On Wednesday I had to catch a train with some of the team to go off to a client meeting. I had booked my tickets on thetrainline.com in order to get a discount (up to 43 percent folks – so worth doing).  At most stations there are booths for pre-paid ticket collection.  I couldn’t find them at London Bridge so I wandered off to see if I could find a member of staff to get help.  The chap I found was amazing – he walked me 20 metres to the correct booth and helped me make the selections on the touch screen.  This guy loved his job – what a star (should have got his name).

At my favourite Camden coffee shop (EAT) gorgeous Felicia continues to be my ray of sunshine.  She is a lovely lady with a booming voice, a big smile and always a kind word to say.  My skinny latte and Felicia every morning sets me up for the day.  Everyone needs a dash of Felicia with their coffee.

Where have you had brilliant service recently?  Name and glorify please…

The way a shop looks, the way clothes are presented, your experience of the fitting rooms and the interaction with the staff make such a big difference to what you buy…

The way the shop looks, or to use the correct term (according to Chad who works in fashion), the shop fit, does make a massive difference to how long you want to hang out in a shop. Now Westfield is a very smart mall and as a result the shops housed in this retail mecca are, I am guessing, the retailers ‘ideal’ shop fit.  Other than the retailers flagship store (that may or may not be in London) they are really setting out to sell the brand to its full potential.

So my shop fit observations from yesterday are…

Ted Baker– a cool shop, really quirky little collections of objects (such as old fashioned prize cups and glass jars) that make you want to hunt out gems from the clothing racks.  I did really try to find something to buy in there – I really wanted to but couldn’t find anything I liked.  But the way the shop looked created a real desire to want to.  BOUGHT NOTHING BUT WANTED TO :+(

Pull and Bear – maybe I am just getting too old but it was far too dark in the shop for me.  After five minutes of searching (longer than I would normally give it but Chad loves their stuff) I sacked it off as I was getting eye strain from trying to work out the colours. BOUGHT NOTHING AND WANTED TO GET OUT OF THE SHOP :+)

The way the clothes are displayed and the fitting room also make a massive difference…

Esprit – the men’s floor is nice and open with enough space so that you can stand back and see everything easily.  One particular section had checked flannel-look shirts in great colours (plum, grey and olive green).  Now this is a look that I have never considered for myself before (I am all about the stripe).  I took it all in, said to Chad: ‘I really like this but I think I’m too old for it’, walked away and then as we walked out of the store and did a U-turn.  I went back to the display, picked two shirts, tried them on in the decent sized fitting room and loved them both.  BOUGHT TWO SHIRTS WHICH CAUGHT MY EYE BECAUSE OF THE DISPLAY :+)

Gap – not sure why they ended up with such a small shop (not usual for them) but they have crammed the clothes in to the rafters – the men’s section is rubbish at Westfield.  I went in to get some t-shirts to go under my new checked shirts (that’s the look you know – which the display and Chad had taught me!).  Gap actually had three perfect coloured t-shirts – but I had to fight to find them (tucked away on silly little shelves).  BOUGHT THREE T-SHIRTS BUT GOT HOT UNDER THE COLLAR DOING SO :+(

Zara – well the menswear section looked like a bleeding jumble sale – just piles and piles of messy clothes.  The big problem here is that nearly half of the clothes are folded in piles on high shelves above the hanging rails.  So to see what the item is you have to take it off the shelf, unravel it – take a look and then you plonk it back disappointed on the shelf.  I probably unwrapped about thirty items in my hunt (multiply this up with other ‘hunters’ and you get the aforementioned jumble sale).  This is a really annoying way to display clothes – you get so frustrated.

The reason that I went in Zara was that when I was in Hong Kong last week I managed to get to some shops before the flight home.  The Zara store in HK was huge – really nicely displayed, all in clear sections, one of which screamed ‘Neil’ and hey presto I bought quite a few things.  The Westfield Zara is a total disaster.  Again, like Gap the menswear section is too small to have everything in it – plus the fitting rooms are totally rubbish.  The cubicle it totally inadequate: too small, it only has two or three rubbish hooks and no chair or even a ledge to put your own clothes on (so you have to dump your own clothing on the floor!).  This leads me to…

