iankirk.net

Following my earlier post about trust, transparency and visibility, here's a recent real-world example.



Ironically enough, after writing "Your VAIO will work" last time, my VAIO stopped working altogether. I can trust Sony to sort it out, though, so last week DHL came to collect my laptop to take it to France for repair. DHL provide an on-line tracking facility so that I could follow my laptop's journey from London to France. It took a day to get to Heathrow airport. Then it left, and afterwards returned again 40 minutes later to remain there overnight. After that it went to the wrong part of France and was held there for a day before finally being delivered to the correct facility.



This experience provides an example of two mistakes that relate to branding and that are common in business today:



1. Narrating a process is not the same as good customer service. Good customer service is delivering on your promises. Customers may not need to hear about how it's done or the steps taken at each interim stage - sometimes the important thing is delivering the package to the right place on time. Particularly in the US, but of course quickly emulated in Europe, one often finds from call centres, hotel lobbies and mid/downscale restaurants that excessive and redundant over-explanation masquerades as efficient service.



2. Transparency does not necessarily build or replace trust. In this experience, transparency has served to reduce the trust that I had in the DHL brand. Am I more disappointed in them than I would be if it was a delivery company that I had never heard of? Of course I am - brand visibility has raised my expectations. The world does not ever offer a simple choice between visible efficiency and transparent inefficiency, but if it did I am confident that - in the world of goods and services - most of us would choose the former.