Whale Cottage Portfolio Blog

The Sweet Service Award goes to Mercedes Benz Financial Services, for extending their Easter promotion, entailing one month free repayment if one called a number on receiving an SMS, into May.  The customer did not know that MBFS stood for Mercedes Benz Financial Services, and that the SMS was not spam, and was to be taken seriously.  They agreed that customers may have missed out on the promotion by not understanding the origin of the SMS, and therefore granted the extension of the promotion, a welcome saving of a month’s repayment!

The Sour Service Award goes to Seeff Properties, for creating high expectations amongst private property owners in Host Cities around the country, and in Cape Town in particular, using soccer hero Gary Bailey as their spokesperson.   The owner of an apartment in Green Point, Jenny Stephens, listed her property with Seeff on Regent Road in Sea Point last year, and was prescribed as to the additional facilities that would need to be provided to make the apartment marketable for a World Cup rental.   She did not hear from the rental agent again for four months, until she wrote last month to say that whilst the demand for such accommodation is high in Johannesburg, “Less visitors will base themselves in Cape Town.  In fact, the demand at this stage is for shorter periods, on average five to seven days”.  The agent also blamed the cancellation of MATCH room nights, as well as the high costs of match and airline tickets for the lower demand for accommodation, and wrote that the rates they had previously promised were no longer achievable.  The agency therefore recommended a rental rate decrease to Mrs Stephens.   Seeff is said to be taking 25 % commission on the rental bookings, sounding almost as greedy as MATCH!  As Mrs Stephens could no longer wait for Seeff to rent out her property, she extended the lease with existing tenants.

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com. Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.

The Whale Cottage Portfolio has increased the traffic to its website six-fold in one year, since embodying social media marketing, and has exceeded the 30 000 visitorship for the first time this month.  In 2009 a total of just fewer than 200000 unique visitors was recorded.

In January 2009 4850 unique visitors (i.e. unduplicated visitorship) had accessed the website, four months after Whale Cottage had started this blog www.whalecottage.com/blog.   At the end of December this had grown to 27 928 unique visitors.

The major impact on the growth in web traffic has been persistent blogging, with the target of one blog post published per day having been met with one or two exceptions.   Performance improved once the blog posts were posted during mid-morning, instead of just after midnight, when they had just been written.   This post is the 500th written on this WhaleTales blog.

Twitter has made a significant contribution too, with it serving as an “announcement” of what one has blogged about, providing a link to the website which can be accessed for more information, given its 140 character space restriction.   Whale Cottage has close to 700 followers, and has written more than 2 000 tweets to date.   Facebook has played only a small role in contributing to web traffic.

Cross-referencing has also assisted in the growth in Whale Cottage’s visibility, in that the social media links are part of the Whale Cottage e-mail signature; in that the WhaleTales newsletter invites its readers to follow Whale Cottage on Twitter and Facebook; and the blog has an RSS feed link, to enable regular readers to receive the latest WhaleTales blog post, and it has links to the Whale Cottage Twitter and Facebook pages.

New traffic to the website has come from restaurant reviews in particular, especially for new restaurants.  Few restaurants have websites, and do not understand about search engine optimisation.  Some Whale Cottage restaurant reviews have outperformed the restaurant websites in terms of the Google ranking on page one of a search on a specific restaurant.   Where other websites provided a link to the Whale Cottage blog in cases of restaurant controversy (e.g. Portofino, Carne), traffic to the website has been enhanced.

In 2009 the top 10 blog posts that were read most often were the following:

1.   Spar Sweet and Limelight Sour Service Awards (8 838)

2.   Petrol price drop best Christmas present for tourists (5119)

3.   Franschhoek goes Italian (Allora review) (4394)

4.   Rebel restaurateur a hit at Portofino (3 360)

5.   SA presence on top 50 restaurant list grows (2 468)

6.   Prince Albert celebrates in Fresnaye (2 276)

7.   Whales beach on Kommetjie beach (1 984)

8.   Minstrels do it for Cape Town (1 698)

9.   Table Mountain only SA New7wonders nominee (1 570)

10.  Sun Princess to visit Cape Town (1 510)

The most popular restaurants in Cape Town at the moment, based on restaurant reviews accessed on the Whale Cottage Portfolio website via Google this month, are Duchess of Wisbeach, Vaudeville and Kuzina.   

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com

The Sweet Service Award goes to Ian Halfon and his team at Belthazar restaurant, a consistent winner of the Best Restaurant in the V & A Waterfront Award.   Halfon is a busy man, also owning Balducci’s in the V & A Waterfront, and a franchised collection of St Elmo’s woodfired pizza branches around the country.   However, he is not too busy to be hands-on at Belthazar, last evening even helping in the kitchen, complete with his chef’s uniform, and to make time to chat to his customers, and to offer them a glass of wine.   Belthazar offers one of the largest collections of wines-by-the-glass in South African restaurants, and serves excellent quality steaks in particular.   The food, service and wine range offered is exemplary. 

