Musings X - Perspective
Thoughts and Bookmarks from KSA to AUS.
An In-depth look at the America’s Cup Preliminary Event in Jeddah.
This article and podcast was created for my Yacht Business channel, but there are some interesting insights and tips that can be learned from a ‘stakeholder management’ approach to fan-experience and application for Customer Experience (CX).
Before you start your journey mapping, consider your key stakeholders. What is important for each of them? Where are the potential points of failure in the details? Could you multi-million dollar investment be ruined because you didn’t pay your security guards or train them well enough?
What is Linkedin Up to? Replacing content creators with AI.
I have been receiving messages from Linkedin to ‘contribute’ to collaborative articles. It’s a bit of an ego boost - ‘You are an expert, your knowledge will help others and you will look like an expert in your field…’
But buried down the bottom of the page, Linkedin says that the topics are created by AI, perhaps through searches that people have done on the site. E.g. What are some of the most interesting innovations in CX?
As they say… if you can’t work out what the product is, it’s you. Without any compensation, Microsoft (the owners of Linkedin) are asking ‘experts’ to contribute their experience and IP to train their AI on details of commerce and tech.
As if the content on Linkedin wasn’t bad enough, with the regurgitating of old press-releases dressed up as insight….
And while we are on the subject.. stop using the word BREAKING… I imagine that when terrestrial tv networks ‘broke in’ to their normal programming because something was so urgent and important that it couldn’t wait until the end of Friends. If something has happened, and there is already a press release out, it’s not breaking news!
I’ve seen a few of my network contribute to these AI training articles on Linkedin. Just know that this is not for your benefit.
Do Telstra’s Product Team Have Passports?
The Australian mobile phone network doesn’t have to consider people travelling outside of the country, and those travelling to places like Saudi Arabia even less. Except that people who travel may be higher value customers than those who never leave Australia’s shores.
So I am an edge case, but… here is how broken the journey is for people like me.
Upon landing in Saudi Arabia…
Welcome to Saudi Arabia! Unfortunately, you’re currently in an ineligible roaming destination, You won’t be able to use your service 0439…. while you are here. If you need to, we suggest connecting to a local Wi-Fi network. To change how you receive these notifications, visit the My Telstra app after connecting to a local Wi-Fi network.
Because the notification settings is the most important thing here!
Later on in the journey, when my sim card couldn’t see or connect to the network, even to receive useless text messages the chatbot in the app told me…
How can I help you today? If I can’t give you the right answer, I’ll connect you with a human expert.
Or not…
For help with this, you’ll need to speak with someone over the phone. Call us on 132200 or if you are overseas +61439125109 for free from your Telstra service. Note: they’re available between 8am and 8pm AEDT Monday to Friday.
You can start to see why this is where I started to get frustrated.
I’ve also noticed that some customer service journeys end with a survey, but sometimes, when they know the results are not going to look good, they aren’t served! Maybe this is intentional, or maybe in this case, the technology is not set up to work on a non-Australian IP address.
The payment journey for Telstra doesn’t work outside of Australia. The URL recharge.telstra.com.au says….
Sorry, something went wrong. To recharge, you’ll need to sign in to My Telstra and go to Services. Choose your Pre-Paid service, then select Recharge.
Except, when you go to the same page using a VPN and an Australian server, it works.
Given the importance of our mobile phones in all aspects of our daily life, including the receipt of one time passwords (OTP) via SMS for things like banking, why should we have to wait until 8am Monday morning to speak to someone?
This is an example of the interconnected nature of customer journeys in complex ecosystems. The bank journey includes authentication via SMS, which assumes that an SMS can be delivered. But whether or not the transaction can be completed or not is tied up in Telstra’s policies and practises.