ABOUT
ABOUT:
Duncan Peberdy
For over 30 years, Duncan has been involved with
technology. He’s old enough to have sold computers
that only had Floppy Drives as storage devices, the
first Fax Machine under £1,000 [the Brother Fax 100
1987], but first cut-his-teeth as a commission-only
salesman of Canon photocopiers.
More recently, since 2006, Duncan has developed a
passion for improving meetings and collaboration.
In 2009 Pearson published Brilliant Meetings -
which Duncan proposed in an unsolicited approach to
Pearson, which was followed in 2014 by Managing
Productive Meetings.
Around ten years ago, Duncan became interested in
classroom collaboration for learning and teaching.
SCALE-UP, pioneered by Professor Bob Bichner at
North Carolina State University, was getting
established in the UK, from which other
methodologies for small group active collaborative
learning flowed. In 2014 Duncan was sponsored by
several leading technology companies to write and
publish, with contributions from academics and
professionals in the HE sector, Active Learning
Spaces and Technology: Advances in Higher and
Further Education. By 2017 wireless collaboration
systems were helping universities better equip their
students for the modern workplace by enabling
learning which developed the much-sought
employability skills;critical thinking, problem solving,
communication and collaboration, and Duncan’s
follow-up book Creating the Digital Campus:
Active Learning Spaces and Technology, was
again well received throughout the sector.
From 2015 to 2020 Duncan ran a successful Learning
Spaces Roadshow, which in 2018 was assimilated into
Jisc, helping universities and colleges to better
understand the many requirements for the successful
deployment of small group active collaborative
learning enabled by technology.
In summer 2020 Duncan returned to being a self-
employed consultant for technology enabled learning
spaces, and to provide time to launch this new book.
ABOUT:
The Consequences of Poor
Customer Service
When goods and services don’t perform as
expected, companies - however small or big -
should want to know. Why? Because according to
research by Accenture, the estimated cost to
businesses of customers in the USA switching due
to poor service is $1.6 trillion. For 32% of
customers, just one bad experience can result in
customers voting with their feet, which can be a
real problem for companies fixated on achieving
customer lifetime value [CLV] for their products and
services.
Flip that around, and research by
PricewaterhouseCoopers [PwC] clearly shows that
companies who get customer service right can
charge a premium for their products, in some cases
up to 16% more. Just look at Apple. Some might
consider their products overpriced, but it can’t be a
coincidence that a company with high levels of
customer loyalty and superb customer service is
the first in the USA to be valued at $2Tn.
As a departure from my usual world of EdTech, this
new book, Keep Calm and Carry on
Complaining, features five case studies that
highlight what can happen when companies don’t
respond correctly to a genuine customer complaint.
In taking on BMW, Microsoft, TUI, VW and a local
prestige hotel, you’ll discover how I got my
complaints in front of the CEO, using a strategy
that emails and letters don’t seem to achieve.
But for anyone in a customer facing role, and in the
UK 80% of our GDP is generated by the service
sector and almost 80% of people are employed in
customer-facing roles, the real lessons to be learnt
from my book are how not to treat your customers
when you get it wrong. In all my examples, BMW,
VW, TUI, Microsoft and the Chateau Impney Hotel
would have all saved money by providing excellent
customer service as a given, and not just because I
embarrassed them into it.
And make sure you complain if bad service and
faulty goods come your way, because companies
that truly care about your business will want to
know and put it right.