Benjamin S Powell

This is a repost from Customize WordPress. A site thatcan help you develop a new career in building custom wordpress themes.

You know (if you have been reading this blog for a while) that I have a bit of a thing with this … ahem…. “Award Winning”.. hmmm airline.

Well, you guessed it… I was forced to try to and I would like to emphasise the word TRY to buy a flight with them.

So what am I complaining about this time… what else?

ERROR

[5066:NotPaidInFull] We are unable to successfully process one or more payments. Please select a different payment and apply it until the balance due is zero.  ”

Yeah, another error… It just amazes me that this company who are one of the largest carriers around can not seem to get around to fixing their website processes.

So Air Asia what are you going to do?

Firstly read this on the last Air Asia issue

Then follow it up with this one

Maybe listen to what other people are saying about the service issues  and fix them.

I think this is the last post I will make on Air Asia, and very defiantly the last time I will ever event try to fly with them.

I am a big coffee drinker, usually two for breakfast and on from there.

So recently, I left the house early for a meeting and didn’t get a chance to have my second coffee so I stopped at a place on my tram interchange and grabbed a latte. Nothing to special about that, but again this morning I had same thing happen so, I stopped at the same place.

This morning however I was cashless but I didn’t realise this till I was about to order, I asked the guy at the counter if there was an ATM nearby.

Instead of pointing me away from their shop where they may have lost my custom Andrew (who I guess was the owner) said

“Mate, this one is on us”

and handed over a freebe!

This in itself was pretty cool, but think about the flow on of that free coffee.

They may have lost the sale anyway (if I had of trundled off to the ATM) so the revenue from that coffee was potentially not going to come in, so giving it away isn’t really an issue also, it’s not really a high ticket item so one coffee isn’t going to break the bank but, the investment in me for that $3 has caused two things.

1) I am now talking about them on my blog and
2) I will return for some time to come on my interchange trips.

What can we learn from this? Sometimes the act of a little concession for a product, can turn a ‘maybe’ returning customer to a returning customer.

I’m not saying give away everything you have in the hope that they will return but understand that ever customer has a lifetime value.

That $3 today that you invest into a potential can easily turn to many times that over a short period of time.

How does this translate online?

If you have an E-Comm site, you will know that you will have a few abandoned shopping carts and if your smart with how you set it up you will have at least an email from that ‘almost there’ shopper. If you contact them with a little offer,say a slight discount to complete the purchase you are doing two things.

1) you’re investing in that customer on an expected lifetime value of their repeat purchase and
2) you’re showing that customer that you actually care in their custom.

A personalised email can go a long, long way to not only driving that sale over the line but also creating a relationship with that customer.

A couple of tips, when you’re contacting that customer make the email personalised to their purchase (don’t have a standard email out), use their name in the email, be friendly and personable in your tone (don’t just hit them with a sales pitch).

Perceived value

Free shipping or at least 30% discount isn’t going to be much and lastly, use your name and contact email ( this way you are giving that final personal touch and the will see that you took an interest I.
Them, it also creates that all important relationship thy online needs)

A little bit of give can received a whole lot of get, it just depends in how much you’re willing to invest in the lifetime sales in your customer base.

As you all should know by now, content is what helps your site get ranked, however you might think that as an online retailer you have to have a blog on your site just to have content. I have some news for you, you know those product descriptions you have on your site… yeah the 1500 of them, well that’s 1500 bits of content that you’re not utilising…

Not so recently Rand from SEOMOZ did one of their truly awesome Whiteboard Fridays, ‘how your customer uses your product and how using the manufacturer’s content for your site is a bad idea’.(or something like that) and it gave me an Idea that I decided to run with.

A little about the presentation

The premise was that if you slap up the description that your supplier gives you, you’re not only trying to compete with the manufacturer for those keywords (and there is a chance that they will beat you in the listings) but you’re competing with every other online retailer as well.

Why do that to yourself?

