A great example of the power of new media

I'm working late tonight. Because I'm working late, I'm missing out on a trip to the Coventry Pizza Express with my fiance and a group of our friends. Sounds like a fairly run-of-the-mill Tuesday night, doesn't it? However, there is a story behind this trip to Pizza Express - one which - combined with tonight's activities (and bearing in mind that they are still probably sat in the restaurant as I write this blog post) really demonstrates the power and speed of new media communications.

The background, in a nutshell, is that between us we've all experienced some examples of pretty poor customer service from this restaurant lately, despite the food being great and it being one of only a few places in Coventry city centre that we like going to and that suits all of our tastes. So, my friend Ben wrote this blog post a few days ago as a bit of a whinge about their customer service.

The blog post did the rounds thanks to the power of google and twitter and ultimately resulted in Ben receiving a call from the manager of the restaurant yesterday assuring him of their committment to customer service. So, true to form, the gang have headed over there tonight while I sit here working away.

As I'm working, one of said-gang and an avid Twitterati has posted a message linking through to a video recorded on his phone as they arrived at the restaurant this evening. In less than an hour the video had already been viewed 22 times. In case you can't quite follow, the gist of this is that the operations manager said that we could request to sit upstairs anytime we wanted, but when they've tested this out tonight, they've yet again been denied using the space upstairs (a space which they rarely seem to use even when the restaurant is full, hence the earlier complaints about customer service).

And I've also just received another Tweet from my fiance this time telling me that they've been refused another drink (just to be clear - they won't be drunk or anything at this time - they're just a bunch a nice young professionals with money to spend wanting to have a quiet drink).

What a great example of the power of mobile, video, and social networking, hey? They haven't even left the restaurant and already probably upwards of 30 or 40 people (by time I have also tweeted about this blog post) will be aware of this.

Twitter update: 10 mins after posting this blog
Jake (our talented videographer) says that customer service from the girl that served them tonight has been good - I just thought I ought to add this update to keep it fair to the staff that do deliver good service!