The Sour Service Award goes to Robben Island, for closing just before the Heritage Day long weekend, due to a technical problem with its ferry.   The company announced the “indefinite” suspension of the service, while it waited for a replacement part to be flown in from Germany.   Tourists who had booked tickets were met with a notice, and were not contacted by the company.   No contingency planning had taken place, over a weekend that saw the first signs of a recovery from the poor tourism weeks preceding Heritage Day.   The ferry trips appear to not have been re-instated, judging by Robben Island’s website.   Robben Island’s management is regularly in the news, for alleged financial irregularities and overspending.   The Island is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Cape Town, and it reflects badly on the professionalism of Cape Town as a tourist destination, especially given the 2010 World Cup being just over 200 days away.

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.

The Sweet Service Award  goes to Murnier and his team at Value Car Hire.  Earlier this week a Whale Cottage Camps Bay guest inadvertently took the room keys with him when he checked out, and called the guest house from the airport.   He tried to find a way to get them back to Camps Bay.   Value Car Hire, with whom Whale Cottage has a long-standing relationship, had staff at the airport, and they kindly met the Whale Cottage guest at the check-in counter, and then delivered the keys back to the guest house.  A whale of a thanks to Value Car Hire!

The Sour Service Award goes to ‘Blonde’ Oscar Kotze of Beluga restaurant, for asking this writer to leave the restaurant when invited for lunch as a member and Chairman of the Camps Bay Accommodation association.    Kotze is a director of the Caviar Group of restaurants, which also owns Sevruga and the Caviar deli, as well as Blonde restaurant, which is to open in February.    The reason for the eviction appears to be that Beluga sister restaurant Sevruga received a Sour Service Award from WhaleTales more than 2 months ago in regard to the poor handling of the Penny Vincenzi launch lunch (see here).      The Marketing Manager Sam Obery was in a state, repeatedly being instructed by Kotze by phone to ask the writer to leave.  The staff ignored the writer, even though she sat at the table with her guest house colleagues, not taking her food order, and not serving her drinks other than water.   Kotze was asked to call the writer, but he refused, and also refused to take the call from the writer.  He instructed his staff to call the police, so that the writer could be evicted by them!   Kotze is short-sighted, as he had a fantastic opportunity to make good the writer’s perception of the Caviar Group of restaurants, which unfortunately has worsened as a result of this incident.   Ms Obery was severely embarrassed, understanding that in marketing one tries to turn things around to the positive, and that her marketing effort to attract business from guest houses in Camps Bay had become a PR flop. A smart restaurant owner would have called the writer, and thanked her for the Sevruga feedback, and asked her to retry the food and service that she had critiqued.   The marketing documentation presented to the guest house owners at the lunch was not adapted to be relevant to the guest house group, it thanking the guest houses for “coming to our fabulous cocktail party… this evening”, when it was a lunch they attended!

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.  

The Sweet Service Award  goes to M-Web, the largest supplier of internet services in South Africa, who have passed on their broadband savings to their customers.  All M-Web subscribers will receive at least one extra GigaByte of broadband for their subscriptions, without an increase in their subscription fee. Even a booster package of R 99, which bought 1 GB in the past, will now supply 1,5 GB.

The Sour Service Award  goes to the SABC TV Licence department, for their inability to provide a tax invoice - instead they issue a statement, yet expect to be paid for the new annual subscription.   A SABC TV call center employee refused to provide the Invoice initially, until the centre supervisor’s assistance was requested.  Given the financial problems of the SABC, one wonders why their staff are so arrogant and rude to TV viewers, as they should be welcoming payment, and make it as easy as possible for TV licences to be paid.

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.

The Sweet Service Award  goes to Terry Bingley of Bingley Tours for speedily transporting guests from Cape Town airport to Hermanus when the contracted company did not arrive to collect the guests, and for accepting payment at the (lower) rate quoted by the other company.

The Sour Service Award  goes to Caltex garage at UMS Sales in De Waterkant for the poor and slow service from the attendant, who had to count the day’s takings first before he could fill the car with petrol.   When the customer complained, the attendant became abusive, and the customer had to lock the car windows, out of fear.  No offer of cleaning the windscreen, checking the tyres etc is ever made.   The son of the owner expressed surprise and even irritation when this feedback was presented to him the following day, as he and his father are never visible at the forecourt of the garage, and yet he wanted to dispute the feedback.   The customer has decided to never use this petrol station again, despite its convenient location. 

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.

