Category Archive: Customer Loyalty

Follow up on my Lufthansa travel story

Posted by Milena Regos on July 27, 2010

I want to close the loop on the Lufthansa travel nightmares blog post I wrote back in May during my trip to Europe for those of you who followed my trip and have been asking me for the result.

In summary, I had to deal with a delayed plane, a sick passenger, a well deserved and expensive  shower, new clothes and a long delay at the airport, a lost bag for 7 days, a damaged suitcase and missing items from the bag and COUNTLESS hours emailing, talking to and collecting paperwork for Lufthansa.

Today I received a check from them for $1,732. This is the maximum amount they will issue for a lost bag. (Policy)

All and all, I’m OK with this. It certainly didn’t make up for the lost hours dealing with the company. It can’t make up for the inconvenience, the hassle, my niece’s disappointment when her new iPod was missing, etc.  At least, I feel like I have been somewhat compensated for the expenses.

Ultimately the question is – Did Lufthansa keep me as a customer?

Most likely they did. At the bottom of the pyramid.

During the entire process, I was contacted only once on this blog from someone in their “social media” department.

The worst part about Lufthansa as I discovered is that you cannot contact their customer department by phone. Only by email and by fax.  I suppose you can visit them personally in their office on the East Coast. It felt too much to me like they didn’t want to deal with customers.

Again, did they keep me as a customer? Probably so. Can they work on improving their customer service? Absolutely. Can they start to move people up the pyramid?Definitely so. It would have taken them very little to move me up. Maybe next time.

This concludes my Lufthansa story. Now, I’m ready for new travel adventures with happier experiences and better airline service.  Oh, and anyone from the customer service department of Lufthansa reading this blog, I can consult you on how to improve your customer service. Call me for a free conversation.

Categories: Blog Customer Loyalty Customer service Life Travel Travel & Recreation | No Comments »

San Francisco hotel and restaurant recommendations

Posted by Milena Regos on April 16, 2010

Photo Credit: Flickr.com by PatrickSmithPhotography

I recently returned from a short trip to San Francisco and I’d like to recommend a few places to stay and eat while in the city that you won’t be disappointed with.

1. The best place to stay in San Francisco is the Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf. You can see all of their reviews on TripAdvisor which confirm my recommendation for a top place to stay in the city. The location is excellent for both leisure and business. It’s close for a nice long walk by the water to the Ferry Building Marketplace, a fabulous place to explore Northern California local produce, breads, meats, seafood, oils, wines or grab a cup of nice coffee or taste some fresh oysters. Along the way, you will pass a few excellent options for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Hyatt is also super close to a couple of cable car turns around and you can enjoy a beautiful sightseeing tour of the city. We enjoyed being able to walk just about anywhere in the city right from the hotel. It’s within a short walking distance from Ghirardelli Square, the Wharf, Pier 39,  North Beach, the Coit Tower, China Town and even Union Square. In addition to the excellent location, I love the modern and clean rooms and most of all the super comfortable bed. The staff is helpful and friendly and the stay is by all means very enjoyable. I haven’t found a better place in the city regardless of your trip purpose – it’s great for short or long visits to San Francisco or business trips.  The Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf wins my award for customer service – everyone I have met in their hotel understands what it means to provide superb customer service. With rooms rates starting at $149, this hotel is a definite winner if you are looking for a place to stay in San Francisco.

2. Nombe Restaurant – This restaurant came as a recommendation by a friend. We looked at each other in the taxi with questions in our eyes as we were approaching the location – in a most unassuming part of  San Francisco in the Mission District. From the outside, the place looked empty although we were told a reservation is necessary to get it. Once inside, the place opened up to a nice atmosphere, busy tables and a great dinner. They serve a big selection of sakes and a very interesting menu of tapas. By all means, get the chicken wings with honey and serrano chili sauce. They have some interesting dishes as well starting with different sashimi plates and ending with pork belly (done two different ways) and chicken gizzards and hearts. Reasonably priced, it all depends how much sake you drink. The staff is friendly. This restaurant just made the Top 100 restaurants in San Francisco. Check out their Yelp reviews.

3. Kokkari restaurant is by far the best Greek restaurant I have visited in the US. Again, via a recommendation from a friend we went there once and we’ll continue to return. The staff is super nice and on top of it, the food is superb, the atmosphere is great.  They have an extensive wine selection from the New World and from the Old World and scrumptious tapas and dinners. By all means, try their lamb – you can pick from lamb rib lets to shank, lamb organs and other delicious cuts. I would also recommend their whole fish and the grilled octupus. The Greek salad, fava beans and zucchinis are delicious too. I would love to return there with a large group of friends and take over their private room. Kokkari makes the perfect location for a special occasion or casual drink and some tapas at the bar. Check out their Yelp reviews and enjoy it. Make sure to make a reservation ahead of time.

