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Vegas vaca (vay-kay) communique

Which do you value more: good communication or good customer service?  Seems like an easy question, right?  Well, on a recent weekend excursion I experienced a lack of both, making me realize even more how valuable these assets are to an organization. 

It was Thursday afternoon and I had Vegas running through my veins!  I was completely checked out and my fiance and I were in full-on vacation mode!

Everything was going smoothly, until it came time to see what gate we were at and we saw what everyone dreads at the airport.  “Denver to Las Vegas . . . 7: 05 p.m. . .  Delayed . . . 8:40 p.m.”
Still in high-hopes, we headed to the gate, only to realize that it has been delayed an additional 20 minutes. Being in vacation-mode, I calmly walk up to the desk to ask the gate clerk the reason for the delay.

“The weather from a connecting flight is delaying other flights but I am not certain that is the particular reason for your flight’s delay,” she said.

Now here was communication/customer service error number one. The internal team must always be “in the loop,” so they can communicate effectively to the customers.

Another hour passes and no word on the delay, until the phone rings. It’s the airline calling to let us know that the flight is delayed again, by another 20 minutes, totaling a delay of more than two hours - still with no explanations.  My hopes dashed, I waited along with the rest of the passengers in the terminal, as we collectively started coming to the realization that Vegas was not in our near future.

Then finally, after a three-hour delay, a voice booms over the intercom:

“All those traveling to Las Vegas this evening, you will be happy to know that your plane has arrived. We will be cleaning up the plane and boarding as quickly as possible.”

My heart is racing as we line up near the front of the gate.

Vegas is only a few hours away!

But, come on, you know it just can’t be that easy.

Sure enough, now my phone rings. Another delay!

Communication and customer service error number two. We were standing in front of the gate with the flight attendants, the gate clerk and the pilots, yet we still heard about our flight from an automated voice in our cell phones?  Please…

As someone in the communication biz, I have to respect that they are using all the “tools,” but as a customer, I truly value the power of face-to face interaction. 

So this comes back to my question, which is more valuable: communication or customer service?  I submit that one cannot be accomplished without the other.

In the end, the delays totaled four hours, making our landing time just before 1 a.m.

Which, lucky for us, is still early in Vegas!

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Posted by Liz Viscardi on 06/24 at 08:00 AM
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I agree that communication and customer service go hand in hand. These days it seems harder and harder to talk to an actual person rather than an automated system. It seems odd that you got an automated phone call about your delay but the folks at the airport didn’t have the information about the delays. Customer service is vital to businesses—no matter what business you’re in. Ditto for communication.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  09/14  at  03:46 PM

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No Sign of the Cavalry

Fifteen years ago, what is now the Internet superhighway was more like the Wild West. There were few rules and more than a few shady characters.  It was a place where a man with an excessively waxed moustache dared tie a damsel to the railroad tracks with the man on the white horse several days’ ride away.

As registering domain names became easier, “entrepreneurial” individuals began registering all manner of them with the hope that someday, a Pepsi or Dell Computer or even Sting the musician would pay a ransom to secure rights to “their” URL. Later dubbed “cyber squatting,” this practice was reined-in when a new Sheriff came to town in the form of the federal government, which enacted the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act in 1999.

Today, there’s a dusty new boom town on the virtual horizon: social media. Much like the Internet was a decade-or-so ago, social media has a constantly evolving set of rules, norms and bad actors.

A story I read in the June 17, 2009 edition of The New York Times, reminds me of something we’ve been suggesting to our clients for months now – determine the most logical account names your company or organization might use on popular social media sites and REGISTER THEM IMMEDIATELY.

It doesn’t matter if you plan to use them or not – securing your accounts now will prevent others from doing so – at best offering later to sell them to you for a “reasonable price,” or at worst impersonating you and casting your business in a negative light.

Yes, some social media platforms allow users to file complaints to have an account turned over to the “rightful owner,” but who needs that headache?

It seems prudent to us to take a proactive role, because right now it’s the Wild West, and there’s no sign of the Cavalry.

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Posted by Matt Wittern on 06/19 at 04:05 AM
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