I’m happy to report that Harrah’s Lake Tahoe is recovering from the service hiccup that I reported in my post entitled “Harrah’s Tahoe: Surprising Service Errors.” A VP from the property called me last night and we had a conversation that satisfied my concerns.
The Harrah’s VP did the right thing by calling me when he discovered that I had a problem. He listened to my concerns, made no excuses, provided explanation where appropriate, and apologized for the experience. In this case, that was enough for me, but he went beyond that and offered me a free night stay in the hotel sometime in the future. I think it will be cool to return to the hotel someday and give them another chance to impress me.
Let’s face it, consistently providing impressive service is not easy. Even when you make a real effort to impress your customers, as Harrah’s does, there are going to be times when the idiosyncratic exchange between your customer and service provider is for some reason not going to meet your customer’s expectations. When that happens, the key is to recover by fixing the problem as soon as possible and learning from the mistake to try to make sure you minimize the possibility of it occurring again in the future.
If you can recover from the service error before the customer leaves your business, that is always best. If not, recover as soon as possible after you learn about the mistakes your business made. I can forgive a business for failing, but I refuse to spend my money with a business that refuses to recover when I took the time and effort to try to help them. If you don’t have the time to pick up the phone and call an unhappy customer, you deserve the lost business and the bad things they are going to say about you.
Nowadays, not only will your customers not return if you fail to recover properly, they will also tell LOTS of their friends VERY quickly. And their friends will quickly spread the word. That’s the beauty of word-of-mouth marketing.
And if you don’t have a system to learn what your customers think about your service, as well as a system to listen to what they are saying about you on and offline, you are making a huge mistake. The new tools of social media make those systems easier than ever to implement.
Related Posts:
Customer Encouragement: The Cycle Of Success Spiral In Action
Chiquito Leicester Square London: Worst Restaurant Experience EVER
Service System Recovery: Red Lion Inn
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