Posted: March 23, 2016 by Robert Craven
There are some divine ironies about my work. One is my obsession with customer service, customer experience and customer journeys. I end up speaking to companies in so-called posh hotels about the customer experience and usually the hotel just gets it all wrong.
As my Mum says, “one star service, one star problems; five star service, five star problems”.
I’ve just come back from keynoting at a conference on ‘Customer is King’ at a very fancy conference centre, spa and hotel. (The book title was brilliantly original when I wrote it way back when, but sometimes the phrase “Customer is King” feels like it has become an empty management platitude.)
Anyhow, I find it hard to believe that a particular 5* hotel can get their strategy so wrong.
My point today:
The smaller stuff is nearly always a replica of the bigger stuff, whether good or bad. In this hotel the smaller stuff was adrift. The bigger stuff was a nightmare…
For instance:
The list is endless. And this was just the small stuff.
I would like to highlight the following:
The hard thing about customer service isn’t knowing what it is – that’s the simple bit. The hard thing about customer service is doing it all the time.
A few final questions:
Come to think of it, what do you think about me?
Answers on a postcard…
Have you also read our Customer Service Heaven article?
Leave a Comment