Posted on by Nancy Rapoport

Customer service heaven and hell–a tale of two hotel chains (Marriott and Hilton)

Hotel Marriott Rivercenter, San Antonio Hilton Bonnet Creek, Orlando
Reachable on Twitter? @Marriott (though there was never a response to my direct message) @HiltonHotels
Responsive on Twitter? DM sent on 10/29.  First contact (a request for more info): 11/1.  My response: also on 11/1, shortly after getting the request for more info.  Still nada, as of the morning of 11/2. None needed.
Greeted at front desk? Yes, and the front desk staff was friendly. Yes, and by status, and the front desk staff member who checked me in remembered my name when I passed by later.  (Thanks, Ashley!)
Helpful bell desk? Yes. Yes, and each member of the bell staff went above and beyond, especially Ezra, who made sure in advance that I would be able to make a fast exit when I needed to make my plane.
App with room key and chat option? Yes. Yes.
Functional room? Yes, but with the Tub from Hell (see below). Yes, and with a glorious view.
Problems with the room? There was a hangtag that said that, if I wanted a rubber bath mat, I could request one.  After almost losing my footing in the Tub from Hell, I requested one early in the morning via the app.  I was told that housekeeping would leave the mat outside my door.  Nope.  Later that day, I was told that the mat was left in my room.  Nope.  When I went back to the chat option to explain that I had not received the mat, I got…crickets.  Nada.  Nothing on the chat.  Nothing on my Twitter DM. n/a
Responsiveness to chat option in the app? Not if you count follow-through or actual help. n/a
Did the hotel go the extra mile? Absolutely not.  I received half-hearted apologies for the mistakes but nothing beyond the bland, corporate “sorry.” Yes!  After I mentioned to the manager of the bell desk how helpful Ezra was, Ezra (and his manager Joseph) arranged to have chocolate-covered strawberries sent to my room—in essence, thanking me for thanking him.  Outstanding service.
Would I stay at this hotel chain again? Not bloody likely, unless I have no choice in the matter. In a heartbeat.

UPDATE on 11/7/18:  Marriott gave me 10,000 Marriott points for my trouble.

Posted on by Nancy Rapoport

Why customer service matters so much

Few things in life push my buttons so much as bad customer service does. Why is that?

One reason is that I work in two different service industries. Law is certainly a service industry, and so is higher education. The former involves my fiduciary duty to my clients. The latter involves duties to my students (to teach them well), to my profession (to create good scholarship), and to my university (to perform my job duties well). I try to do a good job every day–I don’t always succeed, but I try–and, for the life of me, I can’t understand people who don’t take their jobs seriously.  Is it the pay? Probably that’s part of the story, but I hope that’s not the entire answer. I know highly paid people who are bad at customer service, and I know low-wage people who are marvelous at it.

Another reason why bad customer service pushes my buttons is what bad customer service represents. An organization’s customer service is one measure of whether the organization is healthy. It’s the window to an organization’s inner workings. What an organization values is what it rewards. If it rewards customer service, customer service is good. Chewy.com is a perfect example of great customer service, as is Zappos.com. Both companies go out of their way to make sure that their employees treat their customers well, and both companies are rewarded for their efforts with customer loyalty.

Bad customer service, on the other hand, indicates poor morale and thus indicates a low-functioning organization.

So here’s the question that puzzles me: how can we take the symptom of bad customer service and use it to fix the unhealthy organization that has generated it?