In an ideal world, a hotel’s service would be so efficient that customers would never have cause to complain. The truth is, however, that no system is flawless and increasingly demanding guests expect high levels of service. When complaints are made, well-established customer service protocols have the potential to reverse your guests experience, even making it to the Internet through the endless raft of review and social platforms that exist today.
Hospitality specialist, Doug Kennedy, shares an interesting process – EARS. It encourages property owners to not just resolve the problem, but do it a manner that shows empathy and leaves the guest satisfied – happy with the process of resolution and service.
Considering all of the many components of a positive guest experience during even just a 24 hour stay, and how many guests are in a hotel on any given night, it should not be surprising to any hotelier that at some point during a shift every colleague is likely to encounter complaints. Surely we can and should do all that is possible to prevent short comings, but it is also essential to train everyone how to respond in such a way as to not only fix what is broken, but also to show compassion for the guests’ inconveniences.
To their credit, most hotel operators seem to be working hard to improve the overall quality of the “physical product” such cleanliness, amenities, F&B offerings, and comfort of the guest room itself. Perhaps this is due to sincere concern for guests, but I suspect it is also out of an awareness of the impact of online guest reviews and social media postings.
That being said, as a frequent traveler I still experience inconveniences just about every time I stay in a different hotel, which for me is usually about 6 different times per month. If it is a minor issue I often don’t even bother to mention it, but sometimes reporting it unavoidable.