How a shop assistant can make a BIG difference (for good or bad!)…

Zara (continued) – there were LOADS of staff in Zara, and most of them seemed more interested in chatting to each other than (a) tidying up the mass of clothes flung all over the place, (b) helping customers.  I asked the girl on the fitting room if they had any more colours of the cotton cardigan I was wearing (purchased in HK).  She just huffed at me and told me: ‘to look on the shop floor for it – everything we have is out there’.  Great, thanks love, nice work, what an ambassador for your employer.  This made me REALLY cross and I wanted to exit the shop immediately but I had a really nice t-shirt in my hand that I wanted and Chad had already selected a chunky Nordic looking (ugly – but apparently this is a good look) jumper.  So we go in the queue of four people and waited ages to be served, the reason being that the chaps on the till where more interested in talking to each other (actually about shop stuff) but it meant they just ignored the customer – poor form.  BOUGHT A T-SHIRT (AND THE UGLY JUMPER FOR CHAD) BUT LEFT THE SHOP FEELING REALLY ANGRY AND BADLY TREATED :+((

Interestingly Chad kept seeing ‘ugly’ jumpers in all the other shops and we kept on trying to decide whether the ones we were seeing were better than the Zara one.  In the end the decision was that the Zara jumper won (and hence wasn’t returned) – but the experience that we had in Zara almost made us want to replace it.

Now you might be asking: did anyone (other than Esprit) actually get it right on this shopping trip or is this just a rant Mr Crump?  Well I am pleased to say a big bouncy yes.  A new brand that I have never heard of called…

COS – this is a new find for me and I am SO happy about it. I loved nearly every piece of clothing in there.  I will be going back lots – I even signed-up to their mailing list so that they can keep in contact – I want to know more about them.  Why? Well as I said I really liked the clothes which is clearly the number one factor but the whole experience was a total pleasure. Nearly all (I think it might have been all) the clothes are on hangers which meant you could just flick through them really easily – they are all kept in size order going from small to extra large – excellent.  The fitting room had plenty of room.  The shop assistants were really helpful and the stunning lady on the till was a breath of fresh air and chatted to me about the brand (they are Swedish [turns out they are owned by H&M], they have other stores on Regents Street etc) – she promptly me to sign up for the mailing list.  It was a brilliant clothes shopping experience.  BOUGHT A PAIR OF TROUSERS, A CARDIGAN, A T-SHIRT, TWO SHIRTS AND SKIPPED OUT OF THE SHOP WITH A HUGE SMILE ON MY FACE :+)) :+))

So there you go folks.  Sometimes you buy things in shops because you have to – the item wins out, but with my no refund culture hat on:

• New brands can excite you – tell you what they are about and make you just want to hang out with them.  I am really interested to find out what the e-communications experience with Cos is going to be like (I really want them to be great)
• Established brands that disappoint might get a sale but you aren’t going to run back to engage with them – the Gap experience was not good.  I know that they do ‘battery’ clothing but this store is nothing like the normal ones – too small, too crammed and reminds you that the item that you just bought is also being worn by about a million other people around the world
• Poor customer service has the power to elicit powerful emotions.  One rotten apple (or a whole bowl of them as in one of the examples above) makes a massive difference.

Interestingly Mary Portas (known as Mary Queen of Shops here in the UK) did the PR launch of Westfield with her agency Yellow Door (not sure if they still look after them).  She is a retail strategy guru who has had TV shows looking at the topics I have mentioned in this post.

She also did a great programme looking at charity retailing – attempting to lift the charity shop from dusty to lusty.  As a result of this show I actually pop into my local charity shop now to try and look for gems (although my Oxfam in Camden looks good it has rubbish stock).  This was actually the main thrust of her mission:  better stock equals more customer pull equals more sales at a higher price which means, abracadabra, more money for the charity.  Well I have been through my wardrobe (adding in my new culls) and undertaken a big purge.  So my cast-offs (that included three Hugo Boss shirts that I have never worn) are destined for Oxfam on Camden High Street tomorrow – someone might like them.

Anyway I’m off to find out more about COS on the interweb… woo hoo.

I won’t go through all the details but Phil Baumann has written an excellent article on it here.  In the post he covers some very interesting points.  I just left a comment on his blog that makes me sound a bit like I have social media phobia (which I do not :+)).  It read…

This is a really excellent article on sidewikis – I’ve been googling away trying to get a good understanding for the last few days and there was this post just sitting there in my reader! You have summed everything up brilliantly. My concern is that there is no notification function to inform you that a sidewiki has been left on a page. If you are running a huge website then how can you keep track of this? Especially since if this is meant to encourage engagement then you wouldn’t know if the comment is there whether or not it is a bitch-slap or a compliment. I love to engage – it is just that now we have to check every page of our blogs / websites that we run in order to do it!!!

Do you get my point – you are literally going to have to hunt down people’s sidewiki comments (oh boy).

