Texsys Blog

Christchurch, 12th May 2011 – Local residents have been giving their thoughts to the Christchurch earthquake from the comfort of their local portaloo.

Adam Hutchinson, Director of local technology company Texsys, has developed software allowing multiple question surveys to be systematically completed via text message.  “The text message survey allows data to be captured from almost anywhere, in this instance, from the portaloo on your street.”

Over the last three weeks, Hutchinson has employed a team to post over two hundred posters in portaloos placed in Aranui, St. Martins, New Brighton, Wainoni, Beckenham and Opawa. The aim, to gather feedback on the earthquake recovery effort.

Residents visiting a portaloo were asked to initiate the survey by sending a keyword text, triggering the first question.  Following a text response, sequential questions are sent until the survey is completed.  From 150 initial responses, survey feedback has indicated that ninety-two percent of those surveyed were either satisfied or very satisfied with the earthquake recovery effort.  On how the city should be rebuilt, comments included:

• Low rise wooden, earthquake proof buildings.
• Open/inviting, spacious, lots of greenery + playgrounds
• Inner city living or university and new city attractions and art.
• We need to make Christchurch a leading city with amazing architecture, new ways of being sustainable, and something that has never been done before.
• Think green. Parks and green spaces business parks bordering the town.
• A world leader in green, sustainable living.

Charley Lamb, Head of Department in Business Management Law and Marketing at Lincoln University states that “surveying is getting harder and harder using conventional methods such as phone interviews, face to face and mail surveys because people are time poor, therefore any technology such as this enabling greater functionality also enables efficiency”.

The system has been successfully used recently in environments such as trains, shopping centres and events to gather data from customers. The company is also lending its feedback system to both the Christchurch community expo and the TedX event happening this month.

www.texsys.co.nz

Unfortunately Christchurch experienced another major earthquake on the 22nd of February causing loss of life and major damage to the city.

This photo was taken about 3 minutes after the quake struck. Unfortunately the Texsys office is no longer accessible so the team is operating remotely. Still managing some cool projects such as the Whanganui District Council texting project which has been a great success. For a recent article check out http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/4846381/Text-spam-How-to-stop-getting-it

Texsys provided the texting behind New Zealand’s biggest free concert Band Together held recently in Christchurch with over 100,000 people attending the concert.  The CTA was promoted on screen, TV and around the concert. AMI was a major sponsor and had kindly donated some great prizes, which caused a major surge in traffic 2 minutes prior to the 3 draws. The New Zealand Police were the official Judicator of the competition, with 2 Senior Constables on hand to check the public facing back end of the Texsys technology. A great day for Canterbury and a great day for Texsys Technology!

At a recent conference, Super coach Ricki Herbert used Texsys technology to get real-time questions from the audience.

Last Wednesday evening provided Christchurch residents the chance to give questions to the Prime Minster John Key via text message.  Some questions that were asked were:

• Why is it that we still dont  see an emphasis on things like financial planning and parenting at high school?
• Press innovation is a great way 2 build welth in nz. Wot r u doing 2 encourage and help new busineses. Esp start-ups.
• Press. Would you support a moratorium on offshore oil drilling until the completion of an inquiry into the spill in the Gulf of Mexico?
• Would you consider bringing in a law restriciting the horse power of a car an under 25 year old could drive on their own?
• I need an MRi scan – CDHB hospital waiting time 13 mths! world class healthcare looks a long way off?
• if Obama rang u and said “John, heard u are full of ideas, what the he’ll do u think I should about Bp and the oil bursting forth ?” What would u say?
• Could you please ask TV-One to use a different fixed camera to show Chch, their current one shows a car park and not the best of our fair city.

The profanity filtering capability of eHand blocks all messages that contained one of five hundred registered words. The filter was only required three times out of the fifty questions that were submitted over the two hour speech. The anonymity of text messaging often provides an open forum for what’s on peoples minds which can be both positive and negative. While the filtering system can stop profanity, it doesn’t block oddball questions.

The opening question was ‘what does BMX stand for’? Of which the Prime Minister could not answer until a lone man, possibly the question sender confirmed it meant Bicycle Motor Cross, much to the cheer of the audience.

It’s almost impossible to have overly satisfied custmomers 100% of the time.

There was an interesting article in the New Zealand Herald last week that was a classic example of brand bashing by unhappy customers. While its true that even an unhappy customer will return to the DHB (so customer retention is not a priority), they do see implications such as formal complaints which take time and money to solve and negative press. The solution here is to provide an easier way for patients to give feedback while on-site. Any patients that have had a negative experience then have the chance to be heard in real-time, allowing management ample chance to get back in touch with these patients to resolve any incidents, before they either make a formal complaint or go to the media.

In a pilot trial with Whanganui DHB, 60% of patients that gave feedback stated they wouldn’t have given feedback if Texsys had not been available. What this means is that many people won’t fill out a feedback form or give feedback face to face, either because it’s too hard, they don’t think they will be taken seriously, or it may be a cultural issue. Text message feedback through the Texsys platform will provide an easier option for patients to give feedback and the health industry reporting will increase managerial decision making efficiency.

QR Codes are a 2 dimensional bar code that can be scanned by a smart phones camera, processed and taken to a particular website. There are also a raft of other functions that can be automated through the QR Code such as connecting to a specific wireless network, initiate the download of a file, save a contact to your phone and the list goes on. The main benefit for the consumer is that it’s simple and saves time in accessing information.

The massive rise in Smart Phones will mean that the QR Code is here to stay. Here in New Zealand it is estimated that by 2015, 45% of us will have a smart phone. What does this mean for you and your business? If you want to engage customers using a simple C.T.A. then QR Codes are a must. Texting will be round for some time yet, but if your customers have feature rich phones, why not drive them to a mobile optimised website through a QR Code instead of a 160 character text message reply?

At 6.15 this morning there was a knock at the door..I first thought there must be something wrong with a neighbour or the like. As it turns out it was a Post Haste Courier driving dropping off a package. I’m sure me standing in the door in my underwear probably gave him the idea we were (up until that point) asleep.

Nevertheless, 6.15 to drop off a package and ask for a signature? Surely Poste Haste have established some acceptable hours to deliver a package within?? That’s a negative customer experience in my books Post Haste..I’ve sent an email to display my dismay..Let’s see what they come back with!

In these times of Über competitiveness and hungry competitors waiting to snatch any unhappy customers, service recovery is an increasingly essential element to the business strategy. With Kiwis less inclined to tell you that something is wrong than ever before, allowing customer friendly feedback channels is key to ultimate service recovery success.

However, simply increasing customer feedback is just one piece of the jig-saw puzzle. Generally speaking, the aim of service recovery is to turn the customer round, almost in a literal sense and have them return to the store with an increased loyalty toward the brand. How can this be done? By exceeding expectations…While this may seem a cliche and stated in almost every service recovery research paper, it is fundamentally essential to change human behavior from the wrath of an unhappy customer bad mouthing the brand over their facebook page, to a brand ambassador that will pass on their positive experience. Expectations differ, so setting the ultimate service recovery strategy will inevitably require contextual input from sources such as your customers while taking into account what resources you can allocate to such a strategy.

There is no one size fits all approach to service recovery,  but the right strategy will inevitably have your competitors wonder why their sales have dropped.