My advice to Barclays? If your brand name is associated to
transportation services, you should ensure a good customer experience. Failing
to do so impacts negatively your brand.
Here's a quick summary:
-
I own a BarclayCard Visa that comes with an
OysterCard built-in.
Barclays sent me a new card and the Oyster stopped working. Resolving this is
quite an annoyance. In the
Twitterverse
we'd say #fail.
-
I also use Barclays Cyclehire, in fact another
TfL service, sponsored by the same
bonus-happy
bank. I use it everyday but it turns out they can slap you a £150 fine just
because their processes are also a #fail. That's more than an annoyance
Failure number one: Barclays, when you send me a new
card, just make sure it works
-
I've got a Barclaycard VISA, coming with no less
than four payment mechanisms: a magnetic strip, a chip (and PIN), a contactless
payment chip (RFID) and an Oyster card.
-
It expired, so they sent me a new one.
-
Because I suspected their processes would be
sub-optimal, I called them up to ensure the Oyster would be transferred across
to the new card. They assured me it was or would be but I still did not trust
them. You see, when I wanted to move from a BarclayCard Platinum to that
BarclayCard Oyster, they got me to re-apply just like for a new card. I wasn't
impressed, after being a client for over 10 years. So, I did not destroy the
old card straight away, just in case…
-
As I feared, the Oyster card did not work.
-
I sent an email to complain and ask Barclays to
fix this. They tried to call me when I was at work and after several tries I
ended up to speaking to a Barclaycard call-centre agent (actually very nice and
patient) who could not solve my problem and had to transfer me to TfL.
-
In between those calls, I tried to register my
new Oyster card on the TfL website (turns out the number is on the back of the
Barclaycard) but that did not work either. See, Barclaycard registered my card
already but did not give me the password.
-
When I finally got to speak with TfL agents,
they were equally patient, well trained and polite. They transferred the
balance from the old virtual (because it's on my Barclaycard) Oyster card to
the new one. But then to complete it, I have to predict where I'll touch in
next as they me to tap my Oyster card on a specific tube station within 8 days.
I don't usually commute by tube, so it's hard to know where and when I'll next
start a tube journey.
-
The next process failure I have experienced,
still speaking with TfL is that once they transfer the balance of an Oyster
card and until you've tapped it on a reader at the designated station, you
can't transfer the 'auto top-up'. Which I had to do because my old Barclaycard
wasn't valid anymore, remember?
Failure number two: Barclays, the Borisbikes give you a
bad name
-
I should make clear that just like I am well
aware that TfL and Barclays are two distinct companies, I know Barclays only
sponsors the
London
bike rental scheme, which is in fact sub-contracted to
Serco –the guys who run the
prison vans and other stuff.
-
This is not to complain there's
never
enough bikes or point that it's ridiculous to require buying a separate key
while they could use an Oyster card to unlock your bikes. Actually, given
what's above, one could think not using Oyster would be a good thing…
-
It's not. Here's what happened to me. To use
bikes, you need to buy a key for £3. You can then set it up and once you unlock
your bike you pay £1 for a 24h access period. The actual rental is free for 30
mn. Fair enough.
-
I've used it 3-5 times a week for almost a year,
with only hassles
when
I can't find a bike (the un-predictability isn't great if you have a
morning meeting) or
can't
return them (which means missing your train).
-
Trouble starts if you use your bike after the
'access period' has ended. The problem is that the access period isn't renewed
automatically if you're on the bike, resulting in a £150 fine! If you're like
me, you're thinking who's going to want to lug those heavy beasts for over 24
hours? But if for instance your train is late on day 1 (I hear it can happen
sometimes) and you pick a bike up at say 0830. If on day two you pick a bike up
at for instance 0829, cycle to your destination and dock it at 0834, you're
done. Bang, they've slapped you a £150 fine.
-
This happened to me. For 40 seconds.
-
Of course it doesn't make sense, but try to
explain common sense to TfL.
Bottom line: Barclays should ensure that customer
experience is good for services they lend their name to. Failing to do this
damages their reputation –exactly the point of this blog post.
Some conclusions for Barclays:
-
Don’t expect your customers to do the leg work:
I'm a customer and if break it, I expect you to fix it
-
Make sure you communicate all the information
you need (including passwords) on all the products you have on a given card
Some advice to TfL:
-
The obligation to touch in at a given tube
station to complete an action is impractical
-
The quality of service for the Boris Bikes is
not great but you should at least fix the processes that are plainly wrong
I like two in ones. Go-fast estate cars. Choc-biscuits. Fridge-freezers. The idea of a Swiss knife usually works: unless you're after something heavy duty, it does the everyday jobs well -like corking a wine bottle and spreading chese on a ciabatta. So I thought if the concept works for picnics, it might help reducing the number of cards I've got to carry and went for a Barclaycard that does Visa and Oyster. 