You’re doing nothing that’s going to make you stand out and you’re also condemning your site to the secondary content bin with the all-powerful Google.

So, what to do? Do something interesting and different.

I want to take a leaf out the book from a twitter that I follow arjunbasu .His tweets are 140 character long stories, of love and loss and everyday happenings. They are a pleasure to get into my tweet box and they pleasantly break up the constant stream of ‘I’m at Starbucks’ or more social media advice blog posts. *Yes I know the irony of the fact that you may have go to this post through twitter, but I digress…

Think of the customers

What I want you to think about is, how are your customers using your products?
I am going to use woman’s fashion as an example as my wifey has a label and I will eventually be integrating this advice onto her site when she starts selling online.

If you have, let’s say a dress for sale on your site and the description you use is

‘Black cocktail dress with halter neck top and a paisley print’

(Don’t judge me on my fashion skills). Yes it’s an ugly sounding dress and an equally tragic description… I think you would agree.

Why not replace that with a little bit of literary awesome? How about…

‘Jane stopped at the door to her office, it was 5:45 and she wasn’t going to be late to the dinner with that really cute guy from accounting. The Black cocktail dress that she was easily able to wear to work, by throwing a white blouse over the top of, was so easily able to turn to a provocative, yet sensible, dinner outfit when she changed the top for a paisley print shirt and a thick black leather belt that showed of the waist that she had spent so long in the gym to achieve. She just knows that she was going to turn heads in this outfit and that was all she needed. Checking her reflection in the glass of the office door, she stepped out with a confident smile on her face’

You see what I did there? Create a small image that a customer can see themselves in .

All you have to do is make sure that you have your social media sharing buttons easily accessible to that page, and if you can write something that can inspire a nice mental image or one that makes people think, then there is a very good chance that people may just share your product descriptions on their social networks.

That sharing is possibly the best personal recommendation to your online shop that you can hope for.

Are you up for a challenge?

The next challenge is to reduce that description to 125 character tweet (the extra is taken up with your URL of course) then you might just be onto something.

If you know of a site doing this or something similar, then I would love to hear about it, or if your up to the challenge try the re-write challenge in the comments below.

*Edit.
A description lol.

If you’re in Australia and would like to talk to Ben about helping you with your social media or online marketing efforts, then go to www.dsa-global.com and get in touch.

Sometimes when there is enough complaint about an online service across many social medias, the business’ involved will try their best to not only address the problem but engage with the public to show that they actually care about the service they are providing. In this case it seems that Air Asia just don’t want to listen.

For the many people who are hitting my blog when searching:

[1347:invalidpaxtype] sorry, an error has occurred. please try again. if the error persists, please contact

or

air asia 1347

I cant offer you help on how to get your cash refunded or how to actually book your tickets (although I have seen that if you give it about 12 hours it seems to work again)

I have an update on how I am going with the saga, as well as I thought that I would post an email sent to me by a rather unhappy fellow traveler who got in touch.

Firstly, if you have been keeping track of these posts, you may have seen that I had a response from the marketing team asking me to get in touch… well I did, then they decided to delete their comment. Read the original post The six fails of Air Asia .

I think that may have been a bad idea, as I would have thought you would want to make it known that you’re in the social space and you’re reacting to brand mentions.. oh well…

From Air Asia Marketing

Anyway, I got in touch and then I received this email.

Hi Ben,

Thank you for your email, I really appreciate it.

I have highlighted this to our senior management and I am sure you will be contacted soon. (I have to this day not heard from anyone) I can assure you that we value all feedback from our Guests to help us improve for the better, especially on Social Media. You mentioned that your feedback was not being addressed in our social media channel…We currently have 9 Facebook channel, may I know which Facebook channel that you were referring to? Is it http://facebook.com/AirAsia?

Regards

So I replied and thought, ‘wow I might actually get somewhere with this!’

alas……… no, since I replied to this email, I haven’t been contacted by Air Asia, however I get emails from unhappy Air Asia customers.

