Virgin Trains, wi-fi and customer comms. Too little-too late?

I travel for work quite a bit and my favourite mode of transport is the train. The London stations are easily accessible, I don’t have to drive half – asleep and there is the ‘doing my bit for the environment’ argument as well. That doesn’t mean that I can afford to watch the countryside go by idly – even though sometimes I wish I could.

The fact is that travelling time is not dead time for me. I’m getting paid for it and I want to work. I’m not particularly expected to but I want to. Look at today’s example. I was travelling up to Stockport and I needed to be working on a policy briefing on yesterday’s Pre Budget Announcement (I’m talking UK people). Right next to me where two people from a big newspaper and magazines publisher that were working on a team presentation (OK, you caught me, I was eavesdropping). All three of us got extremely annoyed that wi-fi was not available. Not necessarily free wi-fi. We were quite willing to pay for it (or rather, our companies) even though we would still nag as National Express East Coast is offering free wi-fi already.

I came back home this evening and went on the Virgin Trains website. They actually have an ideas section where customers can submit comments and ideas for services. It looks very good – with little clouds representing each idea. You can sort by the most popular or the latest and you can add your own. Detail: You have to agree to quite lengthy terms and conditions before you do, even though you are not registering to the service. In fact you can’t register – there is no such option. Turned out that my idea for free wi-fi was already on there so I left a comment underneath it agreeing (a polite one, I promise).There are multiple FAILS here (can you spot them?).

Wanting to blog about this (and I believe in giving the company a fair chance) I called their Press Office and was pleasantly surprised. I said I was a blogger and they were very helpful. Apparently the wi-fi kit is being installed as we speak and the helpful gentleman took down my e-mail address and my phone number. He didn’t ask any intrusive questions, he didn’t make me feel as I didn’t have the right to enquire. That is a WIN. True to his word he called me back within 10 minutes (another WIN) to let me know that Wi-Fi will be available from March 2009, free for First Class customers and with “a small charge” to Standard Class customers.

So, good news all round? I doubt it.

Customer communications: Close but no cigar.
WIN: An ideas section that looks good and is easy to use.
FAIL: Who moderates? Ideas are replicated all over the place.
FAIL: To leave a simple comment I have to agree to Terms and Conditions. Quite lengthy. Every time. Every single time. I don’t think so.
ALL ABOARD THE FAIL TRAIN (MAJOR FAIL): Even though the company has answers to many submitted ideas, even though the company is actually doing something about them, nobody from the company says so on the ideas section. Nobody is there to say “yes, thank you” or “no, we’ve looked at it and can’t be done for so and so reason, here’s a link to a blog post where we explain ourselves” or “we are rolling it out as we speak”. The feeling you get is that it’s just customers talking to each other and that nobody listens. This is not necessarily accurate. But impressions count. (Update: Check out the delicious support forum where delicious team members respond to ideas)

Press Office: Good with room for improvement.
WIN: I talked to someone who was helpful and willing to speak to a blogger. He came back to me very quickly with the information I wanted.
GO FURTHER: Why not have a section for bloggers in the Virgin Media Room? Why not ask me if I’d like to receive the newsletter? Why not ask me if I want to be included in a list for future briefings?

Wi-Fi: The never ending story.
WIN: They are planning to do it.
FAIL: They have been planning to do it for quite some time (counting in years). Check out one or two news stories and you’ll see that things just keep going wrong. Note: the customer doesn’t care. It is assumed that since National Express East Coast can do it than so can other operators.
FAIL: Free for First Class and a a charge for Standard Class. I’d love to see the business plan for this one. Even if it brings revenue does it really benefit the brand – or does it speak volumes about the type/ class/ income of people Virgin Trains really wants to offer services to?

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Read On:
First Offence from And Another Thing… (MP Ian Harris using National Express wi-fi while on a Virgin train in Glasgow station)
Hurry up, the customer has a complaint by Carolyn Y. Johnson of the Boston Globe (how Comcast does it right)
Starbucks – MyStarbucks Idea from Web Strategy Blog
Your customer has evolved into a community. Have you joined it? from Jon in 60 seconds
Executive Video Interview: Why Dell continues to use Social Media from Web Strategy by Jeremiah. Bob Pearson,  Vice President, Communities & Conversations at Dell says: “listening to a community is arguably more important than the actual number of units sold”

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