Guest complaints are common, not just in hospitality, and the more comfortable you get dealing with them, the better for you and your customers! Unfortunately practice itself does not always make perfect, only perfect practice does. So while everyone working in a hotel in any guest related position is confronted with tons of complains during their career, not everyone masters the skill of dealing with them effectively.

Four Rooms

So how do you handle complaints and a guest who had a bad experience?

Because of my current role, I am very ‘lucky’ to be getting a lot of practice opportunities, and believe the following to be very helpful when dealing with upset customers:

1. Always remember that you are a limited personality over the phone, no matter how much you smile, it’s not the same. So if you have the luxury of being able to get up from your desk and talk to your guests directly face to face, no matter how unappealing it may seem at that moment (because of the yelling), DO IT, and it will pay off!
2. Don’t take it personal, and don’t make it about yourself! Even if it seems to be or actually is your fault, or the guest is insisting on holding you personally responsible for ruining their most important weekend, chances are that he/she is not actually upset at you personally, so don’t try to defend yourself or get emotional about it.
3. Don’t accept the blame and apologize for it, if you (your team and the hotel) is not at fault, and don’t try to push the blame on other departments or your coworkers! If you are not at fault, don’t accept the blame, but do always apologize for the inconvenience caused, because regardless of whose fault it is, your guest is obviously upset about it. If the guest is upset that his room was not cleaned all day, but did have the ‘do not disturb’ outside the door, you should not accept the blame, but can definitely apologize for the inconveniences that it caused. Trying to push the blame on others only makes you and your entire team look bad and unprofessional, and the guest doesn’t really care who messed up. I remember a recent bar experience with the barkeeper being seemingly professional and knowledgeable setting the perfect foundation for a memorable evening, and only when we could not order certain items from the food menu, she apologized by blaming it on the kitchen not having communicated properly to her. It’s not only her who looked bad, but the entire experience suffered.
4. Keep calm and carry on! Take notes and listen generously. Ask the guest, if you can take notes, and a couple of things will happen. Firstly you are not in the spotlight anymore, your notepad is now, and with the spotlight being removed, a lot of the pressure is too. Secondly the guest will calm down, be more thoughtful about his words (at this point any profanity usually disappears), and trust that you take the complaint serious (even if you’re drawing a picture of hangman on your notepad). Thirdly you’ll be able to remember what was said, and actually be able to follow-up on it. Were you ever at a meeting, trying to give constructive feedback and the other person didn’t take any notes? Did you have the feeling that anything was going to happen with your feedback?
5. Empathize with your guest (this has nothing to do with accepting the blame), paraphrase the reason for the complaint (you don’t want to end up solving the wrong problem), and offer a solution.
6. Did you solve the problem to your satisfaction or the guest’s? Offering a complimentary bottle of house wine may give you a heroic feeling that you did something, but doesn’t do anything for the guest, if it doesn’t solve the problem (chances are that the bottle of house wine is actually offending your guest who just spent a lot of money for staying at your hotel). Ask the guest what you can do at that moment to get it right, and what they expect from the hotel to make up for the service breakdown. Very rarely the guest is going to demand an upgrade to the Presidential Suite, and in most cases only wants to have the problem solved without any compensation.
7. Follow up on the guest complaint! Many times you need to involve other departments to solve the problem and depend on other people, so follow-up with the guest if the problem was solved to his/her satisfaction (it’s better to know now than at check-out later, if you’re still falling short).

I hope these suggestions help you to start adoring the challenge of changing a bad experience to the better and the opportunity of turning an upset guest into a loyal customer that comes with every complaint. Recognize every complaint as another opportunity, and understand that most guests do not complain, do not give you the chance to fix it, and simply do not come back.

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