Posts tagged Pune

10/10/10 was a particular day of interest for the team at SocialMedia2Go. Not because of the significance of the date or anything astrological… but cause we were about to go public with our experiment “Tweet 2 Order” with our client Faasos in Pune, India. 

Recently we had been thinking about what would make Ordering food home (delivery) more simple than Calling up the Restaurant? So simple that you wouldn’t need any details other than what you wanted to order & without the need of having to call anyone at all. 

We turned to client’s twitter account. Setting up a basic registration page (sorry for the crappy UI), we took down information such as Name, Address, closest Landmark & chosen outlet. The client has 10 outlets placed strategically around Pune city. This information was tied to the Twitter ID of the registering person. 

Now all one needed to do was Tweet their order to @Faasos & use the #FaasosNow hashtag with it! Given the simplicity of the system, we knew who was ordering, where he/she needed the order to be delivered & even sent a confirmation tweet back :) 

Surprisingly we did not expect such a good response, within an hour we had 15 orders placed & delivered via the system. This in a city which is currently celebrating the Hindu festival of Navratri (means almost zero business for restaurants which serve Non-vegetarian food) and where twitter is still way behind facebook users. 

Two major wins of this launch were immediately visible, 1. Faasos got credibility of being ahead of the curve & experimenting with simple yet pathbreaking services & 2. winning new fans & respect of existing customers. We’ve certainly made a difference today & this will go a long way.

Mr. Jaydeep Burman of FAASOS had this to say: “thanks to the SocialMedia2Go team for the successful launch of tweet-2-order @faasos. We were pleasantly surprised to see the tremendous response and level of interest in the Twitter community. We got 15 registrations in the first hour :) not to talk of sudden increase in followers for both twitter and facebook. Thank you guys for converting an idea into reality.” 

We’re still smiling & happy that this has been a perfect 10. Over time we will improve the system & hopefully it will catch on as a trend too. 

Cheers,
@MrShri
Co-Founder - SocialMedia2Go. (sm2go)

image courtesy: vidafine.com

This is interesting & sad at the same time.. cause 1 it concerns the ‘default social media hangout’ of PUNE and 2 cause we LOVED the Beer & crappy service at Doolally - The 1st Brewhouse. Well thankfully the Beer remains the same but with massive upgrade (read management change) to the Food menu - has come albeit a lot of disappointment, and I am not even talking about taste. The food is great, but then I am a Beer guy & I like so many others drove 30+ km almost twice every week for the same. And this is where the Social Media movers & shakers from Pune & Mumbai came together. 

So that said, the point here is of the gross neglect of Twitter & Facebook fans… to a point where it even sums up as rude by the new management. The original team of Suketu & Prateek did their bidding in building up a great list of followers & fans… and even interacted in real time, supported tweetups & Oh… the 1st Foursquare Special in INDIA was at Doolally. 

When I walked in there today, I was already aware of the discussion around how uncomfortable the majority were with the “over commercialization” of the 1st Brewhouse & the subsequent change in the name to “Smokies Brewhouse”. After a couple of BEERS & meeting some tweeps, which is usual… I decided to speak with the PR person in concern of Smokies. To my amazement, the response was nothing as expected. 

The PR was unaware of the Twitter followers & even Facebook fans… maybe brushing it across as an unimportant thing. She also stressed on how this was their first day & the management didn’t have many things figured out. What I feel appalling is that a company with such a large investment into rebranding completely ignores the Social Media goodwill which was already created by the previous Brand? 

Tweet from @tastykhana shows a PR Fail.. Response from @godoolally below:

Less can be said about Foursquare awareness, so no wonder the feedback has been negative! I did not even get my Mayors Special & thanks to buddy Abhishek the Beers were covered. 

This throws up some questions on how sensitive brands should be when it comes to their real customers, ones who take the initiative to talk about their favorite brand and in-turn get more conversions in real time. And we are talking about Twitter & Facebook fans here… real numbers. 

Here is where I would like to give huge thumbs up to the management of a small restaurant in Pune called “Yolkshire” which made it a point to run a ‘test phase’ and collected feedback via twitter and facebook. Hence within a month of opening, they are doing brisk business and have a good number of people endorsing the first Egg Speciality joint in this Social-Media-Active city!

I will be monitoring on how Smokies managment fixes this SMM hole or its just going to dry up all the good done by the good guys at Doolally. And I am not saying this being biased, I am just a customer who needs to be treated like an asset… don’t we all? 

Will appreciate comments & responses!

UPDATE - 6th July 2010

The Tweet from @tastykhana verifies correction and below the Text message from Smokies PR:

“Read your tweet. Thank you for all your feed back, we shall take your critique and improve ourselves. Thankyou for your attention and time.”

Note: Author is the Founding Member of Foursquare PUNE & a regular commentator on Social Media topics, Twitter for Business et. all. Connect on Twitter - @MrShri