How come everything old isn’t new again?

by Tom on January 3, 2009

Is there a time and place where people start getting cynical?  A point of no return where people decide they have reached the proper age to start complaining days on end?

coatroom

New Year’s eve.  3,000 people came to Kursaal Oostende to celebrate the new year.  Target demographic about 18-26 years old.  The cloakroom had a capacity of more than 2,500 but that doesn’t mean anything when most people decide to leave at the same time.  Result… some people had to wait a really long time to get their coats back, some of them almost an hour, that’s a long wait for someone who’s tired and really wants to go home after a long night.  Was there complaining?  No.  Did they like it?  Hell no.  Who would?  The important thing is they understood the difficulties, the problem and rolled with it.

December 2008.  A classical concert.  Target demographic about 50-70 years old.  Same cloakroom, only 600 people.  After the concert same problem, everyone wants to leave at the same time so a big bottleneck problem.  But waiting times weren’t that bad, 10 minutes tops.  Was there complaining?  A lot!  They complained about having to wait, about the service, about the building, the organization, the concert,… everything they could complain about.  Ofcourse, I’m not trying to generalize, there where a lot people who didn’t complain and understood that cloakrooms will always be bottlenecks and require people to wait.  But it’s remarkable that from a certain age it becomes ‘easier’ to complain, and I really wonder why?  I have nothing but respect for people who’re older than me, but some of them make it really easy to dislike them.

So what’s the problem really?  Why do they start acting that way?

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Who’s Listening Anyway?

by Tom on January 1, 2009

Customers.  In general I don’t like any of them.  There are not many that don’t complain, where you don’t have to bend over backwards to get them to use your service or buy your product.  We have to be more creative to get their attention.  They know what they are worth and are more demanding and even the best can’t keep up with their ever changing needs. 

One of the reasons why I want to do this is because:
1.  It’s one of my New Year’s resolutions for 2009 and I have to start strong… January 1st.
2.  At Kursaal Oostende we receive over 250,000 customers each year.  Lots of stories.
3.  Another way to appear ‘busy’ if my boss is watching me behind my desk at work. (Actually, this is the only reason, but I have to sugarcoat it a little bit… he’s probably reading too)

I’m not pretending to be any expert, but on the other hand I hate so-called experts who write lovely dustjacket covered books about how customer is king and how we have to be gratefull for their business.  How we have to handle them with care and always be friendly.  I tried that and it backfired.  So this should be a blog in constant developping.  Or at least it’s supposed to be…

So feel free to share your experiences… we all have had difficult times and we can all learn from each other.  And God knows we can all use a shoulder to cry on sometimes ;)

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