merry Christmas from qantas... or not...

[MEL_Traveller]

Sooooo... basically you're saying it's Qantas' fault that you purchased from a litigious company who deliberately hobbles their products in an attempt to control the market?

Caveat Emptor!

Works fine on my Samsung Galaxy SII...

no. I'm saying qantas missed the mark, yet again.

 

[reflector]

Well I thought it was brilliant! I was going to let this slide, but since you've responded directly with a nonsensical argument...

You seem to be unfamiliar with the concept of creating goodwill with customers (I'm guessing you're an "old school" businessperson seeing as though you think e-cards can be mailed) Creating goodwill with customers is not a directly profit positive activity, but it creates brand loyalty, and word of mouth advertising that's difficult to put a value on. The money spent on this e-card (probably less than $10000 including design/programming costs and data traffic) will pay dividends in the medium term, more so than simply ploughing money back into the company.

Given the level of design involved in the e-card, I'm sure that the subject of format came up in a design meeting. At the end of the day, they really only had the option between flash (unsupported on certain apple products) and html5 (relatively new, still a bit buggy on android and iOS, and possibly not viewable by people with older desktop machines.) At the end of the day, they have to go with the option which gives them more coverage, and that's flash.

tl;dr: Don't have a big cry when you can't view flash on your apple device, use another device. It's your fault for buying a device that can't view the full web.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I am clearly aware an e card can't be mailed. you missed the point. I was just saying that they could keep any paper based Christmas card and save the postage.

and yes, some of us work in PR and marketing, so nothing behind qf's intention was lost.

creating goodwill = not grounding your entire airline. an e card that doesn't open on iPhones, which are encouraged for use with checkin and mobile boarding passes shows a little lack of foresight and simply introduces another aspect of frustration. that to me doesn't equal goodwill either.

 

[Robert K]

Grounding the fleet had nothing to do with them trying to create good will so why even bring it up.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Grounding the fleet had nothing to do with them trying to create good will so why even bring it up.

sure it does

you should be looking at your strategy as a whole, not as a series of individual events that have no bearing on each other. if you have an event that requires some serious PR to put right, and the main event led (in the whole) to frustration for 70k stranded passengers, then the last thing my campaign would have is another event that could lead to potential frustration.

you need to be able to think three steps ahead to work out all the potential issues.

if you are in a cab out to the airport, using your iPhone to get a mobile boarding pass (something they encourage) and then happen on the e-card that doesnt open, it can lead to frustration. same as emailing about double points, but then sending a letter out as well.

personally I saw the letter as a waste... of paper, postage and time. hardly the most environmentally friendly of options (granted, neither is air travel!)

 

[harvyk]

Gee not this argument again - yawn... (Insert sleeping emoticon here)

As I said, the sending of an ecard generated based on a database entry doesn't do a lot towards building goodwill, but it hardly destroys it.
Also you can hardly link the inability of your chosen device to open a certain file type with the QF grounding. Besides you may have chosen a device which does support flash and yet it still might not have worked, then what?

 

[straitman]

Gee not this argument again - yawn... (Insert sleeping emoticon here)

As I said, the sending of an ecard generated based on a database entry doesn't do a lot towards building goodwill, but it hardly destroys it.
Also you can hardly link the inability of your chosen device to open a certain file type with the QF grounding. Besides you may have chosen a device which does support flash and yet it still might not have worked, then what?

I wonder if QF will serve popcorn today whilst I follow this :!:

 

[MarkD]

Hmmmm criticised for sending a Christmas card... What a funny world we live in

 

[markis10]

Hmmmm criticised for sending a Christmas card... What a funny world we live in

Yep, and we wonder why the shopping centre above Fortitude Valley station is wishing us happy holidays, yet they dont put the same sign up for Diwali or Ramadan, mind you its mostly a food court so happy holidays for Ramadan would be more askew!

 

[JohnPhelan]

creating goodwill = not grounding your entire airline.

creating goodwill = ensuring an end to disruptive industrial action = certainty for your customers.

It's not a difficult equation at all.

 

[mannej]

Perhaps the real issue is why apple products such as the iPhone and iPad can not handle flash?

 

[markis10]

Perhaps the real issue is why apple products such as the iPhone and iPad can not handle flash?

Because they chose not to support such a buggy piece of rubbish, a policy now adopted by Adobe themselves who have canned future development of mobile flash.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Hmmmm criticised for sending a Christmas card... What a funny world we live in

not criticizing the concept, criticizing the execution, and inability to think that perhaps you are sending a card to a customer base that a sizable proportion can't open because of an iPhone or iPad.

if you have an e-strategy, then all elements of your campaign should fit within that strategy.

 

[blackcat20]

not criticizing the concept, criticizing the execution, and inability to think that perhaps you are sending a card to a customer base that a sizable proportion can't open because of an iPhone or iPad.

Most people with an iphone or ipad still have access to a computer (heck, I have 4!)...

Regardless, I liked the card. Simple and cheery, does it for me.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Most people with an iphone or ipad still have access to a computer (heck, I have 4!)...

Regardless, I liked the card. Simple and cheery, does it for me.

I guess I'm just getting to the point where this is symptomatic of lack of control of PR... it appears to be systemic:

• the balck face issue
• announcing platinum 1 with little or no details
• inability to offer priority boarding, and lack of desire to tap into expertise about how to fix it (unless someone has been contacted about it??)
• 'let's play I spy' when people have been on hold for 8 or 9 hours during the ash crisis
• failure to update qantas website on when flights would be operating in the immediate aftermath of the ash crisis (virgin posted very early in the morning, qf was several hours behind that to announce that flights would be flying that day)
• run around on T5 lounge access (yeah... the cheque's in the mail...)
• postings on here that are simply cut and pastes of press releases...

and then we get another email today... announcing that in response to member feedback, golds would now be advised of an international upgrade 24 hours prior to departure.

is that really what member feedback was? or was member feedback perhaps that they wanted the ability to have confirmed upgrades at the time of booking? I am willing to put money on the latter. (and yes I know there are people that book last minute, but it is entirely possible to have a mixture of confirmed and last minute upgrades, as seen by domestic ODUs)

none of these things cost additional money to do properly from a PR perspective. If you are going to complain you are doing it tough and have to tighten your belt internationally, why not start with some free things that might keep some of your existing customers?

