markwilson.it

Category: Waffle and randomness

  • Not-so-helpful social media “help”

    Not-so-helpful social media “help”

    Social media is big business. And almost every major business to consumer (B2C) organisation has at least one account on each of the major social media platforms (at the time of writing, that’s Twitter, Facebook and Instagram but I’m sure it will change over time). 

    Unfortunately, there’s a concerning trend starting to emerge – one where the “conversation” is moved to control the brand image. Many brands have set up <brandname>Help accounts for their customer service so that the main brand account is “clean” – pure marketing, untarnished by customers expressing concern about the products and services. Meanwhile, the “Help” account may be operated by a communications agency, simply offering a face and redirecting customers to other channels. 

    And that’s where the problem lies. If you want to offer omnichannel support, then you need to meet your customers where they contact you. It’s no good offering “help” on Twitter when all you’re really doing is advising customers to phone your contact centre. That does not help. That’s obfuscation. It’s a blatant attempt to preserve the online image of the brand, whilst offering shoddy customer service. 

    So, here’s my plea to brand managers across the UK. If you offer a <brandname>Help account, then make sure it provides real assistance and is not just signposting to another channel. 

    I’ll provide an example here, from @KwikFitCS (who responded to my tweet for the main KwikFit account… more on that in a moment), but they are not alone…

    Then there’s the issue of the information that <brandname>Help accounts ask for to verify you before they will provide help…

    In the example above, @BootsHelp replied to a tweet sent to @BootsUK. And the issue I was reporting was a website problem that was not specific to a single account – the web team could investigate without my personal details. Maybe I should be the one looking for the verification here… not them? That may sound a bit extreme but what’s to stop anyone from setting up a spoof <brandname>Help account and harvesting information from disgruntled customers? (In fairness, the @BootsHelp account has been verified by Twitter, but the @KwikFitCS example earlier was not).

    And Boots is not alone – here’s another example from @Morrisons, the UK supermarket chain:

    The request went on to a second tweet:

    So, come on B2C Twitter. You can do better than this. How about providing some real help from your social media channels? Preferably without requiring a long list of personal details.

    Featured image by Biljana Jovanovic from Pixabay.

  • Extended warranties (and my experience with Samsung Care+)

    Extended warranties (and my experience with Samsung Care+)

    In the UK, it’s common practice for retailers to try and sell extended warranties with their products. Dixons Carphone (Curry’s/PC World) were early proponents of the practice, and most consumer electronics have some form of extended warranty on offer.

    I generally don’t buy these warranties because:

    • UK consumer protection law is pretty good (thanks to our previous affiliation with the European Union).
    • If I break something, I’ll generally pay for the repairs, replace the item (for low value goods), or fix it myself.
    • If it’s really bad (like when my son broke our 4K TV), we have accidental damage cover on our household insurance*.

    Last year, I bought a new mobile phone (Samsung Galaxy S20 5G). I decided to pay a significant sum for the Samsung Care+ package because of previous experience of paying for repairs on my sons’ S10 and Note 10 phones and I knew it was very expensive. I also knew how easy it is to chip the curved edge on the screen (which is not covered by a screen protector).

    Samsung Care+

    Samsung Care+ is meant to be a bit like AppleCare+. I say “a bit like”, because it’s intended to cover consumers for out of warranty repairs. It’s also clearly named to sound similar. Both are insurance-backed but my Samsung Care+ experience has not been a positive one.

    If you go to the Samsung UK Support website, there are various options for repairs including at doorstep, pickup, and in-store. I found that Samsung Care+ only offers a pickup service. A courier collects the phone and takes it to TMT First, who assess the damage and provide a quote. After paying the excess, the phone is repaired and sent back. Samsung quotes 7-10 working days for this service. Mine took longer because, after the screen repair, it failed quality checks and needed more work before it was delayed again “due to limited staff”.

