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Service Recovery

Sometimes a Small Gesture is All You Need


Service Recovery

Sometimes a Small Gesture is All You Need


By Nathan Gawlik
Nathan Gawlik's experience includes being a General Manager of a Hampton Inn and other front line roles such as a Banquet Captain, Front Desk Agent, Housekeeper, Catering Event Manager, and Director of Sales.

Service Recovery can be a balancing act. There are often operational constraints, known issues, and sometimes backwards ways of doing things that are less then perfect that your guests have to contend with by no fault of their own. It can be cost prohibitive to make things, "perfect" and therefore, the art of service recovery must be honed and practiced regularly. When done correctly, service recovery saves the business money and appeals to guests sensibilities to strengthen their relationship with the property.

Fitness Fiasco

Our property management had a known issue in the fitness center. On more than one occasion it had been reported that if all three treadmills were being used at the same time it would overwhelm the system and cause the circuit to pop, abruptly halting all guests using the equipment. 

Clearly we knew this to be a safety concern but it was exceedingly rare, only coming up a couple times a year. So for one reason or another, it was never addressed. On one such occasion - a little to my surprise, a very sweaty man came huffing and puffing up to the front desk. He began screaming while still across the lobby nearly 15 feet prior to reaching the counter. We could tell he was more than upset.

Wiping his face with a towel, he explained what happened and I took the stance of complete ignorance while validating and meeting his intensity, stating: "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry this happened. I can't believe that. I'll definitely tell our maintenance team about that. Are you okay?"

After another moment of venting he began to back peddle from the counter. Noticing that it seemed as though this grievance had been fully heard, I tried to shift gears and remind him why we were a great place to stay in an effort to ensure his return after an unpleasant morning run. I did so by offering him a complimentary Gatorade from the fridge, apologized and thanked him for bringing his concern to our attention.

After about 20 minutes, I rang up to his room just to further express our concern and offer our services. Given the chance to calm down, he was a completely different person. He was grateful for my call and thanked me for the Gatorade, which probably cost us less than two dollars. 

Service Recovery Acronyms

This is a great example of the ILEAD Service Recovery Principles:

Identify that there is a Service Recovery opportunity
Listen effectively, trying to determine the real issue and the impact on the guest. What is their demeanor?
Empathize. Our recovery efforts can only be successful if we know how to put ourselves in the shoes of the guest.
Apologize. Expressing your sincere concern will be critical in effectively resolving the issue.
Deliver the solution, typically within 60 seconds.

The faster resolution is provided, the higher the rate of return.

Another example is the LEARN acronym or the HEART acronym. I'm sure there are many others. Pick whichever you prefer.

Listen
Empathize
Apologize
Resolve
Notify your manager 

Hear
Empathize
Apologize
Respond
Thank the Guest

Pro's and Con's

What Bugs Every Guest

We hosted a county health inspector conference at a property where I used to work. We knew our county health inspector well as he often stopped by to check the breakfast area, pool, guest rooms, etc at least once a quarter.

Well wouldn't you know it, during the conference an inspector found one of the worst things: bed bugs.

That's right, at the County Health Inspector State Conference they found bed bugs at the host hotel. How embarrassing!

But do you know what they were most upset about? The service in response to the situation. Worse yet, the person affected by the bed bugs wasn't even the most vocal about her predicament; it was her colleague that was the loudest. I've provided her review below. Consider what could have been done differently.

Dear Hotel Manager,
After reading all of my comments, please understand, I am not looking for a free handout. My family always chooses [our hotel name] when we travel. Last month I stayed at one for 5 days for a wedding. I chose this hotel to stay at for my conference instead of the [competitor hotel name], across the street.

What I want you to understand is that I will make new choices in the future. I was so appalled at what I saw in my co-workers hotel room, how it was handled and how it was nonchalantly mentioned that room had been treated for bed bugs before, it has ruined my confidence in this chain. I won't be able to not see the bugs running all over the bed and coming out of the headboard. The chain should also know the conference I was there for was an OHA conference. Oregon Health Authority....you know an entire hotel full of REHS (Health Inspectors).

Yes that is right. I am an REHS in the state and I inspect hotels as part of my job. I know about bed bugs and I see them frequently, so to have me be grossed out by the room is saying a lot. Wearing my inspector hat, I was very disappointed on how the manager was more concerned about us being quiet so other guests could not hear what we were saying. I understand that but I also understand that taking care of this issue should be #1.

Of course he took care of my co-workers room but really she gets nothing from that as our county pays for the rooms. She threw away all of her clothes, I was in the room and I threw away my shoes and the clothes I was wearing as a precaution. I could tell all the manager wanted was for us to leave and keep quiet. As a customer, I checked out of my room early to get out of my room since I know how bed bugs travel and wasn't convinced my headboards were clean. The hotel benefitted from that since they were full and got a room back very early in the am.

