Back on May 18th, I wrote an entry regarding Travelocity as an exercise to you about customer service and follow up. The full post is here, but my general point was true customer service involves complete follow up, especially if you fix the original problem.
In the comments section, a nice fellow, Gary Potter, left a note saying I would be contacted and even went one step further by posting his own blog entry which you can read here. He basically said, he bets on the customer service team, not your humble VC.
Yup, you know where this is going. No call, no email, shoulda placed a big bet with Gary. That's not, however, the big message and critical lesson for you to learn.
This is a text book case of why, in my opinion, the jury is out on corporate blogging from the perspective of overall long term impact.
We know Robert Scoble is dives on problems/issues virtually immediately and does a pretty good job of, well, diving in. Gary Potter, Sabre Holdings, wants to be like Scoble from the perspective of being proud of his company and wanting make some change happen.
Gary got up in public, proclaimed to his large audience of readers and the four of us over here on my blog, "this will get addressed" in the same way Scoble does it for Microsoft.
Microsoft doesn't leave uber-blogger hanging but it looks like Sabre/Travelocity is going to leave Gary hanging out here in cyberspace.
And who ends up getting hurt? The company, not me. The company wins an employee who may (don't know Gary) just may care a little less, get frustrated a little more and take it on down the road thus costing Sabre holdings the total investment in Gary not to mention replacement costs, etc.
Forget me. I've spent, since the original post, $22,500 in travel not on Travelocity. Travelocity used to be 100% for me, now it's zero but forget me, I'm not that big of a deal revenue wise and I haven't painted "I hate Travelocity" on my car or body.
Worry about Gary and all the Gary types out there that care about where they work, are sitting right on the front lines, diving on problems and being left out in the cold because some "old school" team just doesn't get where communications are going.
My advice:
Prohibit your employees from getting on-line and doing anything or saying anything about the company. Make it a firing offense.
Keep this policy in place until you and your management team clearly understand that yesterday is done. The line between all of your people and all of your customers (live and potential) is direct and unfiltered. You must have a process (and commitment) in place to deal with the new world as it can make or break you.
Then go check out Gary Potter. Seems like a senior/smart guy and one who gets it. He might be in the mood to make a change! Memo to Travelocity HR/Legal: I'm just kidding, please don't flame or sue me.
[Side note: It dawned on me that in making the point about not having "I hate Travelocity" on my car or body and pointing out that I don't really have an issue with Travelocity, I've created the possibility that when the inevitable Google check of "I hate Travelocity" gets done, this post might show up even though, I don't hate em. Them search bots can be a bitch, eh? Off to Seattle]
Interesting, luckily I work at a company where I've always gotten help for customers when I've asked for it. In fact, the blog makes it more likely I'm gonna find the right person to get it done (and it TOTALLY led to the development of Channel 9).
Posted by: Robert Scoble | May 31, 2005 at 18:39