    7-10 working days is around 2 weeks without a phone. This is when you realise how important these things have become in our lives. My phone is my primary camera. I use my phone as a digital wallet. I use my phone for mobile access to various Internet-based services (web, podcasts, apps). I use my phone for second factor authentication. I can’t even log on to my bank’s website without a digital access code from my phone. Not having my phone for weeks at a time is a major inconvenience. I could put my SIM into another device but it wasn’t my primary phone and I didn’t want to re-register all the services (although had to anyway after my S20 was wiped). This is why I paid for an extended warranty. I would have been better paying for a doorstep repair.

    Samsung Care+ is supposed to make it easy to get your phone fixed. Indeed, quoting the Samsung website:

    “Made by Samsung. Fixed by Samsung. You can’t stop accidents from happening, but you can be protected with Samsung Care+. Simple, affordable and comprehensive insurance from the people who know your Galaxy inside out. Not only are you covered for a wide range of mishaps, you’ll enjoy first-rate support when you need it the most.”

    Samsung Care+ | Tablet and Phone Insurance | Samsung UK (checked 31 August 2021)

    First-rate support. Hmm… My experience was not first-rate. It didn’t even save me much money (though I suppose it will if I have to make a second claim in the next year or so).

    What would Apple do?

    Why compare to Apple? Well, because Apple and Samsung are the western world’s biggest OEMs for premium mobile phone handsets. And because the naming of their insurance-backed extended warranties suggests that at least one of those brands is trying to compare itself with the other…

    Apple owners tell me that AppleCare+ is better. This Tech Radar post tells me that AppleCare+ includes “same-day carry-in; mail-in with a prepaid, overnight delivery box; or on-site repairs at your home or office” and “a temporary, express replacement phone sent to you before you send in your defective unit”. Those repair options are clearly better and the replacement device would have saved me a lot of hassle. AppleCare+ and Samsung Care+ are similarly priced, but it’s worth noting that the equivalent iPhone would have cost more than my S20 did… so I guess you pay for that service.

    Once bitten, twice shy

    Regardless, I won’t be buying Samsung Care+ again. And I’ll be thinking twice before I buy another Samsung phone, however good it is…

     

    *Beware, this can be an expensive approach for low-value items. I once fell into the sea whilst taking photos of my children and destroyed an iPhone 6S. The 6S was the last iPhone model to not be water-resistant (though I’m not sure anything will survive salt water). After paying the insurance excess, the payout was not huge, and the premium increase for the next few years probably wiped out any benefit.

     

    Image credit: screenshot from the Samsung Care+ website, taken on 31 August 2021 as fair use for quotation, critique or review under the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  • J’ai un mal à la gorge. En Angleterre, nous avons le “TCP”

    J’ai un mal à la gorge. En Angleterre, nous avons le “TCP”

    My family’s recent bout with non-specific cold-like illnesses included a sore throat for one of my teenage sons. He must have been feeling bad, because it was enough to convince him not to race his bike for a week. (In fairness, reminding him that previous attempts to compete whilst ill didn’t work out well was also a factor.)

    “You need to take some TCP!”, said his Uncle.

    “Already on it!”, said I.

    For those who are not familiar with TCP (not the networking protocol), it is a particularly foul antiseptic substance that can be diluted and gargled to attack the bacteria that cause sore throats. It’s not nice. But it is effective.

    Trying to buy TCP whilst on holiday…

    TCP seems to be a very British thing though. I know ex-pats in the ‘States who bring it over from the UK and this incident reminded me of trying to get some in France. We were skiing, in Tignes, and I had a sore throat. Not wanting to miss any time on the slopes, I was willing to take some strong stuff to try and get better.

    So, off to “la pharmacie”, I tramped… and in my best schoolboy French (GCSE grade B, Kingsthorpe Upper School, 1988) I said to the assistant:

    “J’ai un mal à la gorge. En Angleterre, nous avons le ‘TCP’. En avez-vous?”

    I also pointed at my throat and attempted to gargle, for effect.