 

[mannej]

I guess I'm just getting to the point where this is symptomatic of lack of control of PR... it appears to be systemic:

• the balck face issue
• announcing platinum 1 with little or no details
• inability to offer priority boarding, and lack of desire to tap into expertise about how to fix it (unless someone has been contacted about it??)
• 'let's play I spy' when people have been on hold for 8 or 9 hours during the ash crisis
• failure to update qantas website on when flights would be operating in the immediate aftermath of the ash crisis (virgin posted very early in the morning, qf was several hours behind that to announce that flights would be flying that day)
• run around on T5 lounge access (yeah... the cheque's in the mail...)
• postings on here that are simply cut and pastes of press releases...

and then we get another email today... announcing that in response to member feedback, golds would now be advised of an international upgrade 24 hours prior to departure.

is that really what member feedback was? or was member feedback perhaps that they wanted the ability to have confirmed upgrades at the time of booking? I am willing to put money on the latter. (and yes I know there are people that book last minute, but it is entirely possible to have a mixture of confirmed and last minute upgrades, as seen by domestic ODUs)

none of these things cost additional money to do properly from a PR perspective. If you are going to complain you are doing it tough and have to tighten your belt internationally, why not start with some free things that might keep some of your existing customers?

To be honest, you do seem to have a bug bear of the QF PR team.

• The Radike Samo fiasco- Understood how it can be construed as racist, and it can be seen as careless by the QF team, however when the person himself was quite chuffed with the attention, was a mountain made out of a molehill?
• What is the difference between the announcement of P1 and the announcement of the Virgin IFE systems?
• There was quite a large thread on the bugs present in the updated Virgin website.
• Most of the threads started by the DJ/VA rep are press releases themselves

I do agree that there are times that they have not nailed it, but to complain over a Christmas card reeks of negativity. I am no IT guru, and I know there are limitations to what the iPad/iPhone can do. The last time Virgin offered me a card of any sort was a supposed Gold Card for it to be revoked due to a Friday the 13th "joke". I think there is a lot of resentment towards a certain carrier at the moment. Yes they have had it tough, and it does bring a lot of criticism with it. I do see changes implemented, which may be a positive in the long term.
QF are not the only ones sending Christmas cards out in that form, for Pete's sake it is very similar to the one our boss sent out to the office. I didn't really expect anything more or less from them.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

To be honest, you do seem to have a bug bear of the QF PR team.

I am not a member of velocity, so I can't comment... perhaps if I was then I would find similar issues.

the issues affecting me directly are qantas ones. we see immediate action where it suits them, and no action when it doesn't. they want our loyalty, but we get told that our feedback has only resulted in a notification for an upgrade 24 hours in advance. that just assumes I'm an an idiot. the email could simply have commenced with 'great new changes to upgrade notification' without the need to say it was in response to customer feedback.

that in itself (saying it is in response to customer feedback) has the underlying connotation that they didn't originally think there was anything that needed improvement, and that they weren't really thinking about it at all until they got feedback. that is... it's not their initiative at all and only comes about because of complaints (errr... let's call that feedback!)

if they had just come out and announced it, they could have claimed the initiative, shown that they are proactively monitoring the program and how to maximize benefits for members.

there is a subtle difference in those two approaches... one is by a professional PR person thinking as part of a campaign, one in not.

why do I say the professional PR person is thinking as part of a broader campaign? because the next question someone might ask is that if is such a great thing and we should give credit to qantas for acting on feedback... what about all the other feedback? I've given feedback that I dont want to have to pay award assistance fees for bookings which cannot under any circumstances be booked on line. do we now have an anticipation that qantas is listening and will remove those fees?

no. of course we don't.

so the whole 'we are listening and responding' thing has as many holes as Swiss cheese. it's not fail safe under every scenario you want to throw at it.

a good PR campaign should be able to withstand anything you throw at, and the underlying fundamentals should be simple and solid, so that the message can be delivered from the ground up. there should be no scope for consumers to ask 'why are you listening on the upgrades but not listening on x, y and z?'

 

[harvyk]

if you have an e-strategy, then all elements of your campaign should fit within that strategy.

Find me one company that guarantees that they're product will work across all devices right around the world, no exceptions. They probably chose flash because the majority of their customer base would have the ability to view a flash animation via one or more of the devices they own. The question could be asked, should QF have built a solution and the tested it on every possible IT device (and in every possible configuration) they could think of? Because that is the only way they could guarantee that it would work regardless of device.

Now the real question has to be asked, how was your life negatively affected by the inability of opening said attachment?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Now the real question has to be asked, how was your life negatively affected by the inability of opening said attachment?

it wasn't ... except for the mild frustration of not being able to open it.

it's not the card per se, it's the lack of attention to the execution of the card, and on other issues, that doesn't bode well when the PR machine says they're working their hardest to get a solution to things.

if you can't nail something as simple as this, how do we trust they are trying their hardest with priority boarding, or T5 etc...

do I trust the team that says 'let's play I spy' to truly understand an issue when I write to them about it? err... nope.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Got my AAmerican AAirlines holiday greeting email today... 'click on the link' it invites... and guess what? Works perfectly... opens a small animated video (similar to youtube). No problems using with 'i' devices.