The Sweet Service Award  goes to Woolworths in Regent Road in Sea Point, for trusting a customer with payment for a trolley-full of groceries on the day that Woolworths had a technical problem in accepting payment by credit card.   A small sign, not visible to customers entering the store, stated that the store could only take payment in cash, which meant that most customers arrived at the till with their trollies, wanting to pay with their credit cards.   An imprint was done of the card, and the customer was asked to sign the credit card slip when next in the store, given that she is a regular shopper at the store.

The Sour Service Award goes to Google and its representative in South Africa, New Approach Marketing, based in Johannesburg.  About once a week a heavily British-accented person calls guest houses, starting with the insulting introduction to the effect of: “Hello ma’m, I am calling from Google.  Have you ever heard of our company?”.  This is enough to get one’s back up.   When one questions where they are calling from, the caller gets defensive, especially when one has a caller with such a distinctive British accent claiming to call from Johannesburg.  Any questioning of this has led to a torrent of abuse, including a lady caller, who decided to call back to add to the verbal abuse of her male colleague, by calling the recipient of the call a racist and referring to our countryfolk as “blimming South Africans”!  The call centre staff are rude, and never allow one to finish a sentence, that it would be a surprise if they sold anyone Google adwords.  A more gentle salesperson later in the day explained that New Approach Marketing is representing Google in South Africa, and can get guest houses in Hermanus in the top 10 of Google for searches on “B & B in Hermanus” and similar, in “8 - 12 weeks”, on a “no contract” basis, at the cost of R 1 300 per month + VAT + R 265 set up fee.   He explained the broad Manchester dialect in that 30 of his colleagues have come from the UK to set up a branch of the company in Johannesburg, to train South Africans to take over the call centre eventually, and will move to Perth and to Canada, to set up similar operations there.   As a company was calling on behalf of  S A Tourism a few months ago, the caller was asked if the calls are being done on behalf of S A Tourism - his diplomatic but evasive answer was “not as far as I am aware”.  The content of the call was reported to George, the manager of New Approach Marketing in Johannesburg, and he promised to investigate.   His response was that it must be a competitor company calling directly from the UK, also representing Google, that made the abusive calls!

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.

The Sweet Service Award  goes to Mark, the Manager at Willoughby & Co in the V & A Waterfront, for reversing a potential Sour Award into a Sweet Award.   A customer went to Willoughby’s just after 22h00, after seeing a movie, wanting a quick calamari meal.  Initially she was completely ignored.  A waiter then asked how she could be assisted, and when she said what she wanted to eat, he apologised, saying that the restaurant was closed, even though all the doors were wide open.   He was adamant that the kitchen had been cleaned up already.  According to him, the kitchen closes promptly at 22h00.   The customer asked whether it was possible to have sushi instead, and the sushi chef agreed immediately and made a hand roll most promptly.   Just at that point Mark arrived at the restaurant, and had heard that there was a problem, and came to the customer.  He expressed surprise that the closing time had been communicated as 22h00, as it is 22h30.  He immediately offered to have the calamari dish prepared.  It was delicious.  The “crowning glory” was that Mark refused to accept payment for the meal, a most generous make-good, and a sure way to build brand loyalty.  

The Sour Service Award  goes to Daniel of Planet Fitness in Durbanville, for calling a guest house in Camps Bay at 15h00 on a Sunday afternoon, to check if it had received undefined vouchers.   Daniel made it sound as if he was a long-lost friend, and as if the recipient of the call would know who he is.   He was told that direct marketing calls on a Sunday afternoon for business purposes were not professional.   His boss Heinrich agreed and apologised.  However, a day later, another person from Planet Fitness in Durbanville called, with the same question.   The recipient of the call had to explain to the caller that it was extremely unlikely that a Camps Bay resident or guest house guest would drive all the way to Durbanville, a journey of 30 - 45 minutes, depending on traffic, to use the gym!

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.

The Sweet Award goes to Paarl Motors for effortlessly dealing with a customer’s car for a service, in collecting it from and dropping it off in Franschhoek, returning it beautifully cleaned, and charging an affordable price for the service, even though the vehicle is three years old.  The customer sent her Garage Card along for payment, and it was returned safely, and payment taken efficiently.

