Plot revenge on call centres with this new app

Please hold

Thanks to call centres the British people are a lot like Debbie Harry’s Blondie: ‘Hanging on the Telephone’.

According to a recent report, we typically waste around 45 hours each year waiting to be connected to a call centre representative.

This won’t be surprising to students of Behavioural Economics who know that – rather counter intuitively – people are more willing to hold on longer if told all lines are busy compared with being promised that their call will be answered soon. Why? The notion of having freely available operators suggests an unpopular service that is consequently not worth holding for. Whereas a message saying that all lines are busy and requesting people to hold or ring back later encourages them to stay holding in the queue longer as it suggests a popular service worth waiting for.

Power of scarcity value

Many a company plays on the lure of this scarcity value, which dictates that if we perceive something to be scarce it takes on a greater value in our eyes, whereas if it is plentiful the perceived value falls. Apple is a skilled practitioner in the art of creating scarcity – when launching new products it creates a lot of buzz and excitement in the marketplace and then holds back on distribution at the launch to further heighten demand.

From call centre hell –
to hell with call centres

However, coming back to our call centre example it looks like the tables are about to be turned. A new phone app has been developed that promises to ‘give you back’ your waiting time.

The ‘WeQ4U’ service claims to not only take the angst out of contacting call centres, but will also save users about 30p per minute. Through use of ‘queuing robot’ technology people can put the phone down when told to wait for a call centre to pick up. The phone stays connected and will automatically ring the user’s own phone once an operator is free.

So in a nice twist of fate call centres will now be held in line before being put through to customers.

Creating Frankenstein’s monster?

For some reason the above reminds me of the story of the nursery school, which fed up with parents picking up their offspring late decided to introduce penalty charges. This sounded great in principle but rather than reducing late pick-ups the penalties boosted tardiness as it effectively legitimised the offering of a cheap baby-sitting service.

Likewise with the call centre app. While the intention is good, I can’t help wonder if in a similar way this creates a Frankenstein’s monster where the consumer ends up becoming the ultimate loser. While people may get back their waiting time they could still end up paying more for this ‘convenience’ as call centre managers realising waiting time is no longer an issue reduce their staffing service levels accordingly. And as this ultimately increases the holding time it also increases the profits of the app provider. So an app that is meant to give control back to the consumer could inadvertently be playing directly into the hands of the call centres.

This begs the question: Is it payback time or will Joe Public still be left ‘Hanging on the Telephone’?

This article first appeared in Brand Republic's The Wall blog on 19/03/12 (http://wallblog.co.uk/2012/03/19/plot-get-revenge-on-call-centres/)

Accessibility kicks the arse of superiority – The Art of persuasive digital engagement

Probably late in the day, but I recently stumbled across the quite brilliant Hailo taxi app co-founded by three cabbies in London. For those not familiar with this app, it allows you to select a black cab in the near vicinity, indicating how many minutes it will take to reach you and gives the taxi details to look out for when it arrives.

After arriving at your destination you can then automatically pay with your credit or debit card as the fare on the meter is charged straight to your account. Without any additional mark-ups and a copy of the receipt emailed directly after the journey I found it to be a joy in its simplicity and effectiveness – especially when using it for the first time on a late, wet and windy night. And of course the cabbies win too as they find more passengers on the street, with the added benefit of avoiding traffic on the way through an alert system.

Better sometimes isn’t good enough

Since then I have discovered what I thought to be an even better service called minicabit. This overcomes some of the few niggles I had about Hailo – in that it allows you to confirm the cost up front, save regular destinations for speedy retrieval and also works across the UK rather than just London.

However I won’t be using minicabit anytime soon within London for one simple reason – accessibility. Or to be more precise the lack of it. You see minicabit currently only offers its service via a website – not as an app – which means when using a mobile it requires 3 clicks before I can access the site versus just one click with the Hailo app. Given this is a service I’d normally use on my mobile this effort barrier means Hailo gets my vote as it’s good enough for the job with the advantage of speedier access.

Now students of marketing will know the power of accessibility is a powerful driver to consumer uptake. Take the well-known latter day example from the world of video where the superior Betamax format was outflanked by VHS as the latter had a better distribution strategy. And from personal experience I recall from previous days of working on the marketing of tabloid newspapers the biggest influence on sale wasn’t the news content or marketing promotions but availability.

If a newspaper was out of stock at the nearest newsagent the chances were that readers would substitute their preferred read for some other paper or go without rather than find another outlet that sold their paper. The reality is that it is part of human nature to choose the path of least resistance where expending too much effort becomes a barrier to motivation.

Seductive design must be friction free 

This is a lesson worth taking on board when it comes to digital design; something Joshua Porter referred to as seduction design. This works on the principle of increasing motivation by taking advantage of persuasive tactics that will make people take action. The most persuasive digital engagement focuses on making users feel comfortable about making decisions and helping them act on them.

This is a lesson the good folks at minicabit should take on board, as from my experience they are akin to a Ferrari with flat tyres – in that it looks good but is going nowhere fast.

This article was originally posted on Brand Republic's The Wall on 21/05/12 (http://wallblog.co.uk/2012/05/21/accessibility-kicks-the-arse-of-superiority-the-art-of-persuasive-digital-engagement/#more-27324).