Yesterday, I wanted to impress a new client in London.
I wanted to shoot an assignment in the morning and have the proofs online for the client before they left the office for the day. In fact, before I even boarded my flight home.
The plan was to do the post-production at Stansted Airport and upload the picture proofs before the check-in desk opened. It would mean using a Boingo wifi hotspot at the airport. Expensive at almost £4 for an hour, but worth it to make an impression on a new client.
The shoot itself went smoothly. More than smoothly. It was a dream. We finished early and the files needed very little post, other than a small colour correction. The proofs were pretty much good to go when I got off the train at the airport.
The plan was falling into place.
Just after 3pm yesterday, I settled in behind a smoothie and panini at Costa Coffee at Stansted to upload the files to our proofing server. An hour’s Boingo time would be plenty. After all, 70-odd 200kb files take very little time to upload at home using Eircom’s feeble no-band broadband, so I reckoned I’d have plenty of time to check the Spain-Switzerland game on the BBC website once Boingo had zapped the files on to the server. (By the way, how did that result happen?)
Unfortunately, the Boingo connection was shocking. I mean back-to-the-days-of-dial-up-snail-band shocking. After 40 minutes only a handful of 200kb files had uploaded. And loading websites like the BBC and Hootsuite into Firefox or Safari took an age. After an hour, it was time to go to the check-in desks, and the majority of the files hadn’t left my laptop.
I wasn’t happy, and tweeted my feelings.
An hour and a bit later, airside, and now well past 5pm, I tried the Boingo wifi again at Starbucks, having earlier in the City got a loyalty card that gives me free access. Or it would do if Starbucks at Stansted actually offered the wifi the card is supposed to afford you. Anyway, that’s another story.
I ended up buying another Boingo hour. Just to see if I couldn’t get the files up. I was traveling to Dublin early the next day and wanted to get the London job proofed and off my plate.
This time, the speed was phenomenal. The remainder of the files uploaded in a matter of minutes.
Nevertheless, I’d still missed the opportunity to impress a new client by having the proofs online before they’d left the office and I’d left the country. That chance to impress will never come again.
But there is a positive to this story.
While the files were uploading @boingo got in touch via Twitter. How’s that for use of social media? Would I email, @boingo asked? I did, and quickly got an email back from Lauren, who was keen to “make things right”. She asked for information about my location at the time of the dud connection and said she’d look into my usage data.
I have to admit I was impressed. Lauren had monitored the Twitter feeds and responded quickly, inviting me to engage with her. Then she’d replied promptly to my email. And now my complaint was being looked into, barely three hours after I grumbled on Twitter. She was starting to turn adversity in her company’s favour. Simply acknowledging me was a big step.
We had no more contact before my flight left, but I left the UK in a happier state of mind.
This morning, there was a email from Lauren. It was friendly. She apologized again for the problem I had experienced and told me that Boingo had credited my account with the fee for the failed connection.
I am impressed.
This is a terrific example of a company using social media to monitor its reputation. It is also a textbook example of how to deal with a complaint.
I’m still disappointed at the missed opportunity to impress my client. But I have to admire how Boingo turned a negative product experience into a hugely satisfying customer service experience.
In Boingo’s case, the first impression wasn’t great.
But the second impression was. So much so, that the first one is almost forgotten.
