Switch Hack

Ofcom’s latest communication report confirms what most of us have known for a long while - our communication habits are changing…fast.

According to the report, since 2002 mobile use has doubled, while PC and laptop use has grown fourfold. Lower prices have fuelled a 6% increase in home broadband in the last 12 months, while more importantly there has been a surge in the number of consumers accessing the internet on the move. But what do these changes mean for brands?

Brands need to change how they communicate with their customers. Gone are the days of the ‘our way or the highway’ attitudes to customer communication. Customers expect to communicate via the channel most convenient to them, whether this be email, phone or over the internet. Indeed, with increasing broadband coverage, internet channels will play a more dominate role in the future. The seemingly eternal wait for a response to an email enquiry will no longer be acceptable. If brands fail to meet expectations, consumers will simply do their talking with their feet.

The communication convergence revolution is upon us. Brands - ignore these trends at your peril…

Interesting to see that BA has attributed its nosediving fortunes of late to the rising fuel prices. Those of us with longer memories might possibly be tempted to add that, what has become universally known as ‘The T5 Fiasco’ could have had something to do with it. Particularly when you contrast these stats with easyJets’s news that their passenger stats have risen by 20% to 4.1m.

It will be a bitter pill to swallow for BA, particularly for those directors that just a few months ago were toasting boosted annual profits and big fat bonuses. The trouble is that there are good profits and bad profits – and BA are starting to see the difference.

Bad profits come from measures taken to create short term profit to the detriment of long term shareholder value. Bad profit means you get a customer on a plane, but you neglect to worry about that customer’s  impression of the brand. It’s all about expectation management; if you charge a premium for service you have to deliver it. You can’t give a Ryanair level of service and charge a lot more. You have to remember that customers have a choice and in a recession, where everyone has less money to spend, we expect more.
 
A national institution like BA should place far more stock in developing the mood the public associates with it. Bonuses should be dealt out in the context of customer service scores – not the FD’s. Bosses should only pick up bonuses if and when the net promoter score of the business has increased.

The net promoter score of a business measures how much customers would recommend the business to other people on a scale of 1 to 10. A score of 9 or 10 makes them positive promoters. We did some recent research within the travel industry and found that Emirates and P&O provide the most highly recommended experience to travellers, with a net promoter score of 32. And BA? Well, last year, BA flew in for 9th position with a NPS of just 11.

It really is simple. If your customers are happy and recommend you – you make profits (and your planes don’t take off half empty). This could be the crucial difference between easyJet and BA. Put customers first and the rest will follow.