Posts Tagged ‘customer experiences’
NZx -20th December 2017: Starry night
Naumai
It’s late December and the rata is flowering beautifully on the West Coast, that’s a South Islander’s version of the pohutakawa ‘Christmas tree”!
In Akaroa our lavender fields are bright purple – Akaroa Organics and ready for harvest.
In our last post for the year we’d like to share a recent experience with one of New Zealand’s leading and award winning activity operators. Checking in we were met by two foreign nationals, they were polite but curse. Unfortunately as soon as we were checked in the two staff spent most of the non contact time (about 30 minutes prior to the activity beginning) trying to redesign the retail space in front of the counter so “they could hide from people”. Really? As front line hosts,and the first personal touch-point between visitors and the company, it should be the opposite. What made it so bad was that they were so nonchalant about this, and everyone in the room who spoke good English could understand what they were saying.
Is this really the type of customer experience our award winning companies are delivering?
The actual activity was interesting but really not what it was hyped up to be. Interaction was limited and much of our time was spent looking at machinery. Trying to interpret a static object requires certain skills, especially when those components dominate the overall experience.
The power of marketing!
Have a great Christmas/Kirihimete and a very happy 2018!
Ka kite ano
NZx July 17th: Undervalued
Naumai
Recently I travelled on the Kaitaki en route from Wellington to Picton.
A lounge is available for travellers that want something different from the standard Interislander fare. The marketing blurb describes Kaitaki Plus (the lounge) as offering “the most comfortable and luxurious way to travel between the North and South Islands of New Zealand.”
Your Kaitaki Plus ticket will give you access to an exclusive, premium, on-board lounge, providing: ….Free internet access……Complimentary food and beverages etc.
First impressions were good: good welcome by staff, light and airy, good seating, plenty of space. Food offering was average but certainly not up to say Koru lounge standard.
Two customer experiences that clearly need resolving are the internet and availability of coffee.One of the attractions of the lounge was the opportunity to access and work on the internet.Unfortunately the connections kept dropping out and in the end the laptop was put away due to sheer exasperation! Having worked on cruises ships for the last six years I acknowledge internet connections can be difficult but surely that shouldn’t be while crossing Cook Strait, and certainly not if identified as a selling feature. The coffee machine became a point of contention for another customer about 30 minutes out of Picton. A few minutes before the staff had hung up the “sorry this machine is not available” sign. She was clearly disappointed when she started to make coffee and was told that was not possible without (any real explanation) by a staff member. Sure coffee machines need cleaning but couldn’t that wait until after the ship was in port – it is after all not a big job.
These may be small features but should be easily fixed and for a premium lounge one would expect them to be. I guess it’s about putting the customer first and not the operational requirements of the organization.
The promotion of the lounge states that Kaitaki Plus will make you wish the trip was longer. I’m not convinced the experience delivered made me wish that…..and at $ 45 it is not a customer experience I would be recommending.
Ka kite ano
Malcolm
Does the customer experience equal $ 45?
NZx 3rd January: Luged
Naumai
So lets put one of New Zealand’s top soft adventure activities to the test……..
Hot summers day, fifteen of us on Skyline Rotorua’s luge.
Nice ride up in the gondola and great views over the city and lake. Pretty basic instruction but soon we were off…downhill – fast.
Sadly that was about as fast as it got……Once we hit the bottom we ran into a “luge-jam”. Essentially there was one staff person on duty; lots of people getting off luge’s and leaving them in the wrong place, luges weren’t going up the chairlift, and all in all utter confusion.
It was all capped off when the staff person yelled at an international visitor to drag their luge over to a certain area. The guest looked utterly bewildered….considering how many non-English speaking people visit this was not a good look.
We all calculated that by the time we accounted for the luge down time we probably lost the equivalent of two extra rides.
Skyline may have been trying to save money by not having a second person at the bottom of the luge, but they certainly ended up with lots of frustrated customers. Waiting, when you have paid a lot of money, is not a good thing…..
This is definitely not a good example of customer service or a visitor experience.
Ka kite ano
when not waiting in line this is what you get…………….
Malcolm