The way the hotel took care of my co-worker was very upsetting. The night manager should have had a procedure on how to help customers as many are not in the know of what to do. They should know how to help people get their laundry done and use hot water and a hot dryer to protect themselves from transferring to their cars or homes. Money or cards should be given to the customer to do the laundry for free. Having to have night staff "loan" $3.00 to do laundry is a slap in the face itself. Staff should be giving customers information on how to protect themselves, what to do, what to look for. Not shoving them off to sit in the lobby and hope they will figure it out for themselves.

I understand that these things happen. I lost sleep over it and ended up having to treat all of my belongings and throw a few away. I entered the room and saw the bed bugs and was in no way going to continue to stay in mine. My co-worker woke up to them crawling all over her. The headboard was infested. They were under the sheets. The manager seemed so indifferent to it. I honestly wanted to tell him to lay on the bed and get a good dose of reality of what it felt like. He stayed as far from the bed as he could. He knew. He also knew the room had been treated. He said over treated but it makes me wonder. If there is a full hotel and you need that one room......

Out of all of this I would like to see a procedure put in place. It doesn't matter if I won't stay at this chain if I don't have to anymore. That's not looking at the big picture. That picture is public health and customer confidence. Bed bugs happen, all the time. This was just a good reminder that having a procedure in place could help the customer and alleviate the transference of bed bugs to their homes, cars and throughout the hotel.

What a great example of Customer Coaching. Sometimes your coach may be really hard on you so you can learn and grow as a result. Sometimes your coach will yell at you or make ridiculous requests but it is all in an effort to see their point of view.

After reviewing the above example, you might see just how providing something like this to your staff can be a great learning experience. A good place to keep these stories is in your Survival Guide. 
hand clenching lightning flash

Acts of God

There are times when things go terribly wrong through no fault of your own. All you can do is simply empathize with any affected guests; you owe them nothing. I like to refer to these as acts of God.

On one occasion we had a corvette club coming to stay at our property. Their trip had been planned for months. There were at least 50 corvettes, some vintage, while others were just off the assembly line.

Unfortunately the county decided to chip seal the road for the last mile stretch leading to our property on the very day of their arrival. Each and everyone of those drivers came to the front desk in the worst mood. Several were swearing and angry. Many more were borrowing each other's cloth rags and cleaners to see if they could get the tar and pebbles off their tires, rims, and bumpers before it dried too much.

"Assumption is the weakest form of communication"

Doubly frustrating was the fact that these guests wanted to tour their corvettes around town. Now that they had made it to the property, every time they went to leave would create more mess and potential damage to their pride and joy.

"Assumption is the weakest form of communication"

Doubly frustrating was the fact that these guests wanted to tour their corvettes around town. Now that they had made it to the property, every time they went to leave would create more mess and potential damage to their pride and joy.
We did everything we could to sympathize with them but ultimately we couldn't do anything to change the situation. No one thought to contact the county to see if there would be any conflict with this event. Perhaps if we had known, we could have rescheduled the event.
Summary 

"It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own."
– Marcus Aurelius


At the end of the day, try your best and understand that you can't be all things to all people. Don't take it personally, having complaints is part of having customers. My favorite example of this comes in the form of the sarcastic Subpar Parks posters on Instagram. Even natural splendor isn't free from criticism.

1. Don't take it personally. While it may or may not be your money (although often times it is), consider that it is six times more expensive to acquire a new guest than it is to retain an old one. You can't be all things to all people and unhappy guests are inevitable. Work smart, not hard and understand that you can't afford to lose any guest.

2. Don't over promise and under deliver. Well managed guest expectations can save you headaches down the road. Assumption is the weakest form of communication.

3. Meet them where they are. Work with your guests to ensure they are satisfied. In Dale Carnegie's book, "How to Win Friends and Influence People," he uses an example of going fishing with strawberries and cream versus a worm and a hook. While Mr. Carnegie may prefer strawberries and cream, fish much prefer a worm. It stands to reason that you need to determine what motivates each individual guest to keep them coming back. Hence why you should have several different service recovery tools to choose from.

4. Some things are outside your control; how you respond isn't one of them. The customer isn't always right - but they are paying us so we should do what we can to be accommodating.

5. Have a plan. After a few years, I decided to start a "Survival Guide" at every property I worked at. In this guide was how to deal with nearly every situation imaginable. Pray you never have to deal with bed bugs but once you have, you can document what you have learned and provide a detailed procedure going forward.

6. Kill our guests with kindness and treat them as you would want to be treated. Get excited and get creative. Think of little things you can do to turn their experience around.

7. Finally check out this video provided courtesy of the FranklinCovey.com, on empathy. Consider how you can apply this to your guest interactions and challenge your staff to do the same.


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