Posts Tagged ‘Acela Club’
Friday afternoon was opening day at CitiField for my beloved New York Mets or as Steve Somers of WFAN coined it – the Wilponzi’s. Ouch. It was a cold and dreary day like many days in early April at baseball parks in the northern climes. My ticket partners and I made a reservation at the Acela Club where we’ve eaten a number of times since it opened with the new stadium in 2009.
Arriving intentionally a bit early at 2PM for our 2:15 PM reservation, we knew that there was a 3:45 PM reservation behind us so we would have to clear out by then – first pitch was scheduled for 4:10PM. The line outside the restaurant was surprisingly long. None of us could figure out why. This began an odyssey that defied explanation for much of the afternoon. It ended well but only due to a savvy restaurateur in Drew Nieporent of Myriad Restaurant Group (Tribeca Grill, Nobu, Corton among others if you don’t know), who in addition to being on the scene realized that things were not going smoothly at all.
At $ 48 prix fix a meal at the Acela Club is not cheap. But you do get a lot for the money mainly due to the impressive salad and sandwich bar that has more high quality food than you could eat even if you didn’t eat an entrée. (The truffle macaroni and cheese is addictive).
Once we were seated, the drinks we ordered took 20 minutes to arrive. And our server was nowhere in sight for those 20 minutes of waiting. One of our partners cryptically mentioned to another server that we actually were at the stadium to watch a ball game “today”. Our meals did not arrive until well after 3:15. A couple of times we were visited by a host who offered us a free drink (we declined) and apologies for the slow service which did show that the staff was aware that things were not going well.
Once the meals did arrive the food as always was good. However at that point there was sincere doubt that we might return again – first pitch was 10 minutes away and it was long past 3:45. We finished up our meals and one of the hosts came over and told us that they were sorry for the long wait and the restaurant was going to pick up our meals.
Wow. And who said there was no such thing as a free lunch? None of us expected that but we were extremely pleased with the result. And yes we will be going back to the Acela club again soon but we might not have had they not come in and made amends.
On the way out I passed Drew (whom I have met a couple of times but do not know well at all) who was both on the phone and surveying the proceedings. I mentioned to him that it was a tough day and he more than agreed saying they totally messed it up – surprising candor from one of New York’s premiere restaurateurs. But I also told him that in the end they got it right by doing the unexpected.
Everyone should think about doing the unexpected when you know your customer has a bad experience in order try to make it right. Anyone can have a bad day. It’s what you do to respond that sets your company apart.
Do you have any good stories on successful resolution to a potential bad customer experience?
I’ve been ‘using’ Foursquare’s location based application for about 9 months now. People ask me all the time WHY do I use Foursquare to let people know where I am at a given moment. My standard answer is that in order for me to understand how this technology might be useful I had to be a user and experience it for myself.
Well after 9 months of ‘checking-in’, having received 9 different ‘badges’, being the ‘Mayor’ of no less than 6 different places – including the Acela Club at Citi Field where I have been only 5 times, I am here to tell you that I personally don’t have any real use for Foursquare.
I have received comments from my Facebook friends (you can link your Foursquare status to FB); on different places I’ve been that they went to at one time or another – that’s a little bit cool. But I have yet to ‘check-in’ at a place and have someone nearby let me know that they are in the area and maybe we could get together.
Granted non-20’s people like myself (ok mea culpa I am more than double that), don’t normally go hopping around in the suburbs from place to place and when I am in New York City and check-in most of my Foursquare friends are either not in the city or not going to the same places that I am.
Occasionally Foursquare has offered me a coupon for an establishment nearby to the one in which I just checked-in and I even used a coupon one time just to test it (coffee). But as I wrote in a previous post http://bit.ly/9AWboS Foursquare’s GPS location is not very good and I can often check into no less than 15 establishments at the same time within as many as 1,000 meters (why it’s in meters I have no idea). In fact frequently it says that I am closer to a place down the street than the place that I am actually in.
An interesting article by Todd Woody in the NY Times from October 20 http://nyti.ms/dwjcRh did a nice job in linking Earthjustice – a non-profit law firm, to a campaign in which $ 10 would be donated to protect endangered species by ‘checking-in’ at Foursquare at ‘Earthjustice ad’. Clever campaign but I don’t know if that’s enough of a business model to sustain Foursquare. And now Facebook has been running its own location based platform – Facebook Places.
As far as I am concerned the road for Foursquare leads directly to be acquired by Facebook. And they better do that fast. Time is running out. You can check-in on that.
What do you think?
Having blogged about it a couple of times, I have also been ‘using’ Foursquare’s location based platform to ‘check-in’ over the past five months. I am dubiously proud of being able to claim that I am the ‘Mayor’ of the Acela club at CitiField in New York.
And I have been to the Acela club exactly three times this season which leads me to think that people who visit the Acela club do not subscribe or care about Foursquare. In fact the few people I asked who work there had never even heard of location based services like Foursquare. As Acela club ‘mayor’ I have not been offered the key to CitiField or even a free drink – alcoholic or not.
In an article in today’s NY Times http://nyti.ms/aDGgmn, it was noted that Loopt is offering people a mobile game that rewards people for checking in frequently to particular places. And as such one can become ‘boss’ of certain locations – sort of like being the mayor. The key thing is that companies like Gap, Burger King Etc., plan to use Loopt Star to reward loyal customers. Foursquare is also working with its partners to offer real-time rewards for check-ins and frequencies of visits.
One thing the article fails to mention is the vagaries of GPS check in on these platforms. I know for example on Foursquare when I attempt to ‘check-in’ I am given a list of nearby locations even if I am smack in the middle of one on the list. (Somehow I find it really odd that if I am sitting in a Starbucks it tells me that the one I am sitting in is somehow 137 meters away). But I can also check-in to any of these GPS-enabled locations whether I am actually physically there or not.
GPS technology is set to make a major leap forward with the advent of High Accuracy-NDGPS which will enable accuracy to the centimeter level. This will be a critical enhancement since it appears that I can check in at any number of places simultaneously/concurrently (or at least in quick sequence), so that I could gain reward points at places I actually never visited.
Think about it, you are sitting at coffee shop in the middle of the city, but you check in at Burger King (for the third time that week) even though you have been to the Burger King. Now Burger King sends you a coupon for a soda with a sandwich purchase. Retailer margins will be squeezed. People will game the system – that can be guaranteed.
I understand that companies can counter that talk about the fact the patron actually purchased something, but at the same time product is being given away for nothing. And how is that a good idea?
So join up now and get free stuff – while you can.