This aside it really is an interesting development.  If someone is dissatisfied with a person, an association or a company they can literally put a comment (as long as it follows Google’s policy) that can be seen by anyone on that page.  Crazy world hey!

The challenging thing though is that people could easily publish inaccurate information – this is a bit worrying in settings where what people write could have a serious impact, say for example in the area of healthcare (in which I work)…  Someone could post an ill informed or inaccurate entry with medical advice that another person might act upon.  This could have potentially fatal outcomes.  Eekk.

…I am not a big techie nerd so I’m not sure how this will evolve – maybe it will remain in the world of the geeks and will pass us by (although my gut says this won’t happen – remember when you didn’t use RSS functionality?  OK YOU still might not but millions of other people out there do and it has changed the way they sift through information on the web.

Anywho folk in the meantime if you have a blog or website I reckon you should have a little read up, download the toolbar, keep an eye out and prepare to engage…

Now Proud is a bit of a Camden institution and has shifted to another part of the market.  It is now in a fantastic venue – with a huge dance floor / stage area and a great bar area in the old stables – all terribly cool.  It is the last time I am going to pop in.

My colleague and I popped in at 7:27, while two others hung back and put in calls to get ‘passes’ for a few drinks from their respective partner.   I had a look around and was really impressed by the decor and general ambience – the place was virtually empty this early in the evening so it was quick and easy to survey the general coolness.  At 7:31 the other two hadn’t come in.  So I dashed back to the door to find them haggling to get in without having to pay.

Apparently they charge to get in after 7:30, and despite the fact that the door dolly acknowledged that she saw them hanging out on the phone, and saw the advanced party go in she was insistent that they needed to pay (and was really rude in the process).

Guess what, no refund culture rules.  Having asked her politely to reconsider and her saying no, I smiled and lead the gang away to another totally great bar – with no dopey door dolly.  We spent at least £40 on a couple of rounds of drinks and then all went off on our merry way home.

I’m not going back to Proud – they won’t miss me, they don’t care.  It might be cool, it might be a destination, but you know what they have competition.  They have staff allowed to act stupidly and damage their business.  You reap what you sow.

UPDATE (two days later): Over the weekend I got two emails from Alex at Proud Camden (plus see his comment below).  Guess what PROUD DOES CARE.  Basically a promoter pays £3,000 to hire the venue (and she is probably the lady on the door) and after 7:30 pm she is able to charge and earn back the large sum of money that she has invested.  It was irritating to be on the end of this door policy but you can see the sense in it (we are in a major recession and this lady is being an entrepreneur and will need to make her money back).  Thank you Alex at Proud for explaining this.  Proud is clearly a venue that does care (a lot).  Next time on a Friday after work drink we will need to get there earlier!

Crump learning:

I need to explain the ‘No Refund Culture” thing much more – it confused the hell out of Alex (I can see why).  One good learning from this post is that given the opportunity to explain my Grump they did explain themselves and as a result I hold them in much higher regard than I did before – I will now make an effort to go to Proud – I loved the venue – the management clearly DO care – just got to see if they pour a good pint now ;+)

This post has been prompted by this post entitled: ‘Is WordPress a Thankless Community’ by Jeff Chandler.  The post was sat in the dashboard of my blog (for non-WordPressers this is the overview of the management system behind the blog you all see).  Jeff points out that people rarely donate or say thank you to the amazing people who have created the platform that allows me to have this blog for FREE.  I get to download plugins and make my blog better and more like what I want it to be.

I recently moved to WordPress from a Blogger account – the shift couldn’t have been easier and I am really enjoying the experience of running my blog from this platform.  Guess what – I hadn’t said thank you to all the developers who made this possible.  So having been prompted I am going to make sure that I do from now on.

The ‘thank you’ is often forgotten in this fast moving world – especially in the social media community – where we often forget that people had to invest lots of time and energy into the things that we all play with.  This is especially true when things are free – we take them for granted.  We shouldn’t.

A small observation on social media: I have noticed that the new people that I follow on Twitter who have large followings are also people that direct message with a ‘thank you’ for following me’.  You didn’t know they were going to do that – but guess what they go in a ‘decent people’ column in my TweetDeck.  I end of reading their tweets more, retweet them, and hey presto their following grows as a result.

If you write a blog you know the thrill of getting a comment – someone you didn’t (or you do) know contributes to your post – it’s a brilliant feeling.  I recently got an email from a blogger who I have been following for a long time, I love her blog - she said how much she enjoyed reading my blog – I was chuffed to bits to get that email.