Another unhappy Air Asia customer

Such as

This is what I wrote this morning to their “réclamation robot”…

1347: InvalidPaxType

I am really upset !

I spent hours on ur website last night trying to get a flight from Paris to Kuala Lumpur. I started at midnight and 10 seconds…

First I succesfully selected a flight for me and my family from the 27th of February to the 10th of March (all included 946 euros 2 adults, 2 children)… But getting to the payment form, it crashed saying that the bank name was not correct !!!!

Then from midnight to 3 am, I tried dozens of times to get a flight on different dates and it always crashed after the passengers details informations got filled… I never got back on the pick seat windows… sometimes I got some (invalid pax type 1347 … blabla error message, contact the call server).

Of course nobody answered at the french call center “open 24H” and now this morning it is always buzy on 0170480722 !!!

Progressively I saw the ticket initial price rising from the initial advertising price to 132 euros, then 162 euros and now sometimes 202 !

Have u only sold one of ur “fake advertising” ticket in any normal condition ? was it only for buyers with some electronic privilege ?

I am very upset and I kept screenshots of all my trials on ur website.

In case of no answer from Air Asia, I will complain to the DGCCRF and study with my lawyer how I can sue ur company for its commercial practices.

… Wait and see if I get the same kind of automatic answer !

u did a great job and I hope that the time we loose to write this online will give good warnings to some people before they trust this company adverts !

Have a nice day

JMW

Good but really bad

I’m thankful for JWM for letting me know that these issues are still going on, but really I’m sad that even though Air Asia management got in touch and they know that these issues are going on, they are still not doing anything about it.

Come on Air Asia, get your act together!

*If you have a story to add, post it to the comments below, and maybe, just maybe Air Asia will listen to us…

Every day I hunt around on the social web trying to find content that companies put out that is worthy of attention, and reposting but really its about finding the total failures. Here is a little guide to help you when thinking about posting content.

The set up

Not that long ago I had a client that wanted to develop an online community through Facebook and Youtube who would share and talk about his company’s product (photocopiers) and its uses.

His main focus was the education of how to use a photocopier and after explaining then general idea to me and who their target demographic was (which he fell into perfectly) I asked him these questions.

Do you have Facebook? (this was a channel he wanted to utilise)
His answer, “yes”

Would you share an instruction manual on your Facebook with your friends?

His answer… a long confused blank stare.

It suddenly dawned on him that, even though your customers have to use this product in the office, that maybe instructions on how to use it might not be…well…… very bloody interesting….

You know what I’m talking about, you’ve seen it too

This is a common occurrence that is continually repeated throughout the social media channels for business, it seems that the marketing managers and social community directors lose focus of whether the content that they are pushing out will actually interest anyone..

What can we learn from this?

The take away from this is, before you launch into your expensive campaign to create content in the hope that a very fickle audience will distribute it on their channels for you, ask yourself one question.

Would I share on my networks what I am asking you to share on yours?

If the answer is NO, then maybe… have a little rethink.

The additional stuff

I am including this last bit as I get a few emails from readers saying that, I give you methodologies on social media and online marketing but never inspiration, so…

What was my suggestion to him?

It’s a shame that he never went any further with this idea as I was getting quite excited about it, but maybe the fact I was telling him that it’s going to take some hard work and a little time, scared him off.

What we started planning was a campaign that showed people how to use their photocopier artistically.

The concept

The concept was, we were going to get some well-known local (Thai) artists, supply them with a photocopier and commission them to make some artwork that only used the copier, we were then going to film that and use the ideas that they came up with as the basis for how you can use your copier in an artistic way.

Next step was to use Facebook as the platform and get people to make their own art during their office lunch break to do their art and post it to our page, people can comment on others art and so on.

The best artworks that were posted, would be judged by the well known artists and the community and the winners would be exhibited at a  gallery.

So that was the plan…… to this day I am sad we never got to go ahead with it….

So my question to you, dear reader, is: would you share what you are promoting?