Your turn. What places in San Francisco do you enjoy and recommend? Let me know what you think of these places if you visit them.

Categories: Blog Brands I like Customer Loyalty Customer service Life Marketing Travel Travel & Recreation | No Comments »

Is your ski resort ready for the season? What keeps you up at night?

Posted by Milena Regos on December 1, 2009

Photo credit: Jeff Engerbretson

I’m speaking tomorrow at the North Lake Tahoe Chamber of Commerce Breakfast Club. I’m looking forward to hearing the key note speaker, Bob Roberts from the California Ski Industry Association as well as seeing my colleagues in the industry. I hope everyone is as excited as I am about the start of a new season. In my presentation I’d like to make three points that I’m passionate about and keep me up at night.

3 things that in my opinion can help your ski resort in today’s economy succeed. 3 things that we as marketers and business owners need to invest in, understand and encourage.

1. Invest in Customer Service. This is one sure way to generate positive word of mouth. In this tough economy our customers demand better than ever customer service. I continue to get disappointed every time I go to San Francisco and visit the retail environment there.  Invest in customer service training for your employees. It will pay off for your business in the long run. Track customer service with surveys. Award your best performing employees.  Establish benchmarks. At Diamond Peak we have a mystery guest program where I personally select a customer for the day to keep an eye out for employees going above and beyond their regular line of duty. Once they spot this special employee they hand him/her a card with $25 bucks they can use anywhere at the resort. Coming from the customer, the message is a lot stronger than coming from their supervisor. We don’t announce the program to our employees; we let word of mouth spread it every year.  This program is extremely successful. In addition, we have mandatory customer service training that is taught by our General Manager at the beginning of the season. With every ticket purchased we hand out a card asking our skiers to go online and fill out a survey. We pride ourselves on high customer service and it’s one parameter in the customer experience we feel is within our control. People like to be treated nicely. They expect it and demand it. They tell their friends about it. Don’t disappoint them. Understand the Power of One – that one individual can make or break their day and you can win or lose a customer for life.
2. Understand the power of Social Media and Word of Mouth Marketing. Now is the time to embrace new technology and the new ways people are demanding information and seeking to engage with brands. 44% of the online population is engaged on social networks. Close to 20% of the adult online population are word of mouth marketing influencers and this number is expected to grow in the coming years. Facebook is the number 3 website in terms of traffic, just past Google and Yahoo and before MSN, Live.com, Amazon, eBay and Graigslist. Your business needs to have presence on social media networks like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, FourSquare. You need to have a blog. Start building your online community. Start practicing “permission marketing” like Seth Godin refers to it. Ask people for permission to market to them. Stop interrupting them. It’s a vicious cycle when you try to shout at people and interrupt conversations. Don’t use the traditional marketing approach in the new media – it won’t work. People will turn you off. They will stop following you and stop being your friend. The ski resort industry is in a good position to show how fun and memorable the sport is. Use new media to get the image out and tap into people’s emotions with videos, photos and more user generated content. At Diamond Peak we are actively engaging with people on social networks. We are having fun doing it while establishing trust with our customers. Once they trust us they will be more likely to come and ski at our resort too.  Join in the conversation. Friend us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and watch our videos on YouTube. Let’s have some fun. Skiing is about fun.
3. CEOs and Business Owners – Encourage Smart, Honest, Aggressive, Transparent, Permission Marketing. Marketers – get 5-6 smart people in a room and start brainstorming how to increase your market share, create memorable programs, cut cost and stand out. Let’s be honest about our snow reports and ski conditions. Guess what? People can and will report ski conditions for us, right from the slopes. They will post videos, Facebook updates, Twitter posts, photos and write blogs about their experience. Now is the time to be more aggressive with our marketing efforts. The Bay Area is close and yet miles away when it comes to trying to convince a family to come and ski. We are competing for attention with other industries, other brands, other ski resort destinations.  It’s easier for a family to put the kids in front of the TV and play Wii or in front of the computer than to plan a trip to Lake Tahoe. Now is the time to build mind share. When the economy improves, and it will, they will remember us and the mind share will turn into a wallet share. Diamond Peak is known as Your Tahoe Place for kids and beginners. Diamond Peak has friendly staff. Diamond Peak created a new product this year called The Holiday Season Pass. Instead of blacking out the pass during the holidays when it may be the only time people can drive up for a ski vacation, we developed a product that’s good only during the holidays – 28 days for $249. That’s less than $9/day. Unheard of, right? Different? And finally, Diamond Peak has the most unique event in the Tahoe Basin – Last Tracks. We have some great programs in place for our customers to start the word of mouth marketing. You can discover them all at diamondpeak.com and help us spread the word – tell your friends and family about them.

