Mind the gap

Too many businesses are letting people down. The gap between how they want to appear and what they actually deliver is growing. Yes there are exceptions - Apple, Toyota, Waitrose and a host of web businesses - but so many huge organisations are being left behind because they fail to notice that customers have wised up and are already looking elsewhere.

We are all pretty smart consumers these days. We will not be fobbed off by big brand promises that fail to follow through, poor customer service or processes and procedures that favour machines rather than humans. And when we (in my day job on the communications business) think about this in relation to our own work, it seems clear that a new relationship between business and brand advisors is becoming imperative.

The future work of brand consultancy and client is about getting close to what customers want, and ensuring the business or brand owner adapts to deliver just that. It's an exciting space where the rule book needs to be ditched in favour of common sense built around the human needs of customers and staff. If they get it right there will be no gap between promise and delivery, no customers left feeling they were hoodwinked by canny advertising or staff feeling disengaged and restless.

Brand consultancies are ill equipped to deal with this. In an unholy (if sometimes unwitting) alliance with ad agencies, they depend on artifice and hyperbole for their existence. Both of these 'disciplines' focus too much on the show instead of tackling the thornier, structural issues of their clients' business.

The brand consultancies of the future will be business designers, content strategists and meaningful work advisors backed by rock solid ethics and a balanced view of the world.

I'm so proud that my business has never advised banks, mortgage companies, hedge funds, political parties or estate agents.

Off the rails

My teenage son again. He travels to school by train and was caught (twice) by Revenue Protection Officers without his season ticket. On the first occasion he'd left it somewhere in his teenage boy life. On the second, which happened to be the last day of term (brilliant strategic planning by the swat team don't you think) he was without it because it was stolen the night before, along with his phone and wallet. As a penalty for this I have just paid the two fines totalling £43 despite having a valid season ticket, which was paid for in advance, covering the days he failed to present it.

Is it just me or this staggering contempt for the customer? What other business would treat a loyal and fully subscribed customer in this way? Will penalising my son (or me) make him less forgetful or less of a target for thugs? Can First Capital Connect not discern the difference between a fare dodger and a season ticket holder?

The customer experience of the average rail user is pretty miserable at the best of times. This is because the customer experience is so low down the list of priorities of the people in charge of the business. Train companies are, without exception, among the most impervious to modern business methods and incapable of adapting to the times. They are opaque, difficult to contact, hard to understand, over priced, deliver a poor quality product and deliberately keep a distance from customers.

At the station where my son leaves the train to go to school they have just installed automatic ticket barriers. This helps First Capital Connect by capturing useful data on passengers and reduces fare dodging. But how does it improve the customer experience? By creating a 100 metre queue of passengers trying to get through the newly installed machines. Brilliant!