THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF CUSTOMER SERVICE –ALL IN ONE STAY!
In August of 2011 the National Speakers Association convention was held at the Anaheim Marriott. It was an interesting experience of contrasts between people and systems and how they impact service.
The convention began on a Friday, and until Tuesday the service had been adequate but not outstanding. At the final banquet of the convention on Tuesday night, I was being inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame, one of the highest honors NSA bestows, and all my children, two of my grandchildren, my favorite aunt and cousin, and a couple who is “adopted family” were all coming. However, the inductees were a secret, so no one was supposed to know who they were until that night, meaning that I could not be seen with my family ahead of time.
GrannaBarbara, Simon and Owen getting ready for the big event!
They all arrived sometime Tuesday afternoon which happened to be my grandson Owen’s sixth birthday. Because he was wearing a birthday pin he had been given on the airplane, the greeter in the lobby wished him a happy day which pleased him.
The banquet was an amazing experience for all of us. I was honored, thrilled, and humbled to be getting the award, and in my speech, I asked all 2000 people in the room to say, “Happy Birthday, Owen,” something he will never forget.
Somewhere during the evening the staff found a small cupcake and brought it to Owen during dinner, and using creative thinking since they had no candle, one of the waiters pulled out a match and did a quick “birthday wish.”
The evening lasted until almost 11:00 pm, so the little guys, 3 and 6, were exhausted at the end, but when they went back up to their room, they found a large tray filled with birthday goodies for Owen – a stuffed parrott, a pirate eye patch and sword, a treasure chest filled with candy, and a card from the staff at the Marriott. (The pirate theme tied in with the new update of “Pirates of the Caribbean which had recently opened at Disneyland.) We were blown away as NEVER had a hotel ever done anything like that before! Owen had a perfect birthday, and we could not wait to thank the manager of the hotel. Someone had been observant and had gone the extra mile to delight a little boy AND his family!
However, that same day we had a less than positive experience. Late in the afternoon I had a message that I had a package at the front desk. I called down and asked someone to bring it up within a 30 minute timeframe when I would be in the room. It was not delivered in time, so my assistant went down to retrieve it a bit later. No one could find anything for me, so we were puzzled.
Just before the banquet that evening, my son told me that he and his family had sent me flowers, and he had received an email message that they had arrived at the hotel at 9:30 am; however, I had never received them, so he went down to the desk to get them. Because he was not staying in my room, they would not give him the flowers. We had to get to the dinner, so we had no more time to worry about this although I did call the Customer Service line and explained to the person there what had happened and asked for the flowers to be delivered to my room while we were at the banquet.
When we finally got back to our room at 1:00 am, there were no flowers! I called down again, and finally the person at the desk took responsibility and said she would FIND the flowers and get them to me. At last, at 2:00 am, the flowers finally arrived – a lovely huge bouquet of roses, but they had been out of water since 9:30 am so had lost much of their beauty. Their story was that because they were sent through an online service and arrived in a box, no one had been able to find them after the initial call in the afternoon since they were being kept with arriving packages and they had been looking for a vase of flowers.
Not only was the issue here a systems one, but even after at least seven calls and trips to the front desk, NO ONE had taken responsibility to find the flowers until the lady on call in the middle of the night.
What an interesting service experience this stay was – from the heights of employees really going the extra mile for a little one’s birthday to the upset of my son wanting to have flowers in my room for a special occasion and then having the hotel lose them for nearly 24 hours — all in one day! (They did finally recover by adding a small credit to our bill when my assistant talked to the manager the next day.)
The moral of the story: Service is all about people caring about other people and taking responsibility to personally follow through to meet and even exceed the customer’s need. In this experience there were several employees who did take responsibility and delighted us as customers and several who did not and caused us frustration and disappointment. Which ones do you want to have in your organization?
If you need someone who can inspire your employees to create loyal customers and have fun doing it, check out Barbara’s website at www.barbaraglanz.com
