Improving our customer services

on 11/03/2018

Today we went live with our new customer services system.

It’s a very Kanban-ish with all the tickets visible, each ticket having a status and states to move through (open, waiting & resolved), each ticket having an owner which means only one person can work on it at any time, and tickets having an SLA which serves to limit the work in progress.

The new system will help the eight people across three sites involved in customer services to be more coordinated in how they help customers and achieve our principles:

  • Shared: We all work together to give the customer the best experience of the BHF. Customer experience is everyone’s responsibility.
  • Speed: We want to provide the fastest route to resolution for the customer.
  • Satisfaction: We want the customer to feel satisfied with the resolution, keep the relationship intact and maintaining the reputation of the BHF.

Objectives are good. Outcomes are better.

Roger on 10/03/2018

The objective is to vacuum the living room carpet. The outcome is to have a clean living room floor. If you focus on achieving the objective you can vacuum the living room badly and not achieve the outcome. If you focus on the outcome you are more likely to achieve having a clean living room carpet and give you scope to consider other solutions like laminate flooring or a rug.

Weeknotes #83

Roger on 09/03/2018

What happened this week…

  • Discussed the nest steps of selling Defibrillators.
  • Signed off some Interface Design Documents.
  • Worked on launching our Fascinators range.
  • Had a Magento roadmapping session.
  • Worked on promoting the new tracksuit on the events pages of the main website.
  • Met with a merchandise supplier to talk about expanding our branded range.
  • Discussed our go live plans for using Freshdesk for Ecommerce Customer Services.
  • Created a team site for Ecommerce in Sharepoint.
  • Worked on improving the Give in Celebration page.
  • Took L2B stock off pre-order and dispatched orders.
  • Updated the supporter collection online range plan.

Read this week…

Doing next week…

  • Discussing the Ecom FTP environment to make it more reliable.
  • Going Live on the MyMarathon Facebook Shop.
  • Discussing making a CPR Chatbot.
  • Attending a talk about AI, Blockchain and Facebook Advertising.
  • Launching the new Hoodies and Joggers.
  • Experimenting with Augmented Reality on products.
  • Meeting with our Magento agency.
  • Preparing for our Order Management Workshop.

Interesting stat of the week…

  • Comparing Organic Search traffic in January and February over this year to last year, the number of visitors dropped by 16% but the Conversion rate increased by 57%, the number of Transactions increased by 34% and the Revenue increased by 48%.

In the not too distant future….

  • Smooth, streamlined and coordinated customer services.

Appreciating the women in my life

Roger on 08/03/2018

I know a woman who inspires me to be the kind of man I want to be. She teaches me that courage is a prerequisite for life every day in every way, and that whatever difficulties occur they can be faced and overcome.

I know a woman who inspires me to be true to what I believe. She teaches me the importance of holding the highest ethical standards, of drawing a line in the sand that you won’t cross, and that being fair and true to the people around you is non-negotiable.

I know a woman who inspires me to think in different ways. She challenges me to consider my assumptions and opinions, and to expand my views on people and relationships.

I know a woman who inspires me to always keep on trying to make things better. She taught me the power of just getting on with it and getting it done, that things can always be improved.

#InternationalWomensDay

Becoming comfortable with pretence

Roger on 06/03/2018

After all these years I’m finally coming to the conclusion that to be successful in an organisation means being comfortable with pretence.

You have to be able to accept falsehoods, inaccuracies, and pretence as implicitly not-true without explicitly stating them as false. Everyone else does the same, and everyone gets along.

If these things were unknowns, I would be ok with dealing with them in that way, but they are known to be wrong and accepted as such. But not by me. I’m not comfortable with the pretence.

Thinking about a Bucks Mind Guide Chatbot

Roger on 03/03/2018

Buckinghamshire Mind is a local mental health charity that supports people across Buckinghamshire. Last year they created the Bucks Mind Guide, a fantastic resource with helpful links to all kinds of services that can support people with mental health problems.

Thinking about a Bucks Mind Guide Chatbot

So, in my bid to make a chatbot for everything, I started thinking about how I could take the masses of information in the guide and convert it into a conversational experience and build a chatbot. My first thought was that because there was so many options for users to ask about and the bot to provide answers for, it couldn’t use button like most of my other bots and would need to recognise keywords and respond accordingly. I considered using Dialogflow (I used used it a while ago when it was API.AI) to handle picking up the keywords, and may still do so later, but to keep it simple I started with using Labels to pick up the keyword entered by the user and jump to the section of the flow that could provide an answer related to that keyword.

Now, I just need to add to the number of keywords the bot can respond to, and make the messages more friendly.

Project documentation: Just enough just in time.

Roger on 03/03/2018

One of the projects I work on has lots of documentation; functional design documents, technical specification documents, interface design documents, etc., etc. These are mostly so there is agreement about what is going to be built and as a reference afterwards for the teams that work with and maintain the system. Having lots of documentation makes some sense, gives some assurance and confidence, but it takes a long time to write and agree.

I’m also working on another project that as yet, has very little documentation. And one of the things we need to figure out as we progress through this project is how to document it effectively.

So how much documentation is enough? How do you get the right amount of the right kind of documentation at the right time? I think it should probably start with understanding what you aim to achieve. If you want documentation that enables you to all agree what to build, that should be different from documentation that records the results of testing, which is going to be different from documentation that creates an encyclopedic knowledgebase that enables other developers and users to be able to understand the decisions that were made during building.

For our project, my aim is just enough just in time. The documentation should grow with the project, alongside it, and at the same time. So the first step is high level requirements that enable us to complete the discovery work. We’ll then figure out the next phase and what documentation is needed to support that. It might be that the high level requirements evolve into user stories or more detailed business requirements, but this evolution will provide just enough information for the next phase just in time for the next phase to start.

Weeknotes #82

Roger on 02/03/2018

Last week’s update…

What happened this week…

  • Met with our UX Designer to brief.
  • Optimising Fascinator pages to enhance google shopping ads.
  • Added more free downloads onto the Online Shop.
  • Recruited a Magento Developer.
  • Discussed selling Defibrillators online.
  • Started work on creating an Ecommerce team site on Sharepoint.
  • Began setting up a MyMarathon Facebook Shop.
  • Wrote a User Guide to Freshdesk.
  • Met with our warehouse team to discuss future plans.

Read this week…

Doing next week…

  • Magento Roadmapping Session.
  • Project planning for selling Fascinators on Amazon.
  • Writing future Order Management scenarios.
  • Meeting with the Accessories Team to discuss the future clothing range.
  • Discussing marketing planning for selling Defibrillators.
  • Testing and training with Freshdesk.
  • Attending a branded merchandise boutique.

Interesting stat of the week…

  • Since April last year, 9.98% of our revenue has come from Pin Badges, 13.46% from clothing, and Christmas cards are still winning with 17.32%.

In the not too distant future….

  • Selling Fascinators on Amazon.