It's all thanks to Twitter...

Last week Wednesday we had a terrible experience at the airport. My wife and daughter were scheduled to fly to Portland via Denver on Frontier Airlines for a family wedding this weekend.  When we got to the airport, there was a surprisingly long line at the counter. The girls got in line but then became suspicious when they noticed it wasn't moving at all.  Eventually a counter agent came over the speaker to explain that due to weather they had cancelled all remaining flights into Denver for the day and furthermore every flight the next day was overbooked so passengers could contact customer service for a refund of their tickets.  That was it. No assistance to transfer travelers to another airlines, that isn't their policy since the cancellation was due to weather.  When we dug deeper they told us the soonest they could get the two girls on a flight to Portland, was next week Wednesday.  I have never experienced or heard anything like this. Both girls were very upset and my daughter started what seemed like 5 hours of constant crying and complaining.

The whole experience was very strange to me so turned to twitter looking for some answers.  I knew Frontier (@flyfrontier) used and communicated with passengers via twitter, so I reached out.  In the mean time, my wife continued her efforts through the 800 number to customer service the ticket agent gave us at the airport.  Every person she spoke with gave her the same story: since it was due to weather they had a policy to not transfer passengers to other airlines and if we wanted to pursue another airline, the expense would be our own and they could refund our Frontier tickets.  The challenge with this, was that their refund process typically takes 15-20 days, according the the agents we spoke with, and same day tickets were 4x as expensive as what we purchased the original flights for.  The whole experience was more than disappointing and leaving me with a very bad perception of Frontier.

At the end of my wife's two hour ordeal on the phone with customer service (I'd like those cell minutes back, please) I checked twitter to see that Frontier had responded to my original tweet.  I began a conversation with @FlyFrontier about my our travel situation, the importance of getting back to Oregon for the wedding, and the all around dissatisfaction and disappointment we were having with their airline.  The responses to my tweets and direct messages was quick and helpful.  In the end, I got a message that said, "we don't usually do this, but how would a 7pm flight...." and a few hours later my wife and daughter were on their way to Oregon on a different airline, arranged completed by Frontier and through twitter.

What began as a terrible customer service experience ended with a great story and example for other companies to follow of how to connect with customers via a very effective and powerful communication tool.  Sure my wife and daughter lost a day off their trip, but we don't blame Frontier for the weather, we just expected the ticket agents and phone agents to provide the customer service experience the tweeter agent ultimately did.

Kudos to @FlyFrontier for saving a family of customers, providing a level of service to be mirrored, and thanks for helping my girls get to the wedding of the year.  For anyone who hasn't embraced twitter yet, hopefully this story demonstrates how valuable a tool it can be to connect with people and businesses.  If you're already tweeting, follow @FlyFrontier if you want an example of how to engage your customers and improve their experience with your business and brand.

Follow me on twitter - @rkaopuiki

The LOST Experience

Almost 24 hours removed from the LOST finale, I continue to process and work through last night's series ending episode.  My brain needs the time to process and think through the experience of LOST.  Experience is really the best way that I can describe what it is like to be a fan and follower of the show.  Some would describe it as a roller coaster ride, others as a six year movie, but for me it's been an experience. 

People get up from watching a TV show or exit a theater with immediate feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction and every once in a while, a really good movie will keep you thinking during the drive home or be the center of discussion with your spouse for a couple days.  When we have experiences in life, they are drawn out over time and impact us on a variety of levels. Satisfaction or dissatisfaction isn't always clear immediately.  It's due to the time span and multi-faceted impact on audience members and a world-wide fan base that I believe LOST rose to greater heights than a television series and should be be described as an experience.

I'll leave the theories and explanations about the storyline and time lines to those truly committed to it (checkout http://www.televisionaryblog.com/2010/05/open-discussion-series-finale-of-lost.html for some great insight), for me the brilliance of the show is the experience it created and how the message of the story extended beyond it's scheduled programming time. 

The characters in LOST were traveling through life alone before their tragic plane crash, but through the course of the series they learned they were not alone and had support and companions around them.  They were brought together and bonded by a shared experience.  LOST's magic is that it created a similar situation for its fans.

