The importance of text updates and mobile chargers [Updated]

Here is a contribution from one senior mobile industry executive who wishes to remain anonymous — his experience is, I’m sure, pretty familiar…

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A tale of how not to handle a corporate customer…

I travel. A lot. Three times to Asia in the last 3 months, and Europe too. The quintessential harried business-class passenger eager to get the hell off the plane, through border control with smile intact / genitals unsearched, and back onto email/spreadsheet/Keynote in the back of the airport car. Get stuff knocked out before the kids rugby-tackle you in the hall as the wife hands you the baby covered in beetroot soup and heads for the bubbly, locking the kitchen door behind her. If I had a penny for every time I’ve wanted to kill the person managing the shambles that is UK Border Control – in fact, just about every ‘service’ at LHR – I’d have about £1.35.

I consider a discreet, professional service to be a business tool. Not a luxury. I could care less about vehicle brand. Your bum gets from A-B just as well on cloth as it does leather, in a Vauxhall as well as an E-class. But the *service* must be immaculate. Don’t think I’m a Gordon Gecko shouty suited asshole. I consider myself polite and well-mannered. But I don’t suffer fools, or crap service – especially when paying a premium for it.

For the last year I’ve used a ‘corporate’ car firm to do my airport runs. I’ve been very happy with the service. Until the last two trips.

First, I found myself in the car at 5am with an Android phone that had decided not to charge overnight and was at 9%, with a whole day’s Euro-faffing ahead. I had USB leads but no 12V cigarette plug, and the driver only had Nokia chargers. So I ended up booting up the laptop and wasting precious battery life to charge the phone at 500mA, instead of in-car at >1000mA. spent the rest of the day playing catch-up with the 5V gods.

So I asked the firm to provide in-car micro-USB and iOS device chargers, or as a bare minimum USB sockets via dirt-cheap 12V adapters. Surely we consider USB in-car to be a basic human right, along with aircon and satnav?

Secondly, on arrival into T3 at 7pm on a Friday night, along with the rest of the UK PLC’s Euro day-travellers and a few 744’s of Americans in khaki slacks to boot, the arrivals hall was *utter bedlam*. There were literally hundreds of grey-suited chauffeurs holding white placards with black writing on them. It took 15 minutes of degrading, demeaning trawling up and down the lines of suits, squinting expectantly, hopefully, looking at each poorly-written name until finding the right one.

So could the firm please SMS me on arrival, saying where they were standing. Which would a) help me find them and b) give me their number in case I couldn’t.

Two easy, do-able requests for a ‘corporate’ service, you’d think.

But no.

On the charger issue the reply came back that the company didn’t want to take responsibility for possibly damaging customer phones. After a long correspondence I managed to convince them that providing a USB port was both cheap and risk-free, and suggested they could add a small disclaimer sticker next to it if they really felt at risk. Yeesh.

Where things really came unstuck was the subsequent request to be sent an SMS on arrival, letting me know where the hell in the arrivals hall they were standing. “Bob your driver here, next to Costa” would do very nicely.

Their reply, and I quote: “Quite frankly there are probably many things we could do to enhance our service but everything costs in this world and the extra cost would have to be passed onto the passenger which is something our clientele would not be happy about, we deal with most of the major companies and they feel our service is second to none”

I should have got the hint, I really should. But I’m a sucker for trying to help people help themselves. So I replied: “Please advise how much extra you will charge me for a different colour sign and a single text message. I believe it will be about £1 for the A4 sign as a one off charge and 20p for the SMS at the most expensive network rate. I would very much appreciate that service, even if no other customers might.”

Was that clear? Reasonable? Was it hell. The final word from the ‘corporate’ firm:

“I have no intention of asking drivers to use their personal mobiles for company business as this is an unacceptable request in my estimation. The office phone is diverted to someone on call out of hours so that any emergency, change or problem can be dealt with. The procedures we use are widely accepted and have never come into question before so I see no reason to change them. In an ideal world we would all get the service we wanted unfortunately we do not live in an ideal world, therefore we all have to accept what the majority are happy with”

Got the message? Mr Big-Shot £2,000-worth-of-taxis-a-year? Like we need your business. Other people like mediocre, so that’s all we’re gonna serve. They like it. You should too.

So literally 24 seconds later Google gave me http://www.acornexecutivetravel.co.uk – The owner Ian answered the phone immediately. Why yes, of course we send SMS to our customers advising where we are located inside arrivals. Of course we have iOS, Blackberry, Nokia, and micro USB chargers in-car. Certainly you can avail yourself of the two 240V AC power points in the car to charge your laptop. Feel free to read the complimentary newspaper of your choice, just let us know your preference. Sip on the complimentary chilled bottled water. We won’t charge you for the airport parking or waiting time if delayed, and you can of course pile all your travel onto an account with 28 days to pay – handy for defeating the the accounting trolls come expense claim time.

Sold. SOLD. S-O-L-D. Two future hires cancelled with the ‘corporate’ firm, two new bookings with Acorn. E280 Avantgarde saloon. And – get this – cheaper than the other outfit.

All for the sake of not wanting to send an SMS, the ‘corporate’ firm lost £2k of business. And I look very much forward to reading the Guardian, sipping on my chilled water, while my mobile and laptop charge away.

SMS Sorted.

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Thank you for this, Mr Anonymous. Highly illustrative of the way to behave when faced with stupid, lazy British businesses. Love it!

UPDATE: Here’s a response from the author to the comments below:

I understand the desire for blood.

However, in writing this piece I was not setting out to exact revenge on the incumbent firm. The drivers are all good people, and don’t deserve to loose income just because some head office jobsworth has not the wit or ability to see beyond the status quo. Maybe they are so flush with cash and overbooked that they can afford to loose my £2k / year. Maybe.

To clarify, I am free to choose whoever I wish for this sort of service, there’s no procurement tie-in. So it was very easy to take my business elsewhere. Had this been a mandated vendor, I’d have been playing merry hell with our CFO to get either their policy or our preference changed.

What I wanted to highlight was how easy it is for firms to do the right thing and win business – or the wrong thing and loose it. Acorn Executive Travel were just the first firm I discovered with a more evolved idea of ‘service’ and what modern business travellers value. I like to see companies like that win. Would love to hear via comments if anyone else makes a change to Acorn (or anyone else) based on the above. I’d like to think that such service becomes the UK norm, not the exception. Travel in places like Southeast Asia is mostly a joy because good service is such a priority. The UK still seems to have a world-beating grip on mediocre-to-rubbish. But it’s not all gloom – just like how the general availability of good coffee in the UK has improved out of sight the last 5 years, I have hope for service from Brit PLC.