Thank yous and positivity go a long way – it just shows you that we need to act online as most of us do face-to-face.  Being a polite human being with good social skills needs to pour out of our typing fingers as it does from our chattering mouths.

PS: I love the lines from ‘Hello Dolly’ – so thank you to the person that created that WordPress plugin.

The biggest culprit is clearly the telephone helpline. I am sure that on paper they somehow make sense, i.e. money is being saved somewhere along the line. But what about the hapless mug on the end of phone? ‘Cause that’s how you end up feeling.

How many times, having dialled the number, typing in endless hash tags and single digit numbers (a lá #1#5#4#1#5#2…) to navigate through endless menu options and then listening to muzak for 15 plus minutes you end up:

• With the phone being accidentally hung up as the operator answers
• With the line going dead as it simply times out
• Hanging up in pure frustration having been bored to death by a voice ‘artist’ who keeps telling you how they are ‘experiencing a higher than average volume of calls’

The whole telephone thing drives me crazy (top tip is just press nothing and often, after being prompted loads of times to press buttons, you get whizzed through to a person – RESULT).

A further example of automation craziness was last night. While waiting on the platform to come back on a train from Birmingham New Street station, I heard the following announcement: ‘I am sorry that the 22:30 to London Euston will be delayed…’ This again came from an automated system. In this instance ‘WE are sorry…’ would be better. I don’t want an apology from an automated system – I will let it apologise for the collective train company – but a computer generated human voice sorry just doesn’t wash.

This post was actually started on my Blackberry as I sat in the new and improved (!) post office, on the High Street in Camden. And yes folks, you guessed it they have gone all automated on us. Gone are the sheep pen ropes that zig zagged in front of the counters (obviously they were unloved – us Brits HATE queuing) and now we have a deli counter ticket system – one where you take a numbered ticket and wait your turn. This is complimented with a front of house refit – now more white with red, rather than red with white and faux red leather modern(ish) looking couches.

On paper I can see that this is a BRILLIANT idea – I can see the concept, the storyboard, I bet in the marketing team meeting it was fabulous. But guess what – it doesn’t work. Basically I waited for one whole hour – I’ve never queued in a post office for that long – ever. You cannot tell how long the wait is going to be – you just sit there – ageing.

When my number got called I had to stop myself from screaming out ‘House’ like I was in a bingo hall (I was surrounded by sweet old ladies). People were moaning and arguing with the staff left, right and centre – generally a miserable and depressing experience – well done Post Office.

One thought I have had is that this has been done on purpose. The point being to force people to do more things online. Create a bingo hall and folk like me won’t want to go on in there.

When I was told this I immediately got defensive (not too dramatically mind) and explained that my problem is not with brands themselves but rather when a brand lets you down, as Cartier did to me.

I have reread the Cartier watch post and can see that I might need to clarify my position a little. So thank you friend’s boyfriend for your insight. So here I go…

I do believe in the value of brands and yes part of what I do for a living is to build belief in them. I think that brands are powerful and by their very nature build loyalty – strong invisible ties that keep you coming back for more. They inspire us and give us a warm fuzzy glow when we interact with them.

Some of my favourites are:

• Clothes: Paul Smith, Nicole Farhi and Hugo Boss
• Electrical stuff: Sony , Toshiba and Miele
• Food: Sainsbury and Prêt-a-Manger
• Department stores: John Lewis
• Skin care: Clarins
• Cars: Mercedes Benz
• Sports clothing: Nike

This then extends into countries (Italy, Spain, Thailand and India), artists (Chris Bush), where I like to go and see films (Vue), the ice cream I love (Haagen Dazs) and even bins (Brabantia) I buy for my home (I’ve got three of them).

So I am an official brand lover and from my list of brands above you will have already got a feel for me as a person – drawing from your experience (whether as a fellow brand devotee or just having seen marketing relating to that brand such as an advert or maybe even an engaging viral). This short list of brands blends into a profile of me. Not all of me, not a definitive “yep I got this chap sussed” but more of a flavour.

Brands are about human interaction, they are built by organisations which are run by people and the consumer of that brand, who again are people, derive enjoyment from buying, visiting, using, etc, etc, etc, that brand.

As part of the brand experience there are always going to be times when a product lets you down – it’s normal, things break, they are after all just stuff, and stuff is fallible. I can cope when something screws up. What I hate is when something does go wrong and you give the brand an opportunity to correct it, and following this plea the response is “bugger off”. They don’t try and keep you, they just spit you out. This is the problem with brands that don’t live up to the proposition, as Cartier did in my experience, where a ‘lifetime guarantee’ guaranteed absolutely nothing. We want brands (with all our heart) to deliver on the promise.

