Why don’t we start with some customer logic?

Sometimes all it takes to be user friendly, to ensure you have the customer’s best interest in mind and that you put people first (or as we call it in this fluid world achieve citizentricity), is a bit of common sense and some logic…Yep nothing more than that, no marketing or usability consultancy… just some logic and common sense!

Let me throw you a challenge. You are responsible for the web site of a major bank, you have gone as far as understanding that customers often need to locate one of your branches, hence your site does have a branch locator. And of course you have also figured out that the most common use for someone using a branch locator is to find the closest branch to where they are.

Or, have you…?

Well not if you’re responsible for the Lloyds Bank’s website. When I put in my postcode in the search engine I had a choice between disabled access and Saturday opening hours.

Screen shot 2010-02-28 at 09.50.31

I assumed that any search results would automatically rank branches according to the ones closest to my location. But no, not so much! This is the search result I got back.

Screen shot 2010-02-28 at 09.28.58

There are apparently 91 branches closely matching my request, but no exact matches.

No EXACT matches they say…I’m beyond grateful…Lloyds have just informed me that I don’t live on top of a Lloyds branch. Who would have known, I mean I only enter my building on a daily basis so I could easily have missed a bank had it been there!

The first result shown is for a branch on 67 High Street, Watford, Hertfordshire. Yep Watford, which makes complete sense since I entered a Marylebone postcode and Watford is only a 36 minute drive from Marylebone, or a mere 5 hours and 7 minutes away by foot (I could go even further if I really wanted to, some of the branches suggested are further away than Birmingham…).

Screen shot 2010-02-28 at 09.57.53

I’m thinking maybe the branches are sorted by city…so I scroll down to London. But no I only find two branches with the heading London in them, so that can’t be the way forward.

After staring at the result page for a while I realise they have sorted the branches by branch names. Could you be any less customer centric? Why would we know what they call their branches, and more importantly why would we want to know, or care for that matter?

I finally give up.

Thank God for Google … I was lucky enough that the closest Lloyds branch to me is apparently on the corner of Marylebone Road and Baker Street, so when I entered my search query ‘Lloyds bank Marylebone high street’, Google picked up on the word Lloyds and Marylebone (now that is logic). Had this not been the case I would still be sitting here entering postcodes in Google map trying to match Lloyds branches to where I live.

Whatever way you look at it,  the only winner in this story seems to be Google…as it certainly isn’t me, a frustrated customer, nor is it Lloyds bank, a company who should go in search of some very very very basic customer logic (maybe they should Google it?)!

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2010
02/28
CATEGORY
Customer Experience
Thoughts
2 comments

  1. …the irony is, if you do google customer logic, you find a company who are very much nothing to do with it (http://www.customerlogic.co.uk/)

    brilliant post.

    you ROCK.

  2. Et aussi, pourquoi faut-il que, si souvent, dans l’architecture d’un site, l’adresse postale de la société, voire le téléphone, disparaissent ou doivent faire l’objet d’une recherche tenace pour être débusqués?
    Comme si l’écran au lieu d’ouvrir sur la scène avait pour fonction de défendre contre toute intrusion du réel, contre tout contact physique de personne à personne et même parfois téléphonique.
    Pourquoi un autre détour par les annuaires téléphoniques pour ce qui devrait figurer en toute première page, en accueil: les coordonnées de contact, la carte de visite améliorée, en somme?
    Oui, Liri a pleinement raison : du bon sens, encore du bon sens: tout site est un dialogue, l’oublier c’est sombrer dans l’autisme.

    Pauleau SA

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