Open feedback for Little Chef

After watching Heston Blumenthal's programmes 'Big Chef takes on Little Chef' on Channel 4 back in January we decided to go down to the transformed Popham restaurant. I would love to spend the rest of this post reviewing the restaurant, but this isn't the place for that. Needless to say they have done a great job. The food is like something out of a gastro pub, the architect has created a funky space and the staff are all really friendly and seem up for transforming the place.

Anyway back the point of my post and that is feedback. With the re-launch at Popham, Little Chef seem to be making an effort to connect with their customers and gather feedback. They have a Facebook fan page and a feedback form on their website. Popham is just down the round from my Mum's house, so she came along. Even she was incredibly impressed! She wanted to let Little Chef know what she thought about her experience, so she filled out their online feedback form. She was told that she would be contacted by a member of the Little Chef customer services team within 14 working days regarding her comments. Sure enough she received a letter a week later. Again impressive! Little Chef seem to be doing the right things and working hard, but they could leverage their feedback much more effectively. Why not have open/transparent feedback? Open feedback online not only gives a great brand message it also makes other customers feel more vested in the brand. Little Chef can then respond to demonstrate how seriously they take the feedback and what they are doing about it. With a letter to my Mum only she gets this message, if it goes online everybody gets it.

As with many sites Little Chef has a customers comments section. Whilst this is better than nothing, it's not exactly democratic. Perhaps Little Chef do post every comment up but as a customer the cynic in you says they only put the good stuff up. That is where having an independent forum like Plebble comes in, adding value to customers feedback!

I believe Little Chef are now considering whether to roll out Heston's Popham concept across the country. I don't have access to all their info but look at Facebook, their website, press and numerous other sites, the message is a resounding thumbs up for Popham. I really hope they listen.

Should brands engage through Twitter?

Twitter's recent surge has been well documented, just take a look at the last 6m's from Alexa.

The question dominating the blogosphere is how is Twitter going to make revenues? This morning whilst I was on Twitter I picked up a Brand Republic article entitled 'Twitter to begin charging brands for commercial use'. The article reports that Twitter are thinking about charging brands for using a hybrid Twitter marketing and customer service tool. This seems sensible when you consider so many brands are using Twitter for just that (marketing and customer service). The issue then becomes whether brands belong on Twitter. Mashable did a blog post on just that, which sparked some interesting debate. I have to confess I did not read all of the 199 responses to the blog, but from skimming through, many of them seemed to think there is a place for brands on Twitter.

I agree with having brands on Twitter for 2 reasons. 1 because I think active engagement by brands, not just passive monitoring is a very positive step for consumers and businesses and 2 because Twitter's basic functionality works. Take Be Broadband as an example. They actively use Twitter and are incidentally in Plebble's top 10 performers. If I am a Be customer I can choose to follow their updates, I am interested in them because I am customer. If they start filling my Twitter page with duff updates, I can stop following them or even block them. So Twitter is a democratic opt-in service. If brands are not engaging or don't play by the rules they simply won't find Twitter an effective tool. However if they get it right they could have thousands of happy followers acting as advocates for their brand.









That said there are still some outstanding issues for brands on Twitter. Many brand names have already been taken by Twitter users and there is no easy way users can distinguish Twitter usernames as official brands. Twitter is a very personal and social tool. Just communicating with a brand name can be impersonal for users. The alternative is to register employees as representatives for the brand. The issue with that is employees move on taking all their hard work on Twitter with them. As Twitter try to monetise, I am sure they will try and make Twitter more accessible to brands and address these issues. The key to Twitter is its simple functionality. This must remain, but I think Twitter could create official brand/company accounts to deal with this. In the meantime however I don't think brands should hold back. For brands Twitter has its flaws, but they are outweighed by the positive act of engagement.