Saturday, January 17th, 2009
I reached Frankfurt on transit on an overnight flight from New York on Singapore Airlines flight SQ25 before 11am on Christmas Eve, with the flight scheduled for takeoff at 12noon. The flight was first delayed till 1230pm, and then 11pm that night due to technical difficulties. As much as Chloe and I were eager to get home for Christmas, I’d rather wait 11 hours than get on an unsafe plane with technical difficulties. The Singapore Airlines representative at the gate then announced that we would all be put up at the Sheraton Hotel just opposite the airport, where we would be housed until takeoff.
That’s where things started to go wrong. The few hundred passengers muddled their way to the hotel and checked in, with no further communication from the airline. Chloe was mainly tired (as we had tried to stay awake during the New York-Frankfurt leg so we could sleep more and adjust better on the Frankfurt-Singapore leg), I only wanted internet access and to make a call home to let my parents know more details.
So I went down to find the Singapore Airlines representative and explained to her what I needed. She came back after talking to Sheraton saying I could either get one hour of internet or a 10 Euro phone call. I literally looked at her with disbelief on my face and asked if that was seriously the best Singapore Airlines could do for two customers sitting in upper class. She negotiated up to two hours of internet access, at which point I was just too tired to negotiate further. (Sidenote: I never did get that internet access due to hotel difficulties and after one attempt to get help from the Sheraton, I gave up. Frankfurt is the worst place on earth to get a wireless internet connection).
Now here’s the thing. I have full sympathy for the poor Singapore Airline personnel who are looking at an extended Christmas Eve workday, and probably well into Christmas. But after I checked the internet rates, it was 1 hour for 8 Euros, and 24 hours for 18 Euros. So the two hours she had negotiated with me would already be 16 Euros anyway. What’s with saving 2 Euros in the grand scheme of things?
I can only imagine people who will be claiming hotel booking fees for no-show, tours that need to be rebooked and recharged and the like, but they’re skimping on 18 Euros? Not to mention we got a food voucher worth 40 Euros too. So it’s not like they weren’t prepared to spend money.
The second thing that was really terrible from a communications point of view, was that no one came up to our room or even gave us a call to tell us what our status was. After taking a long nap, I went to the lobby to ask about our flight details at 8:30pm. The Singapore Airlines representative at the desk had two different pieces saying two different things. First I was told that Chloe and I were re-booked onto a Quantas flight, and a couple of minutes later, told that we were on a 10pm Singapore Airlines flight instead. I don’t know how to say this, but when you’ve been away from home for four months, just got off an overnight flight with an hour of sleep, and already annoyed at a lack of basic internet connection, the last thing you want to hear is the airline sounding unsure about which flight you’re getting on to go home.
In addition to that, what if I went downstairs to ask about my flight at 9:15pm and was told my flight was at 10pm and couldn’t make it? Why didn’t someone come to let us know about it? It’s not like they didn’t have our names and room numbers. And I don’t think this is an unreasonable request. It’s not a far stretch to imagine that customers who are stranded in a foreign airport would like to hear from the airline at sometime during the day. If not personally, then at least through a phone call.
My closing point here is this: 18 Euros and a phone call would have transformed this “Singapore Airlines drops the ball” post into “Singapore Airlines delivers full satisfaction, even with 12 hour delay” post. Especially with the state of air travel these days, I think airlines want to give customers an experience so that they can tell other friends and colleagues “Even if Singapore Airlines has flight issues, you will be taken care of”. I think that positive word of mouth will go far these days.
I am and will always be a Singapore Airlines fan, and one isolated incident like this is not going to make me stop flying with them. But I write this hoping they will do better. As always, I invite Singapore Airlines to respond to this blog post and tell their side of the story.
[note: this post is a late one because my laptop crashed on arriving back to Singapore and the draft was saved on my computer]
Tags: airplane technical difficulties, christmas eve, euros, finding wireless connection in frankfurt, frankfurt, new york, quantas, sheraton hotel, singapore airlines, sq26
Posted in Poor Practices, case studies | 4 Comments »
Thursday, December 11th, 2008
Last week I blogged about what not getting involved in social media may cost you, and I have a personal example on it this week.
I’m leaving beautiful Canada in just about a week and I have to go through New York to go home. Because I don’t feel like sitting in a train for 14 hours and don’t dare to drive in potentially snowy conditions on unfamiliar roads, I’m going to fly.
While booking tickets, I made sure to avoid Delta Airlines for one reason and one reason alone: Joseph Jaffe’s Delta Skelter experience and absolute failure to act satisfactorily on the part of Delta Airlines.
Do I know that American Airlines is any better? No, not at all. No one in the North American airline industry is particularly known for being excellent. That also means I’ll take my chances with a “neutral” party than a party that is known to have issues for sure.
So Delta, if you had just made things right at the time, you may just have had my $200 because Joseph would have blogged about how happy he was that you made things right, and I would have based my decision on that positive word of mouth instead of the negative.
