prosaic factor is the financial services industry’s old philiosophy of “My word is my bond”. So, “Buy this product, you’ll be covered” would always be a factually correct and emotionally valid. Having high personal regard for Huntswood, I hope these themes remain pure genetic constituents of your advice to clients. If not, you have become part of the problem rather than its vaccine.