Monday, December 15, 2008

Town Hall Meeting - Lessons Learned

Last week we conducted out first or "inaugrual" live online Town Hall gathering and in short, it was interesting! We only had 3 people attend (well 6 or 7 but from 3 locations). That turned out to be a good thing.

Why a good thing? The reason was some technical difficulties. Plan 1 was a toll free teleconference setup. This was fine except they gave me the wrong "host" code to open phone lines. Actually was a typo but didn't know this until the next day.

Not to worry - we went to Plan 2 - and attached my microphone to the new computer (that's another whole story) but something was not right and no audio.

Fortunately, at 7:58 there were only 2 attendees so I was simply going to use 3-way calling to plug both in and now a 3rd name showed up on the attendee list. Well, I could only connect 2! On to plan 4. As there is a "chat" module in this technology I asked "does anyone have 3-way calling?" One lady thought she did so I asked "Mike or Richard, do you mind if I give Wendy your phone number?" Richard said that's fine so I called Wendy, she connected Richard from her phone, I connected Mike and we began only about 7 minutes late. If there were more folks, then it might have been a real "daisy chain" to pull this real.

The folks had a good time looking at the pictures we took of the Solstice, Splendor, and Ruby Princess and especially the "behind the scenes" look at how we research price and availability for clients. They had several good questions and closed the session.

Lessons learned - 1) always have a plan but also have a back up plan. 2) Check equipment ahead of time. 3) Never panic as there is always a solution to a situation (I prefer that word over problem). I know these 3 things and only forgot the 2nd one. Next month will be better.

I do want to share these comments from Wendy:

Al & Helen:

I truly enjoyed your webinar this evening. The pictures of the new ships were beautiful. I found it very exciting to see pictures of Carnival’s new ship as I will be sailing in just a few days.
The tour of your website was very informative.
I can certainly see the price advantage of booking through you rather than try to sift through all of the information myself on the internet. I was especially interested in the “blocked cabin” rates that you are able to sell at a deeply discounted rate.

Since you gave me onboard credit for my next cruise, I will have to book again in the near future.

Thanks for all you do.

Wendy

We always have surprises and the 3 who did take time to attend each received on board credit for their next cruise. What will we do next month? I guess you just have to show up to find out. Check our website for details.

Al

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