    The perplexed shop assistant looked at the mad Englishman on the other side of the counter, shrugged, and pulled out a bottle of cough syrup. Basically it was a sugar mix (certainly not TCP), but that was as far as I was going to get with my limited grasp of the language. Ironically, as I was writing this post I found that TCP is produced in France, for sale in the UK.

    I don’t recall whether I missed any skiing time. I certainly didn’t let a sore throat ruin my holiday, but I’m equally sure I wasn’t able to buy any antiseptic for my throat. These days, a small bottle of TCP is a permanent item in my travel bag.

    NOT A SPONSORED POST!

    Image credit: author’s own.

  • Taking time “off sick”

    Taking time “off sick”

    My family has had various lurgies over the last few days. Stomach bugs, sore throats, colds but mostly feeling “non-specific urgh”. Or just “meh”.

    It might have been the ‘rona, but we all tested negative so it’s more likely that 18 months of not mixing with other humans means that, when we do, we pick up their germs and get ill.

    After a weekend of broken sleep and with a headache and a sore throat, I needed some rest and I called in sick at work.

    Pressure to work

    I’ve been based from home for a long time. Remote work is not a new thing for me that started with the pandemic (although exclusively working from home is). A side effect of that is that I rarely take time “off sick”. I might not be well enough to travel to an office and mix with others (potentially making them ill too), but I can generally drag myself to my laptop and push some emails around. And anyway, what about that meeting? Or, if I don’t do that work today, it will only add pressure later in the week. Normally, I’d dose myself up on paracetamol (or similar) and “man up”.

    Except, is that really a good mindset? If I’m not bringing my a-game to work, then maybe I should rest up and come back when I am properly fixed. Take some time to recover, step away from the screen. Unfortunately, because I felt able to do something, I felt like a fraud.

    I got back from the pharmacy and had woken up. Maybe I could (should?) just check those emails?

    Whilst I’m very disciplined at keeping away from work on my weekends and holidays, it was a lot harder when I wasn’t feeling well, but I wasn’t completely ill and confined to bed either.

    Is this just a sad indictment of modern life? Implied pressure to contribute at all times. Being a consultant and knowing that it’s an important month and every billable day counts. Or, as one person (who I’ll let remain anonymous) put it:

    “You definitely shouldn’t be feeling you have to work because years of conditioning of the UK workforce has led us to a place where unless a limb is hanging off you’re ‘fine’.”

    Get well soon

    In the end, it was these wise words that I decided to stick by:

    “Commit one way or the other. It’s horrible when you half commit to work and half commit to putting your feet up and do neither very well. (Get some rest).”

    And, when I got back to work after some proper rest and recuperation, I could bring my a-game with me.

    Featured image: author’s own.

  • Weeknote 22/2021: By the sea

    Last week, I was on a family holiday – and the sun shone too. And, for the record, it’s still a holiday even if you don’t go abroad. It’s only a staycation if you stay in your own home.

    Connectivity

    Sadly, I’ve been strugging with mobile connectivity recently. I finally got around to putting a 5G SIM in my phone. Since then the 3/4G signal has been awful and I haven’t even seen 5G. giffgaff’s Twitter support were worse than useless, eventually demanding a list of personal information in a direct message including things they should know (like the identifier of the SIM they had sent me, which Android refused to show me). In the end, I gave up as I needed a SIM removal tool… I’ll try again this week, now I’m back home.

    Meanwhile, in parts of Dorset, I even got a French mobile signal (when I couldn’t get an English one…)

    Family History

    One evening, whilst discussing family history, I found that my wife’s Great Great Grandfather was quite possibly murdered in the 1890s! The Coroner’s report suggests the body was found buried in a sitting position – so that sounds like foul play. It’s unclear whether there was a severed hand found nearby with some money but the newspaper says “hat” so that may be translation!

