My recent experiences with customer service was a substantial difference between two “H” travel companies. They provide lessons on how customer service should be conducted successfully — as well as how it can fail miserably.
Customer Service: Substantial Difference Between Two “H” Travel Companies
The two “H” travel companies are Hilton and Hertz.
Starting with Hilton, I experienced initial failures with my stays at two Hampton Inn hotel properties in the southeastern United States: too many people at breakfast at one Hampton Inn where members of the staff were not prepared prevented me from participating in breakfast during my stay; and I experienced a number of negative issues at a different Hampton Inn during my stay. Although I informed the people behind the front desks of both hotel properties about the issues, neither one of them did anything about them.
I contacted Hilton via its official Twitter — er…X — social media channel; and I received the following response within two hours:
Thanks so much for bearing with me! I’ve got everything documented, and like I said, we’ll work with the hotel to make sure opportunities for improvement are identified and actioned.
With regard to your stay at the Hampton Inn Columbia-I-26 Airport which was an overall disappointment due to many housekeeping and maintenance oversights, I’ve arranged for a refund the night’s room and tax. Please allow up to 30 days for processing, at which time a check in the amount of $121.40 will be mailed to you at [address redacted].
Concerning your less than stellar 2nd day breakfast, in acknowledgement of that inconvenience, I’ve deposited 5,000 points into your Hilton Honors account. Please expect to see that reflected in your total points balance within 24 hours.
Brian, it is always our goal to deliver wholly rewarding stays, and we regret that on these occasions we did not succeed in that endeavor. I’m confident your future stays will be marked by the pleasant guest experiences you expect and deserve.
I was more concerned about having the issues fixed than receiving compensation, for which I thought was quite fair. I would rather have an uneventful stay than experience issues and be compensated for them…
…but the response was quick. The people who handled my query listened to what I said and took action to resolve it in a positive manner. I was impressed. Customer service is only one of a number of significant reasons why I keep returning to Hilton over the years. I know that Hilton has my back whenever things go wrong.
Now let us move on to Hertz. with whom I have experienced a number of issues — including experiencing a flat tire and not having a vehicle available 39 minutes prior to the start of my reservation. I was just about to give up on Hertz after the last issue when I unexpectedly received a welcome opportunity of customer service recovery from Hertz — but it was approximately 2.5 months after the issue occurred…
…and only 17 days after I had received enough Hertz Gold Plus Rewards points to rent a vehicle for a week as a gesture of good will, an official announcement from Hertz declared that the points will expire five years from when they were earned — regardless of rental activity. I could not make this up if I tried.
So with which company would you prefer to do business?
The Challenge of Successful Customer Service
Before you answer that question, acknowledging that providing successful customer service is not an easy task is important. Numerous factors define successful customer service. Companies understandably do not want to just give everything away every time an issue occurs. The satisfaction of customers should be the ultimate goal; but some customers do exist who are not satisfied with anything and will take as much as they can get — whether or not they deserve it.
Hiring the right people to perform customer service is also not easy. Having customer service based “off shore” — India, as one example — can cost a company significantly less money because wages are cheaper; but barriers of language and culture can prevent customer service from being optimized. The last thing a customer who has had a negative experience wants is to listen to someone with a thick accent stick to a script without deviation; without listening to the customer; and without providing a satisfactory resolution. The person who is capable of providing excellent customer service will usually cost more money in terms of compensation and benefits.
Technology can cause impediments as well. Voice mail prompts attempt to weed out simple questions being answered and leave live people to handle more complex customer support matters. Along with support via a toll-free telephone number, e-mail, text, on-line chat, and social media channels, artificial intelligence is the latest technology to be embraced for customer service and support — and although the cost of its implementation can potentially be substantial, it is designed to save money over the long term. Time will tell as to whether artificial intelligence will actually be a useful tool in providing satisfactory customer service.
Please read about my visit to an airline customer support reservations center that was slated to close to read about some of what customer service representatives face from customers on a daily basis. Their jobs are not all that easy.
Final Boarding Call
As a customer, you really do not care about the costs, impediments, and challenges with which companies must overcome to provide a satisfactory resolution to an issue. You simply want the issue resolved — preferably in your favor. That is not unreasonable.
I have always said that providing goods and services to customers is easy when everything proceeds as it should. What separates good companies from companies that can stand improvement is excellent customer service and recovery when issues arise and things go wrong. The customer has to feel like they can trust to patronize the company in the future when an issue is satisfactorily corrected and resolved…
…for when it is not, the company may just lose that customer — and winning him or her back can be a lot costlier than simply doing whatever is possible to retain that customer in the first place.
Often, half the battle with performing excellent customer service is having the customer feel like the company is listening to him or her — and many companies fail at that rather simple task…
All photographs ©2012, ©2017, ©2022 and ©2024 by Brian Cohen.
