Bluebean.com needs work

Bluebean.com is Standard Bank`s financial services and online shopping portal. Having recently announced a deal with Tanua Technologies, and redeclared its commitment to the click or call model, ITWeb decided to try bluebean.com`s call option.

It is the eighth business day since I placed my order, and still no sign of the courier company contacting me.

Basheera Khan, journalist, ITWeb

The colour blue is a favourite of mine, but after spending too much time on this site, I may be forced to reconsider. It`s not so much that the site uses too much of the colour, but rather that it uses too many different shades of blue, which, offset by the stark white of the background, makes for a painful visual experience.

The home page is remarkably lacking in imaginative use of design and layout - the extensive use of frames results in a blocky, flat page, which is loaded with content. All in all, not a very inviting home page, unless you count the nicely sized buttons at the head of the page, which allow for one-click access to home, shopping, money and merchant pages within the site.

As mentioned, bluebean.com is a financial services and shopping portal, and as can be expected, offers functionality associated with those options. One can register as a bluebean.com user, and apply for the branded credit card. There are also links to mylife@bluebean.com (the financial planning aspect of the site), straight-up Internet banking, a profile manager and a loyalty point monitor. There is also a shopping demo.

The site offers free SMS capability, and a number of ad boxes which link through to the merchant`s page. It`s interesting to note that bluebean.com recently discontinued its relationships with a number of its merchants; it appears to have retained only those whose products/services cannot be provided by Tanua Technologies.

ITWeb`s friends at Keynote Systems say the average download time on the page, between 8am and 10pm, is 15 seconds, with minimal error reporting. This may seem horrendously slow, but considering SA`s bandwidth problems, it is just below average.

The site has a contact centre number displayed on the home page, which when dialled, takes you through to a very professional sounding interactive voice response (IVR) session. It offers the options of querying shopping and loyalty points, account applications, credit card queries, and information relating to mylife@bluebean.com, general queries and a telephone banking option.

The Web site is easily navigated, even though some links are not given as much prominence in the page as they are in the top and side anchored navigation bars. One can view the products available through the bluebean.com shopping section without registering, which is a plus.

The mylife@bluebean.com financial planning and management tools appear to be useful and user-friendly, while the rest of the information is just as pertinent. My only complaint is that there is a deluge of content on this site, and its presentation definitely needs some work. At the moment, it is slapped all around the site in a haphazard fashion. A more structured approach would be much more effective at getting the message across.

I came to know of several special offers by advertising flyer, which displayed a different contact centre number than that on the home page. I used that one, which appears to be a more dedicated shopping number, and which sounds somewhat less polished than the other IVR loop.

In fact, the introductory message sounds tense and strained - almost as if it was recorded by a bluebean exec with very little time or resources. It probably was, too. They should definitely consider re-recording a friendlier, more relaxed sounding message.

This second number offers options directly related to shopping, and like most IVR applications, is easily navigated with the use of a touchtone phone.

The contact centre operators I dealt with were helpful enough, even to the point where I received the same information from two different people, spaced out over a 12-hour period. For a reason beyond my understanding, two people handled each of my calls. I don`t know if I`m too demanding, or if I keep getting the trainees, but there you go.

I placed my order on the morning of 24 May, and received a phone call that afternoon to confirm that the payment had gone through, and to notify me of my reference code. The next day, I received another call, again with the reference code. Better to err on the side of caution, I guess.

Two business days later, I phoned to make use of the tracking functionality promised in the IVR. Reality check time - firstly, the call centre operator asked for my name and an arbitrary piece of information - what I purchased, I think. I volunteered the reference number, which considering the importance placed on it by the other bluebean.com operators, I was quite surprised they hadn`t asked for first.

Apparently, demand for the special offers heralding the Tanua Technologies announcement was quite in excess of initial expectations. The contact centre operator said something that sounded like it was being read from a prepared statement, which apologised for slow service due to overwhelming demand.

The call centre agent also let slip that bluebean.com hadn`t yet implemented the call centre software, and that all orders were still being processed manually. So much for technology saving the day!

This meant there was no way to actually track my order, or even to confirm that payment had been received. When I told her that the payment had indeed been confirmed, she explained again to me in the tone of voice generally reserved for the very young, the very old or the very touched, that it would take four to seven business days to receive my order, and pointed out in no uncertain terms that this was merely the second day, and I should just wait to be contacted by the courier company.

When I tried to track my purchase again, I was once again greeted by an operator who preferred to use the nature of my purchase rather than my reference number to track it down. That strikes me as just a little confused. South African consumers are used to quoting reference numbers over the phone - why then does bluebean.com ignore this?

At the time of publishing, it is the eighth business day since I placed my order, and still no sign of the courier company contacting me - although I was promised that it would happen in two days time.

Delivery on special offers is free of charge, while delivery on other products is calculated by weight. Prices range from R27 for items weighing 1kg, to R153 for anything weighing 100kg.

I might consider shopping through bluebean.com again, but only when I`m convinced its back-end and fulfilment operations can take the strain of what seems to be a growing number of contact centre shoppers.