It’s never a good thing when guests have a bad experience with your product or service. But instead of getting defensive, you can apologise, make it right, and make them love you more in the process.
Here’s how the hotels management normally resolve a guest complaint:
When you learn about a customer service mishap, jump on it immediately. Have a plan in place where you immediately make it right for the customer experiencing the problem. Then, look for ways that you can promote the fix and how much better it is to everyone.
Look at your mistake as an opportunity. Don’t look at a mishap as a mistake; look at it as a loyalty-building- sales and referral opportunity. Instead of thinking about how to defend the mistake, think about the ways that you can use the mistake to give your guests an unexpected surprise.
Have low-cost, high-value giveaways on deck. Market Samurai decided to give an additional free license to its guests. This didn’t require much additional support or cost on their part. But for those guests who had to wait in line to do keyword search – it’s a real value.
Be humble, be human. Mistakes happen and people will always forgive an honest mistake. But they will not forgive a defensive and empty-hearted corporate apology. Have a nicely drafted apology letter sample sent to the guest.
You might think this doesn’t make sense, but in reality, it gives guests who were affected a fix, and guests who haven’t affected an update in case they heard rumblings on social media channels.