O’DAY’S TRAVEL WOES #13: Kentucky "Customer Service"

April, 1994: My first visit to Owensboro, Kentucky, had me conducting three seminars in two days. On Day One, I conducted both The Psychology of Management and Air Personality Plus+ for the joint Kentucky Broadcasters Association/Indiana Broadcasters Association convention.

One of my passions is Customer Service (whether it’s a radio station serving its listeners or advertisers…or a non-broadcast business serving its customers). The convention hotel provided my Customer Service seminar with lots of good material.

The hotel has a huge parking lot — the size of a football field. Having driven two hours from Evansville Airport (it would have been one hour, but I followed the directions provided by the hotel) and arriving late in the evening, I could not find a parking place anywhere near the front entrance.

Well, actually, there were three empty spaces right in front, just steps away from the entrance. No, they weren’t Handicapped spaces. They simply were marked, “NO PARKING — TOWAWAY.”

So I parked the equivalent of two city blocks away and struggled to the front door with my suitcase, computer, and box of seminar materials.

Upon checking in, I asked the desk clerk, “For whom are those three prime parking spaces reserved?” She didn’t know.

So I asked a bellman, and he explained, “One is for the owner. Another is for the owner’s mother. And the third is for the hotel manager.”

That told me all I needed to know about this hotel: It is operated for the convenience of the owner and manager, not for the customers. And that is why nothing that happened those two days surprised me….such as:

The KBA/IBA had requested an overhead projector for one of my seminars. But when I arrived at the seminar room, there was no projector. The KBA member in charge of dealing with the hotel asked the hotel’s contact person where it was. The hotel employee said, “You didn’t order one.”

“Yes, we did,” replied the broadcaster. “Here’s a copy of the paperwork that lists our equipment needs.”

“Well, yes, we did receive that,” conceded the hotel employee. “But the problem is the bulb in the overhead projector burned out.”

This, of course, explained why they did not have an overhead projector ready for us; the bulb had burned out. Keep a spare bulb on hand? Why should they do that? Send a hotel employee to a nearby store to buy new bulb? They certainly have better things to do with their time than that!

Believe me, I have half a dozen other stories about this hotel — all of which you can hear in my newly revised Customer Service seminar. Perhaps my favorite moment came when I checked out. I wanted to take with me an extra copy of the hotel’s Guest Comment Card. So I asked the desk clerk if she had one. She didn’t know what I was talking about.

“You know,” I said, “those little cards in the guest rooms that ask us to evaluate the quality of service we received during our stay?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” she replied. “I’ve only been here three months.”

Fortunately, the IBA and KBA were such gracious hosts that my non-hotel related memories of this trip are fond ones. This also afforded me my first opportunity to meet (the since deceased) J. T. Whitlock and to enjoy his hospitality.

On the following day, I conducted a special version of How To Create Maximum Impact Radio Advertising for convention attendees as well as employees & advertisers of WBKR/Owensboro. WBKR’s Gary Exline had been wanting to bring this seminar to town for several years, and he is a very persistent person. He arranged to have me stay over, took care of my fee, and invited not only his own people & clients to attend but also opened it up to any IBA and KBA convention attendees who wanted to stay for the extra morning.

My only regret on this trip was not visiting the Moonlight Cafe. WBKR’s Chuck Urban waited until he gave me a ride back to the airport in Evansville, Indiana, to tell me about the Moonlight, which apparently is famous for its barbecue. I, of course, am famous for loving barbecue. The Moonlight has a buffet that is supposed to be wonderful. (Now I’ve got to finagle another invitation to Owensboro to find out what I missed.)

A couple of weeks later I found myself in Nashville, where I conducted a full-day programming seminar for the National Christian Radio Conference. WAY-FM’s Dusty Rhodes had arranged for me to speak there, and I think the NCRS board of directors thought I was a bit expensive.

I told Dusty that although I don’t discount my fees, they would be paying for a day of seminar time…and that they could define what “a day” means. “You can have me work from 6AM until Midnight, if you wish,” I told Dusty.

Little did I know they would take me literally. The seminar began at 9:15AM and ended up 5:30PM. From 6:00PM until 1:00AM, I conducted individual aircheck critiques for NCRS attendees. Suffice it to say, the NCRS knows how to get its money’s worth. (They also were very nice to me, and I was glad to see them get what the British call “value for money.”)

The conference was held at the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, which has a revolving restaurant atop the building. It’s lovely…but you can feel the room moving in small, sudden starts. I kept thinking I was back home in Los Angeles, experiencing more earthquake aftershocks.