Lat weekend a made a quick visit to the area in which I grew up. Whilst there we stopped off for a meal at the Farmhouse pub in New Waltham. The suroundings, service and food was excellent. That is not the 'good' of the entry, however.
No, the blog is about Internet-related marketing, and clearly displayed near the door was an offer of a chance to win £1000 by completing an online survey. So that's the good.
The 'could do better' is that the online questionnaire could have been better. Is was far from being bad, but a little thought would have broght it up to the same standard of service I received in the pub.
Several of the questions were poorly worded and there were a couple of grammatical errors, but what annoyed me was the form's refusal to accept a phone number as two elements ie the area code - space - number. Nope, I had to close the gap for it to be accepted. Two points: (1) it would be easy to set up the field to accept all variations of the phone number, and (2) this was on the first page of the form and it was how I identified the pub I had visited. It actually said that I should 'enter the telephone number on the survey invitation' [which I had collected in the pub] - and guess what? Yep, on the card the phone number was presented as two 'numbers'.
And now the bad. As is my wont - hey, it's my job - I had a look around the Vintage Inns website. And I tested the 'find a pub' search facility. And that's when I found out the Farmhouse is listed as being in Yorkshire.
Ermmm, no - it's in North Lincolnshire. Or - as when I was growing up - just plain Lincolnshire. Rubbing salt in the wound is that in the description it mentions 'South Humberside' - the maunufactured county that the government put us in during the early 1970s, but was done away with a number of years ago.
It's a small point Vintage, but if you want local custom, try pampering to their prejudices.
No, the blog is about Internet-related marketing, and clearly displayed near the door was an offer of a chance to win £1000 by completing an online survey. So that's the good.
The 'could do better' is that the online questionnaire could have been better. Is was far from being bad, but a little thought would have broght it up to the same standard of service I received in the pub.
Several of the questions were poorly worded and there were a couple of grammatical errors, but what annoyed me was the form's refusal to accept a phone number as two elements ie the area code - space - number. Nope, I had to close the gap for it to be accepted. Two points: (1) it would be easy to set up the field to accept all variations of the phone number, and (2) this was on the first page of the form and it was how I identified the pub I had visited. It actually said that I should 'enter the telephone number on the survey invitation' [which I had collected in the pub] - and guess what? Yep, on the card the phone number was presented as two 'numbers'.
And now the bad. As is my wont - hey, it's my job - I had a look around the Vintage Inns website. And I tested the 'find a pub' search facility. And that's when I found out the Farmhouse is listed as being in Yorkshire.
Ermmm, no - it's in North Lincolnshire. Or - as when I was growing up - just plain Lincolnshire. Rubbing salt in the wound is that in the description it mentions 'South Humberside' - the maunufactured county that the government put us in during the early 1970s, but was done away with a number of years ago.
It's a small point Vintage, but if you want local custom, try pampering to their prejudices. 
No comments:
Post a Comment