Australian business is not really known for being on the leading edge of social media however I think that a lesson can be learned from Telstra who, and let’s face it aren’t really known for its A1 customer service.

Everyone who reads this blog may be aware that I have a little issue with the state of social media awareness that business’ in Australia have, so when I find even the smallest win, I feel the need to post about it. Here is one win.

The Telstra experience

A friend was looking at getting an upgrade for his phone so he like a lot of people now, used twitter to ask the wider community about a possible plan.

In my constant search for Social Media wins and fails I put it out there with the @telstra tag and….. they actually listened and answered!

Check the image below for the conversation.

I know that it may not seem like much however, Australian business are putting aside a much larger proportion of their marketing budget to online channels.

One of those channels should be social media and the most important part of social media is…. engagement!

Telstra, so far are doing it right, so take a leaf from their book Australia….

*I am most likely not going to be changing my phone to Telstra just yet, as contracts are nasty things to get out from, however I did renew my internet plan with them… so thats a win for them because of this!

Listen to your community

Some business seem to think that by just having a presence on the SM you can influence the masses to use your products, and some even try to do a little more than having a page.

If you want to meet the current Telstra team watch the (kinda awkward) video below..

There are some pit falls to this however!

A recent campaign from computer manufacturer Acer is an example of this, by running a competition to win a phone… not one of theirs as I don’t think they actually make phones… but…. they started a Facebook competition ‘write a note on our wall about how excellent acer is and you might win’ or something to that effect.

There were some pretty great entries, poems and the like… *Kath Schultz did some great ones and should have one in my opinion* however the winners…. well the community didn’t think they had the chops… and I tend to agree with them.

Check out the page and judge for yourself. Facebook competition fail

The takeaway

 
I have said it before and I will keep saying it until Australia actually listens.

• Talk with your consumers
• Listen to your customers
• Be in the places that your customers are
• Don’t be afraid to adopt new technology
• Think about how it actually fits your business and brand personality

If you have had any wins or fails, let us know about them in the comment box below.

If you’re an Affiliate marketer look out, your world is about to change because your sites are…… well….. ugly.

This image is credited to Benjamin Rubin via www.oldwelshguy.co.uk

Recently I read an article about how Google will start (sometime soon) to give searchers a preview of the site they are about to go to.

I have a feeling that this is actually going to be a total “game changer” (I hesitate to use those two words but..) in the click rates on below the fold natural search returns.
*the Google listings that are listed on the first page but you need to scroll down to see them after you typed in your search*

Why? well… currently when you go to a site you have no idea whether it’s going to really be what you’re looking for, (nothing new there) but what’s important to think about here is, now that you will get a preview, a snap judgment will be made on the awesomeness of your site all based on what it looks like.

Book, cover…..what?

Don’t judge a book by its cover? well as much as we all like to say, ‘I don’t do that’ it’s only human nature, just have a read of Malcolm Gladwell’s supermegaawesomebookofpower Blink and you will see that all humans instinctively judge by the cover.

How is this going to change the game

Put simply, most people trust Google to return the most excellent site for their queries based on the higher up the list the better it must be. Now you have the option to judge for yourself and I think that you will find that being in the top spot just wont have the same importance as it did previously.

Whats it all mean

What is this going to mean to SEO, Affiliate marketers (the guys selling Viagra and health products) and webmasters?
What you will find is, users will be placing more emphasis on design aesthetics than top placement, so all that hard work at optimising and link building will, while still being important to get to the top 10, it will not have as much importance as before.

This aesthetic importance will mean that SEO’s and Affiliate marketers are going to have to learn Design now, as to increase the click rate on to your site will have to be really eye-catching.

If you’re a SEO and you don’t have design skills or someone in the office who can redesign the site, well look out because it’s going to have a massive effect on your effectiveness.

But I have an affiliate site, and I don’t want to make it look pretty

As for affiliates….. just slapping up a 10 min word press site and posting your hard spun articles on penis extensions… well good luck.

