One of the reasons this blog has been neglected for the past few weeks has been the fact that we've just been flat out with work and, whilst there are a few matters that I want to write about, I had an experience yesterday that has jumped to the head of the queue.
I'm in London today for the 'more exciting than it sounds' Automated Transfers to Local Authorities workshop, which has already scored its programme initiation goal of having a Greek acronym in ATLAS (although Midas remains the IT industry favourite in my experience).
As it's a fairly early start in London, I caught the train down yesterday afternoon. We left in good time for the station and I went to pick up my tickets from the machine at the station, having ordered them online from The Train Line. I popped in my card and I was prompted for my booking reference, which caught me off guard, as it normally just spews the tickets out.
The Train Line website has a nifty feature which enables you to SMS your journey details to your 'phone, so fortunately I had them to hand but the reference wasn't recognised. After two more attempts I gave up and bought fresh tickets from the booking office, just as the train rolled in. It was a mad rush to kiss my wife goodbye and jump on the train with my laptop, suit and overnight bag but I made it to a table and made to stow my luggage, at which point I realised I was still holding the car keys.
In a most un-English way I shouted for someone to hold the door, thus paralysing everyone else on the carriage at a stroke but I made it in time to hand the keys to my wife who was determindly striding the length of the train looking for me (and probably considering the eight mile walk home with two small children).
Eventually, then I was sat at my seat, luggage put away, book, laptop and iPod out, and I decided to Tweet my success against the odds: "Heading down to London for the DWP meeting, despite TheTrainLine's ticket pickup process letting me down #moredismalsoftware".
Less than thirty seconds later I had a reply from @thetrainline "@fennerpearson Hello, anything I can help you with? Dave"
Needless to say, my irritation with The Train Line flip-flopped in an instant and, fond of the website as I have been in the past, now I was in love. Before the train was at the next station, David Wilkins, the man at the end of the Twitter line, had sorted out my problem and given me instructions to obtain a refund.
There is a huge amount of suspicion and even distain when it comes to social media and I'm not saying I don't have doubts about it myself from time to time but here is a brilliant example of a company making full use of the tools at its disposal to give a personalised service in a transaction environment that - arguably as one of its benefits - has almost no contact between business and customer.
So, hats off to The Train Line for imaginative use of technology and thereby turning a very disgruntled customer into one who is now delighted to have had a stressful start to his journey, just so he could experience their use of Twitter. As anyone runnng a business knows, it's easy when everything's going right. It's how you deal with situations when they go wrong that sorts out the average companies from the excellent ones.
I'm more of a cynic than you Fen, so I think that companies (who, and all credit due to Train Line here, *understand* the power of social media) have professional tweeters out there purely to mop up negative publicity spills before they get out of hand. If only BP could do that in the real world.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to know how successful you'd have been obtaining a refund if you'd tried to phone or email them.
We've had a lot of frustration with trying to get support from Adobe in recent months, through the proper *paid* support channels. One disgruntled tweet from one of our web editors precipitated an immediate response.
Is this a bad thing? On balance I think it is. It's great for companies to offer support via any channel, and to embrace new platforms and new technologies - I am 100% behind that - I'm a fan, but in the business world at least we need reliable and personal support without having to threaten to "squeal" first.
R.
I've had a few similar experiences and its just great when this happens.
ReplyDeleteThe immediacy of social media is extremely alluring and holds so much potential. But the race is on before I think it goes the way of telephone, email and SMS.
I frequently tell people the best way to reach me at work is twitter*. I never answer the phone (too many cold calls) and email is just rammed. But that's only because its early days before the we get swamped.
I think yours is a great story, but it only goes to highlight the poor experience we get across the other more traditional customer service channels. Having a dedicated soc media team just isn't tenable in the long term.
(I also wonder whether your result would've been different during peak travel times.)
In the meantime your problem was solved and you have a great customer experience. Which shouldn't be forgotten!
John
*Ric - i last shared this observation with the European Marketing Directors at Adobe on Thursday. I was invited in to their offsite to talk all things marketing (and social media). If I'd known your problems I would've angled for a free copy of CS5 :-)