As the saying goes ‘To err is human’, and when we make an error we should apologies where necessary and strive to get it right. This is what great brands do (I will maybe post some more on great brand experiences in the future). The very process of correcting a problem reinforces our belief that our decision to engage with the brand was a good one in the first place, building more trust, more loyalty.

Phew, that was a long post, I hope that I have explained myself a little better. Anyway I’m off for a Diet Coke now ;+))

Milan trip was good. I even managed to catch a bit of the old part of the city with a late night walk followed by an alfresco beer with Chair and our my lovely client. All very pleasant although it was pointed out that my eyes were blood shot and I looked like hell (the daily disposable contact lenses are very unforgiving after 18 hours of wear).

My Grumped moment relates to my flight out to Milan on Saturday.

I stupidly attempted to check in two bags. My micro suitcase and a laptop bag (doubling up as an ‘on-site event bag’). The latter contained scissors and all manner of other sharp pointy things that you cannot take through Security – and hence why I wanted to check it in.

Anyway I wasn’t allowed to without paying £35 pounds as my ticket only allowed one bag to be checked in. This was despite the fact that both bags together weighted less than my allowance.
Most annoying and out from my mouth popped the title of this post. This was met by a harsh look – batted back with my most smiley of smiles. ‘Frosty’ then couldn’t – I guessed faked – not being able to print me a receipt and inconvenienced me further with a trip to the baggage desk where ‘Incompetent’ was unable after 10 minutes to print me a receipt.

Learnings from experience:

• Don’t fly British Airways – I know they are our national carrier but they are expensive and don’t give you a better experience
• Remember to get your jumbo suitcase from storage before you fly
• Pay a few pounds to have your small case cocooned in 200 metres of security plastic wrapping. As the Spice Girls said “two becomes one” and you don’t pay the extra (as I did on my return journey)

So ziga zig argh BA. I hope the £35 compensates for my new BA avoidance strategy.

That purchase was a Cartier watch – it cost several thousand pounds. The thrill of buying it was amazing and it came in the BIGGEST box that you have ever seen (about 30 cm by 30 cm by 20 cm) to house a watch. But the box did come with two straps (a metal one and a leather one) plus an all important lifetime guarantee – which I was told by the jewellers to keep safe and they did all the necessary stamping to it to prove purchase etc.

I have to say that I really loved that watch and wore it every day for more than five years. Now a while back it started to lose time and making a weird clucking noise. So I hocked out the lifetime guarantee from the aforementioned box and took it back to the jewellers. They filled out all the paperwork, keeping the lifetime guarantee documentation and I paid the £20 charge to get the watch sent off to Cartier. I got a call from the jewellers about two weeks later telling me to come and pick up my watch. So in I go to collect it. On arrival and I am informed that Cartier has said that they cannot mend the watch under the lifetime guarantee because they believe the watch has been ‘knocked’.

Now first of all I cannot recall the fateful knock – but the chances are that a watch is going to get ‘knocked’. For hell’s sake it’s a watch that has wrapped around my left wrist for five years. Secondly, and this is the bit that really annoyed me, Cartier said that for £300 they could service the watch and that they felt that would fix the problem!!!

There is no way that I am going to pay Cartier another £300 to get that watch fixed. I am not sure if I am cutting off my nose to spite my face here but I am really cross about the principle that I made this purchase with a belief in a globally renown luxury brand’s lifetime guarantee.

I have read the small print of the guarantee and it really does turn out to be a worthless piece of paper with ‘get out’ after ‘get out’ clause. I have tried to search the Internet to see if other people share my frustration – but you cannot find anything as Google searches just bring up thousands of pages selling either fake or second hand Cartier watches.

With hindsight I look back on the Cartier purchase as something actually embarrassing. In these current credit crunch times, as us Westerners feel a bit squeezed and our charitable donations have declined, there are millions of people around the world who are suffering as a result. That watch now symbolises something a bit obscene and what is wrong with the world in which we all lived a few years back…

• That I felt the need to demonstrate my worth by buying into the luxury myth – a watch shouldn’t cost thousands of pounds – it’s just plain dumb
• Big brands, such as banks and those purporting to be luxury are in many instances just hollow worthless shells – they have no substance or care for their customers and make them feel like duped fools

I am not a tree hugger (although I am sure that an embrace of a three hundred year old oak tree might help us put our small periods on this planet in perspective), however I do hope that as we all come out of this recession that we can individually and collectively wise up. That we recognise what is valuable, solid and worthy of our attention and investment.

Boy this post opened up a can of worms!