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Angi Tries to Standardize Home Repairs; Dentsu Buys Customer Experience Shop; Airline Complaints Don’t Go Far
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Welcome back. The home-services platform Angi is trying to make hiring a contractor as predictable as hailing an Uber. A major advertising company is moving further into customer experience with a new acquisition. And travelers’ complaints about airlines are disappearing into the wind.
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CONTENT FROM OUR SPONSOR: SAP
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By standardizing core business processes and boosting automation levels, telecommunications giant Vodafone is prepared to develop the next generation of products and services.
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Angi's new feature showcases home services as a browsable list on the web. PHOTO: ANGI INC.
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Angi, the home services company formerly known as Angie’s List, is rolling out a feature that lets consumers browse and buy common household services at set prices, Ann-Marie Alcántara reports.
Its goal is to offer tasks such as mounting a television, painting a room or repairing a roof in a format that more closely resembles the experience in industries already transformed by tech, like ordering a taxi via a ride-share app.
The new feature supplements the current system, which allows users to browse professionals in a directory or submit a project request, then take up details such as cost estimates directly with contractors.
Angi executives say they are trying to bring transparency and standardization to the home improvement space. The layout is designed to resemble an e-commerce store for more traditional goods.
“The more we can merchandise and display to the user in a visual way, like the same way you’d scroll an Amazon or a Target catalog online, the more we can make it easy for people to digest,” said Oisin Hanrahan, chief executive of Angi.
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Dentsu will incorporate LiveArea into Merkle, its customer experience management division. PHOTO: ISSEI KATO/REUTERS
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Japanese advertising giant Dentsu is buying the customer experience and commerce agency LiveArea from e-commerce company PFSweb for about $250 million, Katie Deighton writes for the Experience Report.
The acquisition forms part of Dentsu’s plan to boost the amount of revenue it generates from customer transformation and technology work to 50% of its total, up from 29.1% in the first quarter of this year.
Marketing companies over the past decade have been focused on coupling creative advertising with data management, analysis and technology. Now they are angling to bring e-commerce and customer technology into the mix, to help clients serve consumers seamlessly and consistently between web platforms and real-life properties, said Julie Langley, managing partner of mergers and acquisitions advisory firm Results International.
“It’s hard to build teams who are skilled in e-commerce organically, quickly, so there’s just much more of a propensity to buy the teams,” she said.
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Complaining Into the Void
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When airlines resisted issuing required refunds during the pandemic, the Transportation Department mainly issued nothing more than warnings. ART: EDEL RODRIGUEZ
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Travelers’ complaints about airlines skyrocketed last year, but to almost no effect, Scott McCartney writes.
The torrent stemmed from airlines’ refusal to give refunds they owed to consumers for flights airlines canceled. That violates U.S. law.
But a coronavirus vaccine was developed and deployed quicker than the DOT could enforce its own rules.
Airline lobbying has countered passenger advocacy efforts for years and the DOT, like many federal agencies, suffers from a shortage of staff to handle consumer-protection issues. The agency lacks a consumer advocate, even though one is required by Congress.
Only recently has the department moved to penalize Air Canada, about which U.S. consumers have filed more than 6,300 complaints since the pandemic started, for its failure to pay out refunds owed.
Before the $25.5 million Air Canada fine, DOT had only warned airlines that they were violating U.S. rules and it might take action if they didn’t offer refunds.
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“Saying ‘because of Covid’ is not a good phrase.”
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— Jo Causon, chief executive at the U.K. Institute of Customer Service. Consumers are getting tired of hearing companies explain away poor service by blaming the pandemic, the institute’s research suggests.
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Roving robots have delivered orders from Ann Arbor, Mich., restaurants, in tests this year. PHOTO: YANDEX
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Grubhub plans to roll out food-delivering robots across U.S. college campuses from this fall. [WSJ]
Papa John’s loyalty program crossed 20 million members, up from 12 million two years ago, after a pandemic-fueled spike in pizza delivery. [Restaurant Business]
Mall operators are backing a plan to open food halls that simultaneously house delivery-only “ghost kitchens.” [WSJ]
Retailers are experimenting with QR codes and virtual consultations to lure shoppers back into stores. [Glossy]
Bumble, the dating app, is opening its long-planned cafe for romantic nights, friend get-togethers and more. [Bloomberg]
How to share user insights in a way that actually gets results. [UX Collective]
Experience designers usually err on the side of “less is more,” to keep things simple for users. But are there times when more is more? [UX Magazine]
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