    This week in pictures

  • Weeknote 21/2021: Running late

    Last week’s weeknote is a few days late…

    That was the week when I confirmed that:

    • I’m still not a fan of panel discussions (I did take part in this event, but it still didn’t do it for me).
    • …or online events. Matt Ballantine’s post on “why I struggle with online events” sums up many of the things that I hadn’t quite managed to put my finger on. Basically, just because you can get 1000s of people to attend for virtually no cost, doesn’t mean it’s good value (not for the attendees anyway!).

    On the subject of online events, I missed the Microsoft Build keynote completely (because of the poor communications), but I found this nice summary of what Google is up to:

    Meanwhile, I’m reading The Human Organisation Report, to help me understand how to make work work.

    A colleague shared this great advice for helping neurotypical people communicate in a way that works for those who are neurodiverse – so we can all understand one another:

    It was also the week when I saw QR codes being used incredibly badly, and also well.

    Last week in pictures

    Not much on Insta’ this week…

    Next week (now this week)

    I’m on holiday now, which leads to my final point. I was reminded that being away from work should be absolute… if you do drop into email to do “just one thing” you may see things that then nag you and you have to fix them…

    You have been warned!

  • Weeknote 20/2021: Echo chambers

    This week has been a bit flat. The weather is mostly awful, so I don’t much feel like riding my bike. I hurt my back exercising on Wednesday. And I have 5 weeks to get into shape for my ride across Wales.

    This weeknote will be a short one. I can’t believe it’s Friday already…

    This week I:

    • Desparately tried to bring some very dry design workshops to life with the inclusion of visual content, only to find that Microsoft Teams isn’t very good at sharing digital whiteboards, yet:
    • Was reminded that annual reviews are a good opportunity to take stock on what’s happened in the last 12 months.
    • Received my new UK (non-EU) driving licence:
    • Escaped from my home office and spent a few hours working inside a coffee shop, for the first time in months.
    • Learned that my social bubble is oh so echoey… when I stepped outside it I heard of people for whom the discomfort of taking a lateral flow test is some kind of hardship (Really? Spreading Covid is a lot worse, I’m sure!) and got called an idiot for not agreeing with conspiracy theories around government tracking of citizens.
    • Felt the need to remind people that there are two NHS Apps:
      • The NHS App (authenticated), which lets you access your own health record.
      • The NHS Covid-19 app (anonymous), which is used for test and trace purposes.

    This week in pictures

  • Weeknotes 18-19/2021: Doubling up

    Last week didn’t have a weeknote. I just didn’t get around to it! To be perfectly honest, my weekends are packed with cycling-related activities at the moment and work has been pretty busy too… so here’s a bumper fortnight-note. Even this is delayed because I locked myself out of WordPress with too many incorrect login attempts… but the very fact I managed to post this indicates that I got in again!

    Working

    There’s much I can write about my work at the moment but we are approaching my annual review. That means I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the last 12 months and looking forward to where I need things to head in the coming weeks and months. It’s not been a wonderful year: although my family has been fortunate to avoid Covid-19 we’re still living in strange times and I really could do with leaving my home office for the odd day here and there. Procrastination levels are certainly up, followed by evening catch-up sessions. That could be another reason there was no week note last week…

    Learning

    I did manage to squeeze in another exam. It’s one of the Microsoft Fundamentals series: Microsoft Azure Data Fundamentals (DP-900) and I used Microsoft Learn to prepare, passing with a good score (944).

    I’m also really interested in building a body of knowledge around sustainable IT and I worked my way through the Sustainable IT MOOC from the Institut du Numérique Responsable’s ISIT Academy. Not surprisingly, some of the statistics are French-specific but, in general I found the content interesting and enlightening. Definitely worth a few hours for anyone with an interest in the topic.

    Watching

    I’m a heavy social media user and I’m under no illusions about what that means in terms of my privacy. I often say that, if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. Even so, my wife and I watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix a couple of nights ago. Highly recommended for anyone who uses… well… the Internet. So, pretty much everyone then.

    Cycling

    After riding England Coast to Coast (C2C) on The Way of the Roses a couple of years ago, I’ve been planning my next big cycling trip.

