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.
