Spearfish Labs

Christmas 2009 was not a happy time for Eurostar and was even worse for any travelers who used the service. The short version is, the week before Christmas hundreds of passengers were stranded under the Channel for over ten hours as three trains broke down in the tunnel. To add insult to injury, Eurostar’s only active Twitter account was being used to push out promotional deals when many Twitter users were on the trains trying to find out how to get home. The usual social media malestrom ensued, I wrote about the incident here.

This morning, I recieved an email from Eurostar reaching out to people who had written about the incident and explaining the measures they have taken to improve communications in the future. While it takes more than an email to a few bloggers to rectify a brand implosion, the first step is to acknowledge there was a problem, take it on the chin and then outline the steps that will be taken to improve. The full email is below for your viewing pleasure (Eurostar were happy for me to post it)…

Hello

You posted about the Eurostar trains that broke down in December, and made the point about the need for better communication with our passengers.

While you don’t normally post on transport issues, I thought you might be interested to see a copy of the Independent Review into the events, and our response.

You can find our response here http://bit.ly/9idW1l together with a visual representation of what happened on the day.

We are extremely sorry for what happened, and take the situation very seriously. We’ve already taken action to address many of the Review’s recommendations, and we are committed to implementing all of its recommendations as quickly as possible. Above all we are focused on:

• Improving passenger care in disruption
• Improving communications, and
• Strengthening the resilience of our trains

The Eurostar communications team will be providing information and updates at @eurostarcomms where we’ll be working closely with @little_break and @creamoflondon. You’ll find us making corporate announcements there as well as reporting back should there be any key service updates.

I hope you have time to look at the review findings, particularly on the communications side of things.  If you have any thoughts please don’t hesitate to let me know.

All the best

Of course this only the beginning of a rebuilding strategy but you have to start somewhere. The next steps are to implement and sustain the improvements but it is a good example of listening to your detractors and instead of adopting a ‘we know best’ strategy and hoping it goes away, taking it on board and using the negative to create a positive. With all the social media channels and tools now at the disposal of disgruntled customers and bloggers, as painful as it may be for big brands to swallow, it is the only way to start rebuilding.