The Keltic Lodge: An evolution from historic property to social business

An agent called me within five minutes of my email inquiry being sent to explain that she did not have a reservation in my name. I was shocked. I had been counting down the days for my visit for weeks and could not believe my stupidity. Within minutes, the error was corrected and our trip was back on track.

Visit any company that provides social media services or website devoted to social media and you will find a multitude of articles that define how social businesses need to ‘engage’ with customers. However, I am here to tell you as a potential hotel client that it works. In the weeks leading up to our stay, and mostly because I was so very excited to be going, I would mention the Keltic Lodge in a tweet. Within minutes (and after doing this a few times, I began to expect them to) they would respond, retweet or favourite my tweet. They would offer to help me out if I had any questions or tweet a funny reply back to me.

Right up until the moment that we drove to the hotel, the Keltic Lodge’s social media team kept me engaged and excited about my stay.

I recently shared a post about a book called “How Full is Your Bucket?” where the reader is encouraged to fill people’s buckets as a way to help others and because it is a wonderful thing to do good for others. Filling a customer’s buckets happens when you show them you’ve read and acknowledged their frustration or excitement. After all, Twitter is not only for customer service complaints. Sometimes we want someone to recognize a good experience we have had.

Tweets take so little time to write but before they can go live, a member of a trained team of customer service agents needs to sift through hundreds or even thousands of tweets and quickly reply to the legitimate ones. They need to know what to write and even how much to post.

Even though companies are beginning to understand the need to be a social business, there are still many obstacles faced by those individuals trying to gain approval within their company. I wanted to share this experience as proof – for anyone who needs it – the social media monitoring tools, training programs and pre-launch preparation are worth it.

Providing this level of social customer service is a great way that social businesses can grow loyalty and build a strong brand reputation. I for one am glad that this historic hotel, a gem for Cape Breton Island, has transformed itself into a social business.

As you will read in my previous post, the staff, location and hotel were amazing. However, the beginning of my wonderful experience started with a few tweets and Facebook posts months before I stepped foot onto the hotel grounds.

By the time that we got to the hotel, I was so ready to have a good experience at the Keltic Lodge that nothing could have ruined my day.

Some may say that my standards are lower than other folks – when a few tweets secure my loyalty – but it is good for companies to remember that there are people out there like me who love nothing better to engage with companies via social media. This is another reason that I will not soon forget my experience at this historic hotel.