    My eldest son and I were planning to head to the French Alps after his GCSEs this summer but, well, that was before a global pandemic messed up our plans. So we’ve been looking for something a little closer to home. We’re planning on riding the length of Wales – from Cardiff to Holyhead on Lôn Las Cymru. 

    After booking all the hotels, and the train travel to return from Holyhead (5.5 hours, via England, with a change mid-way at Shrewsbury) the biggest challenge was booking 2 spaces for bikes on the train. I had similar issues with the C2C and I’m just hoping that I manage to make the cycle reservations nearer the time. I certainly can’t allow myself to stress about it for the whole 4 day ride up!

    Something that will almost certainly come in useful on that trip are the waterproof socks I bought from Sealskins… they are fantastic:

    Still on the subject of cycling, the Trek X-Caliber 9 mountain bike that I bought last autumn is back in the workshop. It’s 6 months old, with just 300km on the clock and the forks have gone back for warranty repairs (and that’s after the headset bearings already had to be replaced because they were not fitted correctly in the factory). More generally, there’s a big problem with bike part availability in the UK right now – partly Brexit-related (inability to buy from some EU-based vendors) but some general supply issues with some parts on back order until 2023.

    Meanwhile, I’m finding more and more of my weekends involve supporting my eldest son with his racing (either cross-country or cycle-cross, with the occasional road circuit). One bonus was that the usual Saturday Youth Coaching session was replaced by a pleasurable gravel ride (and pub garden visit) this week due to non-availability of our usual venue.

    Random techie stuff

    The last few weeks in pictures

  • Weeknote 17/2021: Not yet digitally transformed

    This week I’ve been struggling to focus but still moved a few things forwards. I also kept bumping up against some bizarre (non) efforts at “digital transformation”, courtesy of Standard Life (abrdn), Costco and the UK Government.

    This week’s highlights included:

    • Realising that digital transformation hasn’t reached Costco UK yet – and no membership card means no entry and no shopping:

    Looking ahead to the (long) weekend, I have no races to take the eldest teenager to and the weather ins’t looking wonderful. So, just the usual Youth Cycle Coaching on Saturday and, hopefully, some relaxing and pottering at “geek stuff” in the Man Cave…

    This week in photos

    No Insta’ from me yet this week (maybe there will be over the long weekend) so here’s a Line of Duty meme instead:

  • Weeknote 16/2021: Look after yourself – and watch out for friends and family too…

    Most importantly, this week:

    • I was reminded not to take family members’ health for granted. Also, that the NHS has many problems but a) is staffed by some truly wonderful people and b) I’m really, really glad it’s there when we need it.
    • I was also reminded that I have some really supportive friends and colleagues. You know who you are. Thank you.

    Lower down the hierarchy of needs:

    • I finally got the (Enterprise) Architecture as a Service service that I’ve wanted to launch off the ground. After years of thinking that it might be useful for clients to have access to someone for a day or two a month, it seems that a couple of days a week is more useful – it’s actually time to do something meaningful. Anyway, it’s given Thom McKiernan (@ThomMcK) an opportunity to go back on site.
    • Related to above, I found I’m a little jealous of colleagues who get to visit clients and interact with humans again. I don’t want it every day – just one or twice a week would be nice.
    • I was frustrated to find that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is very misunderstood – and all too often given as a reason for not doing something, with no apparent knowledge of what the regulation covers.
    • A client project underlined that, even when using SaaS, you still have to plan for and take action around upcoming changes… such as the upcoming retirement of Microsoft Skype for Business Online.
    • I sold a bike. It felt odd:
    • Related to above, I found that Facebook Marketplace is a strange mixture of nice, normal people, and some very odd individuals who didn’t seem to understand why I wouldn’t accept their low offer when I had plenty of interest at the asking price.
    • My weekend activities were mostly cycling-related: riding in the sunshine; transporting my son to/from an XC MTB race; youth coaching, and marshalling at a road race (where my son was also racing).

    This week in photos