For those of us who followed LOST, we became bonded together with co-workers, acquaintances, Twitter followers, and Facebook friends who shared the experience of LOST.  We watched each episode and quickly turned to our networks to discuss, analyze, and debate our theories and ideas about what we just saw.  The LOST experience has allowed us to connect with and share with others.  Our stories of our LOST experiences have been the center of conversation around the water cooler, in the break room, and at lunch.  LOST wasn't a show that we enjoyed for 60 minutes each week, it was something we experienced throughout the week and anticipated season to season. Sharing the experiences with others.

I will miss the story and characters of LOST, but mostly I'll miss the experience I feel I've been a part of for six years.

A Rainy Interruption to Dinner

A couple weeks ago while eating dinner, we started to watch the rain fall outside.  It was really coming down hard, but absent from this storm was the thunder and lightning we've come to associate with midwest rain storms.  Growing up in Oregon we rarely had rain storms with thunder and lightning, but the since we've lived in Indiana, we've rarely seen one without the extra excitement.


So as we watched the rain come down during dinner, it occurred to me that we may have an opportunity to take advantage of.  I dropped my fork to my plate and asked the Kyron, my only child I haven't had a play date in the rain with, if he wanted to go play outside.  He looked at me sort of funny, not sure if I was serious, but the older kids immediately yelled 'YES!'  Everyone grabbed their shoes, left their coats inside and ran outside to play, dinner could wait.


The next 30 minutes were some of the most fun we've had as a family in the past couple months. Playing tag, jumping in puddles, and just running around having fun.  I have great memories of being a kid and playing in the rain, I hope my kids will have the same.

End of an Era

This last week was a sad week in our house because it marked the end of an era for our family.  Kyron had his last day of preschool and it marked the end of that stage for our entire family.    It will be great to have all our kids in grade school and beyond, but it is amazing me at how fast that part of our life has gone by.  I am sure Kyron will do great in Kindergarden next year and have no problem adjusting to the longer days, we'll just have to see how well Mom and Dad adjust to the change.  IMUA!

Benefits of Being the Younger Brother

All our kids have played sports over the years and through all the soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball, and football games our youngest son Kyron has been exposed to hours and hours of sports and activity, just waiting his turn. 

His turn finally came several weeks ago when he started soccer.  I blogged at that time about his first game, but we didn't realize how good he would do or how much he would like it.

The great thing about Kyron is that he seems to have fun doing whatever has his attention at the moment.  Every moment is full of smiles and it's no different each Saturday as he's playing soccer.  He's fun to watch because he clearly is just out there having fun.  When you're good at something it makes it easy to have fun, and Kyron is pretty good at soccer.  It helps that he's just bigger and faster than the other kids out there (that will change, he has my genes...) and he's been watching and playing with his older siblings for year, but for now, he's way better than other kids his age on the soccer field.  The other team hasn't scored all season when he is on the field and he hasn't had a game with fewer than six goals!

I think we'll spend the rest of the season focusing on passing and playing defense, but even his older brothers have to admit that #3 is a little superstar - at least in our house.

Cheaters never win! well, they're not supposed to!

Several weeks ago Caeden participated in his second Math Pentathlon. I joked that it was the minor leagues for future Chess Club members, but we had a great time cheering Caeden and his teammates on in each of their contests. I was really disappointed though and left with mixed feelings on the event after talking with some of the parents who were helping out.

Parents volunteered to monitor matches and help resolve any challenges the kids came upon during their match. The instructions to the parents were that they could not intervene unless one of the players used a challenge card to dispute something. What was disappointing, however, was that in talking with several parents they acknowledged watching kids purposely cheat to win (obvious stuff like moving a piece when the other player looked away), but because the other player didn’t see the wrong doing they didn’t know to challenge. Since the monitor couldn’t intervene unless a player challenged, the cheating player often got away with it. So we had instances of monitors knowing that wrong doing was happening, but helpless to do anything due to the rules.

I’m not sure what that teaches kids. Some of them were clearly learning that cheating is ok and will have benefits, so long as they don’t get caught. I’m not comfortable with that and refuse to allow my kids to think that is acceptable. It’s just disappointing to me that there are first graders learning such false truths at a young and impressionable age.


Despite my personal disappointment though, I was proud of Caeden’s effort and sportsmanship in the competition. It was also great to see him trying something different than sports.