And by the way, this is only one $200 ticket that Delta may know about. How many do they not know about?
Tags: american airlines, canada, delta airlines, delta skelter, flying to new york, joseph jaffe, negative roi, new york
Posted in Poor Practices, case studies, social media | 2 Comments »
Saturday, September 6th, 2008
One of my favourite franchises in New York is Cosi Cafe, and I spent quite a bit of time at their outlets while I was there. One thing Cosi does well is maintaining a good web presence.
Their website is divided into the US States, with individual addresses of the outlets listed. This means one can enter it on Google Maps and find it fairly easily. Or, even easier, typing “Cosi Cafe, New York” in the Google Maps search bar turns up the various locations in Manhattan, so all you have to do is choose the one closest to you.
What really blew me away was when I was trying to find this one particular Cosi Cafe outlet that I particularly liked. I didn’t remember anything about it, other than it was near the Natural History Museum. I had walked out a different exit last December and it was dark, so I randomly walked in one direction and stumbled upon the place. So I did Google Map search and looked a a couple which were rather close to the Museum, and chose Google’s Street View and saw this
Maybe you can’t see it from the image, but it’s next to a hair salon called “Curl Up And Dye”, which I remember from my previous trip (how do you forget a name like that?).
The lesson here? In a place like Manhattan, or Tokyo, or Hong Kong, or Singapore, where choice is endless, you may have people like me who adore your brand, or just a random tourist searching for “coffee in New York” or “shoes in Hong Kong”.
Unlike Kingston, you can’t afford to not be reaching out on the web with a website, a blog, a Facebook account, pictures, videos and other user-generated content, because people will be searching for your vertical, and if they can’t find you, you can bet they’ll find your competitor instead.
Tags: cosi cafe, curl up and dye, google maps, google street view, hong kong, manhattan, natural history museum new york, new york, Singapore, tokyo
Posted in social media | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
I was talking to Wanida online yesterday and telling her I really enjoyed Avenue Q, so she asked to borrow my soundtrack. I initially said no because she should watch it in person! She countered by saying that hearing the songs, will further increase her interest to catch the next time in New York. I realised that was pretty much the same for me: listening to Les Miserables on cd on an almost-daily basis when I was young made me really want to catch it when I first flew to New York to see how the scenes I imagined in my head played out on stage.
With that in mind, I went to the website to find a song or video clip to show her, but the only clips on the official site were 29 seconds long (featuring a cast who isn’t even performing anymore), and those on youtube are secretly filmed in the theatres.
So how in the world does someone in Singapore get an actual sample of what Avenue Q is about?
First of all, let’s establish that Avenue Q does a great job with traditional marketing. There are huge billboards in Times Square with really funny, provocative advertisements. That works fine if people are living in the United States and are exposed to it.
However, Avenue Q is never going to go to certain countries like Singapore and others because it’s controversial and we’re conservative. When Singaporeans (and perhaps most tourists) visit New York, the tendency is to catch the newest show (Is He Dead?), the hottest show (Wicked) or the sold-out-for-ten-years show (The Lion King). Given that there are easily 20-odd theatres with musicals at any one time, how does a show like Avenue Q get the average tourist to consider their show instead? (And hey, before you think Avenue Q isn’t any good, they won the Tony over Wicked).
My solution is to release full length audio and video clips for download and/or streaming. Before you get up from your seat and go “What? Those seats go for a hundred bucks!”, hear me out.
This will enable people to really sample what the show is like, get the show some exposure, and if they ever make a trip over to the United States, you can bet that in addition to Wicked and Lion King (which will probably be sold out anyway), they’ll have Avenue Q in mind as a possible Broadway musical to catch as well.
Why full length audio? Avenue Q has an advantage in that it has absolutely brilliant and attention-grabbing song titles. Imagine seeing a friend listening to “The Internet Is For Porn” or “It Sucks To Be Me” on MSN or Last.fm, that is definitely going to generate interest, which can translate to word of mouth and eventually, ticket sales.
This concept of distributing certain bits of a product for free isn’t new. I first read about it in October when Chris Anderson gave away a chapter of his book, Mitch Joel at Six Pixels of Separation has also explored How to make money by giving something away for free.
Joseph Jaffe also has a new initiative UNM2PNM (that’s Using New Marketing To Prove New Marketing) by giving away 150 copies of Join The Conversation, as long as the recipients give an honest review of the book. I’ve applied for a book, hopefully geographical restrictions allow for it to happen.
Finally, let me say that I’m providing a fairly simplistic view of Avenue Q’s distribution. I don’t know what the legal scene is like and if this is actually possible. But if it were, this would be something I’d do straightaway.
Tags: avenue q, broadway, chris anderson, free chapter, is he dead, jaffe juice, join the conversation, joseph jaffe, last.fm, les miserables, lion king, mitch joel, new york, Singapore, six pixels of separation, tony award, unm2pnm, wicked
Posted in Marketing | 8 Comments »
