please take my survey about this customer response
I want your opinion. My request is for you to tell me YOUR opinion about the response I received to my complaint with a recent hotel stay. I want to know your reaction to their response. This is strictly a review of how one should or should not respond to a customer complaint.
I will not give you my opinion yet on my reaction to how this was handled. I’d like to hear from you.
Here’s the background.
I had what I consider an unnecessarily bad hotel experience at a Holiday Inn Express in St. Louis, Missouri last month (June). In the scheme of life, these are minor issues except that when you travel a lot, the blatant mistakes are well, blatant.
The response I got to my complaints from the hotel while I was staying there was not what I expected. The hotel did try and fix some of the problems during my stay. In the morning, I received the feedback stated in the response below. Then I received an automated customer feedback request from Holiday Inn (Intercontinental Hotels) right after my stay and I told them all the details.
To my feedback – this was the response I received at 4:00 a.m. ET today:
Dear Mr. O’Connell,
Thank you for contacting Guest Relations regarding your experience with the Holiday Inn Express St. Louis Airport – Riverport, MO. We greatly appreciate you taking the time to bring this matter to our attention, and apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced.
It is IHG’s goal to consistently provide superior service and accommodations and your comments are very important to us. The feedback we receive from our valued guests, like you, enables us to target problem areas and take the necessary actions to ensure similar situations can be avoided in the future. We appreciate the candid feedback we receive and welcome any opportunity to improve.
I have forwarded your comments to the hotel a copy of this file has been made available to the General Manager and ownership for their records. I know they share our vision of providing the best guest experience possible, and I am confident they will take the necessary steps to continue to improve their services.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact us. We value you as our guest and hope you will continue to choose IHG for your future travel needs.
Sincerely,
(Name omitted)
Case Manager
Guest Relations
IHG
Reference No. 37920958Phone: (omitted)
Fax: (Name omitted)Americas Region
Email: (omitted)
www.ihg.comOn 6/24/13 5:57 PM, peter@audioconnell.com wrote:
INTERCONTINENTAL HOTELS GROUP FEEDBACK
——————————————————————————–
C O N T A C T I N F O R M A T I O N——————————————————————————–
Contact Name: Peter O’Connell
Priority Club Number:
Street Address: (omitted)
City: (omitted)
State: (omitted)
Zip Code: (omitted)
Country: United States
Region: UNITED_STATES
Home Phone Number: (omitted)
Email: (omitted)——————————————————————————–
H O T E L S T A Y I N F O R M A T I O N——————————————————————————–
Hotel Location: Holiday Inn Express ST. LOUIS AIRPO
Confirmation or Cancellation Number: 69112792
Check-In Date: Jun-18-2013
Check-Out Date: Jun-19-2013
Comment Type: GENERAL_SERVICE
Spoke With Management: Yes
Comment: * The phone in the room was disconnected and broken * The TV changer was broken and not replaced * There were 3 kinds of bugs in the room at 3 different places in the room – When I told the front desk about all this in the morning, the lady only said “It’s a good thing we’re renovating.”
So what would YOUR reaction be?
[…] I want your opinion. My request is for you to tell me YOUR opinion about the response I received to my complaint with a recent hotel stay. I want to know your reaction to their response. […]
Hmm. I think I’d fire back a response that very diplomatically stated that this felt like an automated response. If their goal was to assuage your concerns, it failed in my mind on the basis that it didn’t address anything specific and didn’t make an offer that would persuade my continued loyalty. I would hope that the implication would be that it’s easy to port your loyalty elsewhere and that they should step up and take care of a good repeat, multi-city customer.
It is just an automated response that is sent when any comments are received. If in fact your concern was moved up the chain you should receive another email or call from the GM of the hotel. If not the person who needs to know did not receive this comment. Sometimes hotels are corporate owned and sometimes they are franchised; or privately held and unfortunately not everyone knows how to run a business and be service oriented.
If you are really that upset with this initial response. I would call and speak with the GM of the hotel directly.
Blah dee blah corporatespeak blah blah