This of course may not happen, and the inherent issues with load time will have an effect on whether users will turn this option on but if they do, well …… game changer.

Do you think that this will be a game changer or not?

If you’re in Australia and would like to talk to Ben about helping you with your social media or online marketing efforts, then go to www.dsa-global.com and get in touch.

This is a rant about the complete and total failure of Air Asia’s customer service and online presence. This may not be a common occurrence, but what made me write this was, the amount of times in one service transaction the company failed me…

The Background:

Recently, I had to fly from India to Melbourne and as my wife had booked a ticket with Air Asia separate from me, I thought that it would be nice to be on the same flight with her. So with plenty of time to spare I started the booking process. This is the tail of how Air Asia failed so many times that really, I don’t know if I will ever fly with them again…..

Fail 1 – The booking process:

In an effort to reduce cost and to pass on the savings to customers (which is a good thing) the way that you book a ticket to fly with Air Asia is through their website, while it looks nice and is relatively easy to understand and use, the issue was – It was down so often and returned so many errors that it took me 2 days to actually complete my booking!

edit* For the nerds who know.. this is the error.
[1347:InvalidPaxType] Sorry, an error has occurred. Please try again. If the error persists, please contact our call center and inform us of this problem.

The take away:

If you’re going to have a e-commerce site where the vast majority of your income is generated through customer managed sales, make sure that all the bugs are worked out and that you test the site routinely to ensure that it works properly.

Fail 2 – The online help system

I am a big fan of being able to interact with customer service through a website. I feel that if I have any issues with the process I can just easily ask someone, they can view my screen remotely and then provide assistance, easy yeah?.

Well, while I was having so much trouble with the booking system I used the Air Asia online help… sounds easy enough.. after waiting approximately 45 min to get through (Thankfully, I was at work so I could just let it run in the background. Glad that I wasn’t a backpacker in a internet cafe paying by the minute)

I finally got onto the help desk and chatted for some time with the mostly helpful assistant. The assistance I got from them however….. Get in touch with the local call center.

The Take Away

If your going to provide assistance online with a e-com site, make sure that the operators have the authority to actually affect some sort of assistance.

Giving your employees some level of authority can not only empower them to really put some passion into their position, but also it gives them some level of drive to provide customer service that is excellent.

Fail 3 – The call centre

Again, using cost effective means of communicating with your customers is great, VOIP for example, however if you’re using technology to communicate ensure that it’s working at maximum efficiency.

It can’t be expected that just because you’re the cheapest service provider that the customer will just accept phone lines that are so bad, its almost impossible to hear the officer, add to that, if your going to have in place a menu system where you want to direct English speaking customers to English speaking representatives, ensure that it actually works, going through a 5 step button pushing marathon to only be told that either

A) You have come through to the Thai language only section and that the representative doesn’t speak a word of English and you need to press # to go back a step and then they hang up on you or

B) Your a small pink tyre on the elbow of an albatross (I think you get my drift that I had no clue what they were saying to me)

The take away

Much the same as Fail 1 really, if you’re going to use technology… even technology that has been around longer than the Pando, make sure that it does what it is supposed to do.

If the simple tech that most western people take for granted is broken, you’re devaluing your brand as a reliable supplier and one that can’t be trusted with personal details let alone credit card numbers…. If you can’t get that right, then how can you inspire trust?

As we all know trust is the biggest influencer of positive sentiment on a brand, so when you fail on simple tasks like that you fail on many levels for all your customers.

Fail 4 – The In flight meal

We all know that airline food has a reputation for being bad, and lord knows I have had my fair share of bad food, but the quality of the food isn’t really in question.

*Although I did take one look at my meal, hand it back and asked the steward to ‘give it to someone less fortunate than me’. I didn’t say the line I gave my wife, which was ‘I would rather choke to death on my own vomit, than eat that’… I thought that might have been a little mean to say to the steward.

