Customer experience, bikram yoga and word of mouth marketing
December 8, 2010Emotional and logical customer satisfaction: know the difference?
December 14, 2010
Today’s post is about joined up thinking in customer service and it’s impact on a disastrous situation. The post features a story that a friend of mine told me about a customer experience that he and his wife recently had at a restaurant and inn that is just round the corner from where my Mum & Dad live. You can see the story of the whole post here.
I believe their story illustrates how a little flexibility in customer service could go a long way to restore a disastrous situation.
Here’s a summary of their story:
- My friend and his wife had gone to the Swan Inn that is part of a group of restaurants that are run and owned by the Marco Pierre White, a renowned British ‘celebrity’ chef.
- This restaurant is an inn (UK pub with rooms) as well and my friend and his wife, there to celebrate their 29th wedding anniversary, had booked in to stay the night too.
- Booking into their room before dinner they found that there was a issue with the central heating system such that when any radiator was turned on it made a severe rattling noise. Apparently, the system had recently been serviced and the hypothesis was that there was air stuck in the system that needed to be let out.
- Undeterred, they headed down to dinner for a pleasant celebratory meal.
- However, returning from dinner they found that the rattling of the radiators meant that the heating had to be kept turned off such their room was cold and that any radiators that were turned on by other guests meant that the rattling was activated again.
- This lead to a night of minimal sleep as many guests tried in vain to get some heat into their rooms causing lots of radiator rattling.
- Remember, this was around a week ago in the UK when we were in the middle of a cold spell.
- Following a rough night night they descended on Sunday morning to check out. They were checked out by Mark, who was very apologetic for the events of the previous night with the heating etc.
- However, they had descended 20 minutes after the end of breakfast service (it ends at 930am on a Sunday!) to be told after they had checked out that there was no breakfast and that ‘9:30 is our brand standard’ for serving breakfast.
- On discussing what had happened, Mark, the employee in charge, became very aggressive, was adamant that my friend had been informed about the cut off time for breakfast even though he insisted that he hadn’t been, insisted that this was their policy and that their was nothing that could be done.
- My friends left tired and hungry.
Now, if you want all of the details then I would suggest that you go over to his blog here for the full story.
I did a little research on this restaurant and the reviews are predominantly positive (although there are some negative ones) but they are almost all for the restaurant…..mirroring my friend’s restaurant experience.
However, what struck me about this story and the possible lessons are these:
- If you are good at restaurants and food then be careful when you extend yourself into accommodation – it takes a different set of skills – and, perhaps, it’s better to stick to what you are good at. No?
- Take into account the whole situation. If your customer is in distress from another area of your business, they are still a customer of your business and would probably really like it if you help them even though what happened may not be your fault.
- Manners and politeness can go a long way and can often diffuse a heated situation.
- Just because it’s your policy does not make it always right. Sometimes it can help to break the rules to make things right.
What other lessons do you think there are here?
And, if this was your business what would you or your team have done in this situation?
Thanks to cdw9 for the image.
12 Comments
Adrian, thanks, the General Manager called my wife and I on Monday. He apologised to us both, offered not to charge us for the room, and invited us back to the restaurant. He was clearly disappointed by the behaviour of his employee who will no doubt receive some further training. I have to say that MPW dealt with my complaint in a very professional way.
Hi Peter,
I’m glad that the business acted swiftly to address your complaint. I guess the most important question is: given what they have now done, will you be going back and would you stay over again?
Adrian
Customer service, flexibility and a disastrous situation http://bit.ly/etmm7Q
What’s interesting to me in this post are a couple of things:
– just because you are good at service in one area doesn’t mean that service level automatically translates to another
– people in jobs follow scripts and policies, not simply doing the right thing.
How do you make ‘doing the right thing’ an inherent part of someone’s job or a company’s approach to their customers?
I think Guy is spot on…how DO you make ‘doing the right thing’ an inherent part of someone’s job? Add it to the training manual and give staff the opportunity to practice this face to face during training. It takes a certain amount of confidence to be able to think on one’s feet and be flexible – staying calm and listening to the customer is a great way to start!
Hi Guy,
Yes, indeed. Quality in one area is no guarantee of quality in other areas. However, if you are expanding your business into new areas….brand extension, if you will……then surely, quality of delivery should be one of, if not the, most important things that you need to get write. If not then it can quickly have a negative impact on your core and original business area.
Guy, Kate,
In terms of ‘doing the right thing’, I think it starts way before the training room and is deeply embedded in a company’s culture and how it does business. I would suggest that to build a customer focused company we need to let ‘doing the right thing’ trump process and policy rather than the other way round. Would you agree?
Adrian
RT @adrianswinscoe: Customer service, flexibility and a disastrous situation http://bit.ly/fUZUYz
RT @adrianswinscoe: Customer service, flexibility and a disastrous situation http://bit.ly/fUZUYz
RT @adrianswinscoe: Customer service, flexibility and a disastrous situation http://bit.ly/fUZUYz
Adrian,
One lesson is to always remember that brand reputation is made up of many things, not just the ‘what’ but also the ‘how’ of delivering the what. Service brands, in particular, are only as reputable as the people invited to deliver the brand. Let’s assume positive intent on part of the employee at the desk – he didn’t want to upset the customer, but he had no policy to follow to help him when the formal policies didn’t satisfy the customer. Nor was he empowered to take direct action. Perhaps he felt he was ‘defending’ the hotel. How different this is from many top flight hotels where all staff are empowered to take some action on their own accord if they can enhance stay of a guest.
As Guy notes in his comment, people follow scripts and play out roles as they have been trained to take on or as they imagine they are expected to play out. The key is to train employees to anticipate two opposing expectations (delight the customer, earn money for the hotel) and allow them to think through/discuss the ways they can and should balance competing brand/business ideals.
By the way, I really like the case illustration approach you have taken.
Marc
Hi Marc,
Thanks for your comment and I am glad you like the case approach. I’m trying to do more of it and tell more stories so watch this space.
I agree with Guy that there is a challenge when we train people to follow scripts and policies. However, I like your suggestion about training people to expect opposing pressures. This could really help team members explore and understand where the company really stands on delighting the customer vs the bottom line and thus inform what they should do in certain situations.
By the way, I learned from my friend that the Manager called him on Monday morning and apologised for the employees behaviour and refunded them for the whole weekend. So, it seems that they could do with some of the type of training that you suggest 🙂
Adrian
So the universe is telling us that managers and employees really do want their customers to be happy! I glad for your friends. I’m also glad for the hotel as their story will likely end up in several training programmes, and this gives it a happy (happier) ending!
The approach of which I speak goes under various names, sometimes referred to as the ‘competing values’ approach, and other times as ‘polarity management’. I find it very useful for diagnosing sources of resistance and identifying opportunities for traction where opposing parties seem stuck in the mud.