A Halloween Trick That Ripples To This Day

My best assistant ever was a woman named Laura Brown. Laura came to work with me at my last company and she was a fun loving, uber excitable young lady with a tough shell but sassy undercoat. A fiery red head and a temper to match and boy did I get to see that temper firsthand one fateful Halloween.

I am a prankster always have been and likely always will be. Well one Halloween years ago I decided to pull a little trick on Ms. Laura and wait and watch for the treat to come! Laura had recently joined my company and was still in that "need to impress Steve stage" when I told her that it was company tradition that we all dress up for Halloween. I planted the seed in early September and kept prompting her with little comments here and there about the challenge of coming up with the best costume.

She took the bait.

A few days before Halloween she began to brag about how she would easily win the company's best Halloween costume contest. In fact she went as far as to downright smack talk me and a few of the employees about her intended domination of the contest. Having let my entire staff in on my little trick we all did our best to keep from cracking up whenever she brought the subject up. We all had great fun with it and couldn't wait to see what Laura decided to wear as her costume.

The morning of Halloween we all arrived extra early and gathered in my office which had a bank of windows facing the parking lot. I had breakfast tacos and coffee there for my staff and we all eagerly watched the parking lot for Laura's arrival. We were all like a bunch of little school kids giggling with excitement knowing full well how this trick was about go over.

We saw her car pull into the parking lot and we all started jumping up and down. What's she wearing? No one could tell. People were working themselves up into a pretty good frenzy anticipating her getting out of her car. She parked and just sat there for the longest time. We started to panic thinking she could somehow see all of us through the mirrored glass. What was she doing?

Finally after what seemed like five minutes, Laura emerged from her car floppy hair and all. She had taken the contest really, really serious and had gone all out to be one of the best looking clowns I had ever seen. As we watched her walk towards the building my employees were howling! For a moment I felt a pang of guilt - she had clearly intended to win that contest hands down.

We decided to remain in my office so the front of our offices would be empty and Laura would come looking for us. Let me tell you when she walked in to my office she looked like the happiest clown in the world. That all changed when she realized she was the only one wearing a costume!

Since this is a family BLOG I can't exactly tell you what she said but that clown taught us all a few new cuss words which I hate to say it but it is true, just absolutely made the trick for us all. After she calmed down and we all had a good laugh about it, Laura included, we told her she won the contest hands down and I think we awarded her a breakfast taco as first prize.

Some might consider that a mean trick. Laura wasn't exactly thrilled about it either a least not at first. But as the day wore on she came to love the extra attention everyone at the company and in the building gave her. Years later I can still call her and ask her if she's dressed up as a clown and that connection point and all the fun attached to it will bring a smile to both of our faces. That trick has a treat that Ripples to this day tastes just as sweet (I smiled the whole time writing this this morning!). No doubt it is one of my best Halloween memories and clearly one of the best tricks I've pulled off to this day.

Happy Halloween Ms. Laura and I just have to ask....are you going as a clown today?

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Ripple On!!!

The Omni Hotel Understand The Ripple Effect Of Social Media Tools

I think many companies are beginning to learn about how incredibly powerful social media tools like Facebook and Twitter are becoming to manage and monitor the scuttlebutt in and around their brand. I had an opportunity to witness this firsthand this past week.

I arrived in Corpus Chrisiti, Texas shortly after lunch on Thursday afternoon to speak at the South Texas Realtor Conference. After stopping by the facility where I would be speaking the next day and running through normal pre-event logistics I headed over to check in to my hotel. I arrived at the Omni Hotel on North Shoreline Blvd. After some initial issues getting checked in I went up to my room to get settled in.

After putting up all of my clothes and prepping my clothes for the next day (did I mention I am a bit of a control freak about such things?) I fired up my Mac to check out the wifi situation. To my disappointment I discovered that I was being prompted to pay an additional $9.95 for access which perturbed me to say the least. In today's day and age I sort of think that airports and hotels should offer Internet access as a convenience. Given this wasn't an option I reluctantly agreed to have the charge applied to my room - after all I couldn't conceive of being offline! Yes...I am also addicted to being connected...what can I say?!?

After going through the traditional sign-up process I was at last able to start connecting to my email server back at the office, check in with my Twitter peeps and do a little quick searching for where to eat that evening. We'll it seems that I was ready but the wifi wasn't. It was slow as Christmas. I was extremely disappointed. Each website I went to seemed to drag on and on while it loaded of eventually timed out. Given that I usually operate in three to four online environments at once (between email and the various social networks I utilize), I was frustrated.

Though it was slow I finally fired off a Tweet that communicated my disappointment by asking the question (of no one in particular mind you) why I was paying the Omni Hotel for wifi access when it was seemed as slow as dial up? Since my Twitter account is tied into my Facebook account I instantly received a few quick quirky responses from friends about my situation and how it was perhaps a sign from God that I should stay offline or that I had a dependency problem on being so connected. These of course made me smile and relax about the whole thing.

Then out of no where I received a public Tweet from @OmniHotels asking me where I was staying and assurances they would look into my perceived wifi speed issue. It concluded with a suggestion for me to sign up for their Select Guest Program. The first part really impressed me but I didn't pay much attention to the last part about their "program" figuring it was some tie-in marketing effort. I publicly responded to their Tweet with my location and figured that would be the end of it; perhaps my speed would be magically increased but I doubted it. I fired off my response Tweet to them and closed my Macbook Pro.

Twenty minutes later as I was reviewing notes for my upcoming keynote speech I received a call from a Guest Loyalty Specialist (title might be wrong but that is what I remember) named Silvia. She was a delightful energetic woman with a very engaging voice. She informed me that they were looking into my problem and wanted to offer to sign me up for free on the Select Guest Program. She gave me the run down of the features of this free program and offered to waive my wifi charges for this stay altogether. Then, and this really impressed me, offered to move me up to a higher floor where I assume my already great view would be further enhanced. I declined but none-the-less was impressed with her and now solidly with the Omni Hotel and their efforts to make me a happy guest.

I signed up for their program and gave them a little bit of "travel information" which I can assume will be used to cultivate more business from me at some point. I understand marketing after all. However it was the personal touch both on Twitter and in real life that extended the power of Omni's commitment to my satisfaction. Their decision to monitor and respond to my random Tweet clearly engaged me as their customer and overcame a perception issue that ordinarily would have been left unchecked and likely never voiced. Come on you know most of us will say everything was fine when asked during check out how our stay was even though it may not have been. At that point we reluctantly raise the white flag and surrender, certain that a complaint at that point would be a waste of breath. Sad but true but come on you know you've been there too!

The Omni clearly didn't want to leave a potential point of dissatisfaction to chance and took action when they saw there was a problem! They used my Tweet as an opportunity to leverage the power of social media to capture what was happening in a customer's mind in real time and respond. Clearly Silvia and their social media person did an outstanding job and no doubt created a Ripple in my mind that will certainly extend to influencing where I stay next time I speak out of town.

So I have to ask, is your company actively mining the various social media tools to not only take the pulse of your customers/clients but leveraging what it discovers to enhance their overall experience and impression of your company. If not why not? I bet you the folks at Omni could give you a bazillion reasons why you should.

Ripple On!!!

P.S. If my new friends at Omni Hotels happen by this post I would love to know who on the Omni Twitter team responded to my Tweet. Additionally I would love to know Sylvia's full name and supervisor's name so that I could pen a quick note of appreciation for their efforts on my behalf.