The issue is, when your filling out your booking form, you are given the choice of 2-3 meals to pre-pay for. While its a good idea, its not really representative of the entire list that you can purchase from.

Is it too much to be given a pop up of the menu? so maybe if I dont want leather beef on week old rice with sawdust sauce, I might know that I have the choice of buying a sandwich on board?

The Take Away

If you have the ability to seem to offer more choice for no change in cost then isn’t in your best interests to offer that?

Doing something simple like having a pop up of the menu on the site, or for that matter giving a larger drop down that lists the choices I have on board.

The act of giving more choice, while some people will say that its not always a good thing can also show that you’re able to offer more for the same price, therefore giving the customer more bang for their buck.

Fail 5 – Online complaints

This is the one that really got me going… Air Asia, has a complaints email which is fine, and should be there, however when you actually make a complaint you would expect that your email may get reviewed by a human and possibly acted on.

I didn’t make a copy of the email (I should of as I knew that I was going to write this) however, I did state that I was very unhappy with the service and was not likely to use their service again but the most important part of the email, was that I stated that I didn’t actually expect anyone to actually read it.

This is the reply I recieved

Dear Benjamin Powell,

Thank you for emailing AirAsia.

In response to your email, we thank for your feedback/complaints on our system, so that we may learn from our mistake and provide a better service at the given opportunity.

We invite you to visit our website at www.airasia.com as to keep updates on our latest flight info, new routes, added flight frequency as well as exciting events. Another link for more info on your inquires
and the following link http://www.airasia.com/my/en/destination/KUL.html.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Should you required any further assistance, do not hesitate to contact us via this http://www.airasia.com/my/en/contactus.html

Kind regards,
Wong Siong Thye
Customer Care
AirAsia Berhad

I don’t know about you, but, I get the vague feeling that this is as automated as you could possibly get.

Take away

Its really pretty simple, if you’re going to have a complaints section on your site, then don’t you think that you should maybe… um… I don’t know…. monitor it with real people?

The act of personalising a response to a complaint shows that the thoughts and feelings of the customer actually matter to you as a company.

That personalization is how you can turn an defecting customer into an evangelist, its how you can make this story that I am writing go from a 6 fails tirade to a ‘How Air Asia won me over’.

Fail 6 – Social media

Real time media is how the masses communicate in this new digital world, people share experiences and thoughts. Its how old friends re-connect and how new friends keep in touch, so it makes sense to take an active role on these medias.

Facebook and twitter are the two biggest real time media’s for the western market and Air Asia seem to be doing a good job at being active in this realm.

Their twitter has 54K followers and for all it seems they are quite active on there with lots of personal messages and re-tweets

They have an active Facebook presence, with landing pages, specials, and lots of conversation so for all intents and purposes they are…well… all over it…..but

When I complained and complained on their medias…. I got nothing, no response, no acknowledgement, no nothing!

To be honest when I started complaining about the issues I had I thought that, as they were all over the social sphere that I would have a fantastic story of response and action but nothing, and to this day over a month later… still nothing.

*edit I have been contacted by the Online Marketing manager recently

Take Away

The thing I want you to take from all this, if only one thing is this.

You can be active on getting your brand out, and you can work hard on the medias, and try to be active with your Facebook group’s friends and all that, but…

The most important thing to do is.

LISTEN!!!!!!

There are plenty of fantastic software applications that can help a business monitor every and all mentions that your brand gathers online. If your not listening then you miss the opportunities to turn a rant against your customer service into a praise of your brnad and how it listens to the community.

This may have seemed like a bit of a rant, and I suppose it is, I was just so amazed at how many times a company can fail in one booking, especially when they promote how online they are.

I guess at the end of the day, customer service is only good, if it comes at no cost to the company…

Have you had any experiences like this, if you have let us know.

*oh and I wonder if Air Asia will comment?

If you’re in Australia and would like to talk to Ben about helping you with your social media or online marketing efforts, then go to www.dsa-global.com and get in touch.