People can make mistakes and things can go wrong, and when they do go wrong and our guests’ stay with us is affected by the service breakdown, it’s up to us to get it right and turn them around. A guest who experienced a problem and it got resolved to her satisfaction is more likely to return compared to a guest who just had an average stay without having experienced any ‘glitches’.
Service recovery is not rocket science (just takes a lot of practice), but it’s important to keep in mind that you want to solve the right problem, that you solve it to the guest satisfaction and not yours, and that you choose the right form of recovery/compensation.
Image courtesy by Salvatore Vuono at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
In my first year of working in a hotel, I was a housekeeping supervisor and we had a guest complaining about the room cleanliness during my shift. The guest was out for dinner and I was on a mission to not only getting it right, but also to ‘roll out the red carpet’ for the guest. I just transferred from cross-training in our room service department and remembered the beautiful cheese plate amenity and chose to have it arranged in the room with a bottle of our house red wine and an apology note. I ensured that the turn down was done perfectly and that everything looked sparkling. I left the hotel that evening with a good feeling of heroic accomplishment and I was sure to have turned an upset guest around into a loyal customer. Continue reading How to make your guests happy with effective service recovery →
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False, our guests expect perfect service, but do understand that mistakes can happen, and it’s important that we recognize mistakes, when they do happen, as opportunities to get it right. Guests who have a complaint that gets resolved to their satisfaction are more likely to return than the ones that never had a complaint to begin with. It’s because we understand that no one is perfect, and if something goes wrong, we want the service provider to take ownership and turn the experience around to our satisfaction. Continue reading Stop Pointing Fingers and Turn Your Complainers Into Brand Advocates! 