October 1994 (continued): Ten days later I had several of my busiest days of the year…here in Los Angeles, where the NAB Radio Show was held. On the day before the convention began, Anne Chaabane arranged for me speak to a group of mostly Swedish broadcasters about promotions and production.
We met at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, which was the main convention hotel. As you might know, Customer Service is a passion of mine; I conduct seminars on that topic for broadcasters and for retailers.
The Bonaventure that week was a textbook case of how not to handle a Customer Service crisis. In fact, if the hotel had been wise enough to seek out my counsel, I could have saved them more than $100,000 and minimized the devastating amount of damage the hotel’s reputation suffered.
The problem? The hotel’s computer system crashed…and stayed crashed for a couple of days. This meant the 1,100 arriving guests were not able to go to their rooms upon check-in. In fact, they couldn’t even check in at all; after standing in line for hours, they were told to try again later.
How did the hotel deal with this? They sent an employee up and down the line of angry customers, offering cups of fruit punch!
After several days of negotiating with the NAB, the hotel deducted one night’s room charge from each guest’s bill. By then, however, everyone had spent the week bitterly complaining about the Westin.
What should they have done?
Easy. While the guests were waiting in line, employees should have approached each guest, explained the situation, and said:
“On behalf of the Westin Bonaventure, I apologize. This is a terrible thing to happen to you, and we feel awful about it. I realize this can’t even begin to make it up to you, but after traveling here and standing in line all this time, you’re probably tired and hungry. May I buy you lunch in our coffee shop?”
What would this have cost – $10 per person? A total of $11,000. And instead of condemning the hotel, its customers would have said, “Yeah, it sure was a pain. But at least they bought me lunch.”
Instead, the Westin Bonaventure hemmed and hawed for days, lost ten times as much money, and still had every guest leave angry.
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Savvy business article!