Musings VI - Zoom Out
Rants and Opinions that deserve more than a 140 character response and deeper reflection.
I Found a QANTAS Customer Experience Champion.
Several months ago, I was locked out of my frequent flyer account. An unhelpful message told me to ring the contact centre to get access restored. Ringing the contact centre from overseas was not really an option. There is no live-chat customer support option!
So, now based in Australia, I called customer service to get my account reinstated. The catalyst was an email from QANTAS frequent flyer to tell me I had some points which were about to expire, so I knew I had an account.
To complicate things, I do not have access to the mobile phone number that they had on file.
But… I did have the answers to at least 5 security questions including my home address, the email address on file, date of birth, mother’s maiden name… I was unable to answer the ‘Year in which the account was created’ - probably about 30 years ago!
And so, as if I was applying for credit, the agent asked me to provide 2 forms of government ID - via email.
Firstly. I have no idea why somebody’s physical location, ie Home address is so important. Especially for a global airline. But QANTAS, like a bank requires 2 forms of ID which prove home address that are less than 3 months old. And.. they want that information sent via an unsecure method - email.
And when I suggested that this was an inappropriate privacy process they said…
We understand that you are reluctant in sending the documents given the current internet threats such as scammers. Rest assured, that upon receipt
of the documents required for our authentication process. we will be forwarding it to our internal team to request for it to be permanently deleted from from our records as per your request. We will send you a confirmation once it has been permanently deleted.
Reluctantly, I provided my driver’s license which has my home address on it. BUT… that’s not enough to restore access to a Frequent Flyer account.
After replying with my objections and informing QANTAS that I don’t have any other documentation, they sent me back the same form letter they had the day before.. (yes this took 4 days to resolve)
Meanwhile, 4 or 5 QANTAS agents would have had access to any documentation or personal information submitted by email.
Finally, I broke the system and they asked me to call the Frequent Flyer shop. Which seems to be a different team with different systems.
Which is where I encountered a Customer Experience Champion. A CX Champion is someone who is willing to ‘break the rules’ to please the customer. The agent that I spoke to at the QANTAS Frequent Flyer shop could hear the frustration in my voice and came up with a solution that none of the other 5 agents answering emails had thought of (or been trained for).
I am beginning to understand that Australia is not as digitally sophisticated as some other countries that I have lived in recently. It seems that there has been a lack of investment or a lack of talent.
It’s not hard. I could have provided my details securely through a service like Yoti or the App could use facial recognition capabilities provided by Apple and Android, or two-factor authentication could be done via an app and a code rather than an SMS.
Zoom Out
Midjourney, the generative AI software that creates images from text prompts has been upgraded to version 5.2.
I’ve been using this product for about a year and it is remarkable to see the way it has learned and the features that have been added in that time.
Yes, there are valid criticisms that the model was trained using copyrighted material and that certain artists could have claims, but… for stock photos and some other uses, it is a huge time and money saver.
One of the new features is the ability to ‘Zoom Out’. You create your initial image and then get the tool to imagine what would fill out the space on each edge.
Just for fun, I asked it to start with an image of plastic bags and bottles discarded on a pristine beach, something that I am interested in as part of my work for Ocean Crusaders.
Then I zoomed out, again and again and stitched the results together using a video editor. The result is a dystopian AI scene of infinite plastic pollution. It’s a powerful little video that would have taken a lot of time and effort to create without AI.