The 911 of real-time customer service management
After all that planning you finally get to go on vacation. You arrive mid-afternoon, at the upscale holiday hotel and the smiling doorman, who was chatting with a chauffeur, greets you pleasantly and opens the door. As you walk past dragging your bags behind you, your anticipation that the doorman will offer to assist you with the bags soon evaporates, as he turns away to continue chatting with the chauffeur. A trifle troubling, but you say to yourself ‘what the heck, I got this far with my bags so I might as well push it to the front desk just ahead’.
The check-in is completed without any hassle and you head towards your room on the 5th floor. Getting into the elevator you detect a strong musty smell and can’t wait to get off at your room floor. It doesn’t get any better when you get to your room. You look around; check the view and the bathroom, only to discover the soap dispenser in the bathroom is near empty. Coming back to the bedroom you attempt to adjust the room temperature and find the remote for the air conditioner does not work.
So you call the front desk to report the deficiencies in the room. Ten minutes later, someone from housekeeping is at your door to refill the soap dispense in the bathroom. After some meddling with the remote, the houseman informs you that it would be replaced. Fifteen minutes later you receive a remote that works. What you don’t know is that the dead batteries in the remote needed to be replaced. What you also don’t know is that several other guests too, who checked into their rooms during the month, faced the identical problem with their remotes. Worse still; even the top management of this hotel is unaware of this - but that’s another story!
You now realise that within thirty minutes of your ‘customer journey’, from the hotel entrance > to the reception > to your room, you have already encountered service and product touchpoints that begin to irritate. And this make you uneasy about what lie ahead. Nevertheless, you are not going to be fazed by it. Ofcourse things may be infuriatingly different had you checked into your room around midnight after a tiring 12 hour flight. The irritation factor would be ten times greater. You now begin to think “let me make note of everything that goes wrong and if need be, post it on TripAdvisor after check out”. This gets you thinking even further...” Why cannot hotels use technology that would encourage and enable guests text randomly irritating (or positive) incidents to some responsible duty manager in real-time?”
This new service should enable the duty manager respond with the responsible departments to take immediate corrective measures – such as redirect the doorman, get staff to refresh the elevator, instruct housekeeping to run up with a new soap refill and new remote - as well as keep top management in the loop – especially on recurring issues and to be highlighted in future training sessions.
Essentially, we‘re talking here of a platform that supports a digital comment card - where guests are provided with a telephone number to text the situation/give instant feedback whilst still in the hotel. The other useful ways this application can assist the hotel is to be able to repair any ‘breakdown’ through instant service recovery methods including damage control. Even a sincere apology at time of guest’s departure is better than a lame duck apology issued weeks later on TripAdvisor.
Ilzaf Keefahs - writes on hospitality related matters that he is passionate about, and likes to share his views with hoteliers and customers alike. |
|
|
|