To help with the networking and learning from each other I started a marketing chat room on Twitter with the hashtag of #mrktchat. It runs for an hour every Thursday at 2pm  PST. I hope you can all join us and we can all learn together as we are trying to figure out the new technology and tools available to us as marketers in the travel and tourism industry.

What are your thoughts? How are you getting ready for this season and this economy? What are you doing differently? What keeps you up at night?

Categories: Blog Customer Loyalty Customer service Customer Surveys Customer Training eMarketing Events Facebook Interactive marketing Lake Tahoe Marketing Recession marketing Ski industry Social Media Social Media Marketing Twitter Video Web 2.0 Word of Mouth | No Comments »

On customer service and social media

Posted by Milena Regos on July 19, 2009

There has been a lot of talk lately about the United video on YouTube and how it has affected United Airlines performance. After United Airlines broke Dave Carrol’s guitar and wasted 9 months of his time in excuses, he wrote a song about the horrible experience and posted it on YouTube. Over 3 million people so far have seen the video and it ranks number 3 on Google when someone searches for “United Airlines”. Nielsen wrote an excellent post on the subject that you can read here. Lessons learned from this experience:

1. The Power of One has become even stronger thanks to User Generated Content. Thanks to the power of social media one person’s horrible customer experience with your company can be seen by millions of people. Don’t let this happen to your company.

2. Are you listening on the social web? You should be monitoring what’s been said about your brand, your product and service online. There are many free tools to allow you to listen to what people are saying about you. If you catch something negative early you may be able to address the situation before it turns into a public relations nightmare.

3. Social media content gets high rankings on search engines. This could be good for you when you intentionally try to improve your search rankings with your social media efforts. It could also be very bad for you and take you a lot of money to correct as in the case of the United video.

4. Use social media to promote your excellent customer service. Social media can very fast turn bad customer experience with your company in a public relations nightmare. Many cases come to mind, such as Domino’s Pizza, Dell computer catching fire on YouTube or AOL not letting people unsubscribe from their service. However, social media can also be used to promote your brand in a positive light.

Below are two examples of how YouTube can become a very effective way to showcase how great your customer service is:

How about Southwest Airlines customer service videos on YouTube? There are so many of them that it was hard to pick just one that sums it all up. I found a video that shows a flight attendant rapping the safety rules prior to take off. It’s a great way to turn a not so pleasant experience into an engaging and entertaining experience on the airplane and one that customers will remember and talk about.

Here’s another great video of how powerful one individual can be to your brand and to the bottom line. Johnny the bagger came up with a simple idea to give something unique to his customers which transformed the whole grocery store into a welcoming and happy place for people while contributing to the bottom line.

5 lessons learned:

1. The Power of One can do wonders for your company or turn in a public relations nightmare. Customer service is all about how your employees engage with your customers. How pleased or dissatisfied your customers are with your product or service.
2. Make sure that your customers are beyond satisfied with your company and they recommend your services and products to  their friends and family.
3. Only after you have accomplished amazing customer service, you can hope to get referrals through Word-of-Mouth.
4. Word-of-mouth is free. With the right amount of word of mouth you may not need to advertise.
5. Make sure you measure customer service with surveys and Net Promoter Score and establish benchmarks for yourself. Without measurements you don’t know if your customer service has improved or worsened. There are plenty of ways you can measure customer service. Net Promoter Score is measured by asking your customers: ‘Would you recommend this service to your family and friends?”. You can calculate your promoters this way and know exactly where you stand and measure yourself against your industry averages.

Let me know what you think of customer service and how you are implementing employee training and measuring customer service at your business. I’m interested to hear.

Categories: Blog Customer Loyalty Customer service Customer Surveys Customer Training Social Media Video | 1 Comment »

A practical resource guide on how to listen on the social web?

Posted by Milena Regos on May 2, 2009

People are talking about you, your company, your brand. Do you know what they are saying?

Here’s a practical resource guide on how to find out what people are saying about your brand. Listening to what   people are saying seems to be a hot topic right now but most people don’t know where to start. There are some very good software companies that will help you achieve your goals but they can get expensive or simply are not in your budget especially when there are so many free tools already. I will share with you great tools that will do the job and are free. It will take you some time to set them up and see what works for you but you can’t ignore the conversations on the web. Listening to what’s happening is important because it will help you understand better what your customers want. Continue reading A practical resource guide on how to listen on the social web?

Categories: Blog Business Customer Loyalty Customer service Interactive marketing Lake Tahoe Marketing Measurements Small Businesses Social Media Social Media Marketing Technology Web 2.0 Web 2.0 tools | 3 Comments »