The Sour Award goes to Boulder’s Beach and its management, the National Parks Board.  Penny Klann, a registered tour guide, writes as follows:”National Parks is paranoid about letting people in without paying at the penguins at Boulders Beach (and at other tourist attractions such as the Cape Point nature reserve) and have instructed staff at these paypoints to check the tour guide’s i.d. card to make sure that they are a bona fide tour guide. Tour guides go in for free, as we ideally like to accompany our pax to see the penguins in order to give information to our pax about these fascinating birds. I have been going there on a regular basis as a tour guide for 15 years, and in the past year it has become irritating to say the least to be treated by these pay-point officials as if I am trying to get in illegally. For a while I had a tour guide card i.d. which had expired, but I had already paid up my new membership and was waiting for the new card to arrive. I explained this to the woman at the gate (who was intent on wielding her authority and blocking my access, as well as the 40 German tourists I had who were champing at the bit to get in to see the penguins, not to mention other tourists also waiting in the queue). As she would not accept that I was a paid-up official tour guide (in spite of my badge and the fact that my 40 tourists all obviously were with me), I showed her my Wild Card. This should have allowed me in without paying, even without a tour guide card, but - no - the woman insisted that I should show her my ID document to prove that I was the correct card holder. Unfortunately my Driver’s Licence was in the coach, parked some 400 metres away… and I tried to explain this to her, but she was determined to undermine and humiliate me in every way she could. She forbade me from going in with my pax, which meant I had to wait outside the gates and let my 40 German tourists go in without me. They were absolutely gobsmacked, and I felt like I was a criminal. These pax had had me guide them around the whole of South Africa for 2 weeks, and now their guide was being barred from entering a site of prime importance on their tour itinerary!  Yesterday I was at the penguins with 2 high-profile VIP guests, and the woman at the gate studied my Tourist Guide ID card for a long time, and then said “You are not registered for the Western Cape”. I realised that she was looking at the back of my card, which lists the provinces for which I am registered. In my case, because I am a National Tour Guide, it states “All provinces”, which was obviously too complicated for this woman to understand. She got very uptight when I explained to her that the reason she didn’t see the province Western Cape mentioned is because I am registered for all provinces. Do these officious-minded people who work at this pay point have nothing better to do than be sour, unwelcoming and downright pathetic? They should be glad to have a job at one of the world’s most popular, charming tourist sites. They should be making the tour-guides who bring them paying customers feel welcome, not be intent on humiliating us in front of our pax. Why would we tour-guides want to get in for free in any case if not for the service of providing our pax with commentary? We tour guides have all seen the penguins countless times!”

The Sweet Service Award goes to Galeisha and her team at Huguenot Fine Chocolates in Franschhoek, for being able to fulfill an order for 50 boxes of turndown chocolates on the same day as receiving the order, as the customer had run short.

The Sour Service Award goes to Glenwood Manufacturers, nominated by Megan from Sugarbird Manor.  She writes as follows:  “We recently requested a quote from a Glenwood for new Room Info Pack holders, Do Not Disturb (DND) signs & Menu covers. They sent us artwork for the DND signs and advised that all the other establishments were fine with the fact that on the one side it had “make up room” in lower case and “PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB” on the other side in uppercase. If you are in the service industry, would you think nobody would find this peculiar?  I requested the cost of a new embossing block, which they could use in future for any other clients who also found this peculiar. The block would cost R600. I found this an exorbitant price for 8 items,  that would only cost R78 to have made? I called the Sales Rep, and advised her that we would not be placing the order unless they halve the price of the block. She would get back to me, she said. I then received an e-mail with the new artwork, so assumed that they valued our business and were happy to give it to us half price. I signed the artwork off, and then received the invoice. Yes, they charged us R600! The sales rep said she could not recall the conversation that we had!  I then spoke to Tracy, the manager, who advised me that I was wrong, and that if I cancel the order, they would sue us! Now I ask you, what kind of service is this? Are the people in the tourism industry just more aware of the fact that the client is ALWAYS right and that you NEVER say no? What is going to happen in 2010? Are there going to be suppliers who will refuse to take a step back - and yes, maybe loose a few rand, but in the long run, have a happy client who will talk about you, in turn getting more people to make us of your services or not have them come back to SA because our service levels are atrocious?  There must be someone out there who would have treated me the way we treat our clients, that deserves the business more!”

Tracy, the Manager at Glenwood Manufacturers, responded as follows:  “Megan at Sugarbird Manor was shown samples of exactly what she would receive should she place the order.  She did query the difference in embossing and I discussed it with her at length. 

• I explained that as all our products are made to order our clients either supply or order their own embossing blocks.
• I explained the process & the costs involved should she choose to order a new lower case block saying “do not disturb”.
• I then explained that the embossing blocks we were using to do her job were blocks that the company had made up in the past to do samples for new clients. I was prepared to use these block on her signs AT NO CHARGE as I agreed that her spending R 600 on a new block was not very cost effective for her company.
• When she suggested that I use another companies block, I explained that it was unethical for us to do that as the block had been paid for by the companies and did not belong to us. Therefore were not ours to use.”

“Megan then demanded to speak to the sales rep.,who repeated what I had said and said she would try get a discount from the block manufacturer.  Artwork was sent to Megan for the new block and it was signed off and returned to us. At no time did Megan mention that she did not want to continue with the order nor did she send us a cancellation.  When the invoice was sent to her with a 20% discount on the embossing block (ie R480 not the R 600 that was mentioned in Megan’s nomination), we were told that they now aren’t prepared to pay for the block or the order unless I only charge them R300.”

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.