Ryanair introduced seat selection some time ago, it works like this: you pay priority boarding, get on the aircraft first and have a flight attendant telling you that first row is reserved. Tough luck.
Then people sit on the first row and it comes up that they didn't reserve it. And then more people. And then at my enquiry I am told that these seats could be reserved and therefore they say they are. Evidently putting some sort of marking on the seats that are actually reserved is too clever for this little dumbfuckers of Ryanair.
So I paid for priority boarding and I'm not getting any extra legroom (while the 2 ignorants in front of me stuck their feet on the wall as first thing, but that's another story altogether), not because other people paid and reserved those seats, but because Ryanair is careless. And badly organised, but primarily careless.

Again, flying with this (now) disgraceful airline only when it's the only option. I wonder what customer satisfaction scores these people have, it's appealing.

Over and out, at least it looks like the flight is departing on time...

Taken at Orta San Giulio

Taken at Port Barcelona

Taken at Port de Barcelona

In no particular oder...

As old as Methuselah, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, Go the extra mile, Wolf in sheep's clothing, Good Samaritan, Lost sheep, Prodigal son, Cast the first stone, Doubting Thomas, Armageddon, De profundis, Quo vadis...

What have all these expressions in common? They are derived from the Bible, which give us an enormous letterary heritage. The origin of most of these expressions is familiar to me given my Christian Catholic upbringing, however I didn't know at all that going the extra mile for example is derived from the scriptures. And since I grew to believe that I don't believe these preposterous scriptures, I shall do my best to stop using these expressions altogether, to take a further stand against the falsehood represented by the Bible and Christianity. As well as any other religion and their holy books.

In January I subscribed to Orange Home Broadband using a Groupon voucher which entitled me to a free 4GB Xbox 360. I had Orange before and I would have picked their broadband anyway for my new flat, so having an Xbox for a tenner (the cost of the voucher) seemed like a no brainer.

However, no Xbox 360 has been seen so far. And I called a number of times (around 10 by now at least) to know what was happening, especially when I've been told "we'll call you back within the next 24 hours" and then nobody cared to call back. If there's one quality I can credit myself with is to be a very calm person with call centre operators, but the continuous back and forth among different people and the same questions/answers over and over again it's starting to take the piss, really.

However, the point I want to make is different. The first person I spoke to today was surprisingly kind and shared some information about how the customer support works at Orange (I'm referring here to their UK business as it's with them I was talking, I can't say for France and other countries). I never worked in the customer centre business directly but thanks to my job I know a bit about how things work, so I can assume that Orange's case is a common case for any large business.

The kind lady told me she was from a third party call centre (fair enough) working for Orange, and that she couldn't access the information she needed in order to help me (although I called the specific number for the Groupon voucher). She went on saying that essentially the call gets routed to the first available operator, wherever in Europe that is and that not everybody has access to the same information. Now, if she's correct (her understanding of how the process work could be not 100% exact, so I'm taking this with a pinch of salt) the picture I have in my mind is of a bunch of different teams, sitting in different locations, some being employees of Orange and some not, probably being trained by different people / in a different way, probably not giving a flying toss about my frustration or about the work they do (because they don't really see the contribution to the big picture), etcetera.

So I ended up being transferred, or being told to call this and that number, to 6-7 people (I lost the count) before I ended up AGAIN with "you'll receive a call within the next 24 hours". The second person I spoke to asked me who did I spoke to before, to which I couldn't really answer because it's so confusing to understand which department you're speaking to, whether it's Orange directly, a partner, or else. The last 'transfer' from an Orange person (I think she was) was to a "third party operator", or at least that's how she called it. What did the person on the other end said? Orange broadband promotions, how can I help?

Well, you could help by sorting my bloody Xbox out once for all*, however I believe that this breaking down a vital function like customer service across many departments, outsourced providers, etc is just detrimental to the business, highly inefficient (outsourced people may be 'cheaper' but what's the price you pay in terms of requests handling time and customer satisfaction?) and in the long run it's unsustainable. Most people have zero patience and actually find it quite 'relieving' to shout down the line to a customer service agent. This is hardly a way to create happy customers. Actually, I just remembered of (and dug out) this tweet from a while ago...

That should be the norm for a modern, successful brand, not the exception. But clearly it's the exception most times, in part because of this insane nip and tuck, partly outsourced, partly in-house customer service business approach in my opinion.

And it's good to remember that Orange simply happens to be the example I had today, but this is a widespread situation. What's also funny is that Orange France is one of the best success stories for the company I work for and it's exactly about making customer service better by using social media (case study here if interested), so they surely are ahead of the curve (but perhaps they'd need to think of how to rationalise their call centre operations anyway) and I fear of thinking to how other organisations are dealing with the problem. Probably by simply putting extra wax in their ears and not listening to what angry people are shouting at them.

Over and out.

 

*for the record, I don't even have a telly at home and I'm not a gamer, so my Xbox will probably go straight to ebay or I'll devolve it to the new office's breakout area... but that doesn't deduct from my determination to have it!

 

Taken at Royal Albert Hall

Steve Jobs has died. Clearly I didn't know him personally, but I feel saddened nonetheless. And it's not "me" to feel that way for public figures when they pass away, but he was an amazing visionary and, in a way, an inspiration.

Back in 2005, at a commencement address at Stanford University, he shared the philosophy that drove him:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary,

Truly inspiring words.

Taken at Scarlett Gallery