Guest Complaint Case Study Lesson I Personally had

Leave a Comment / Hotels / By Lakshmi Narasimhan Soundararajan / February 18, 2021 / c

What can handling a guest complaint teach us about their thinking and psyche?

Guest complaint consequences can be severe.

From a loss of business on the one hand all the way to being bad mouthed in the industry by an irate guest on the other.

It will however ultimately depend upon what attitude the hotel management adopts toward handling guest complaints.

This blog post will highlight 3 critical actions that can be taken in these situations.

Hotel managements can ensure that you can not only handle guest complaints well and recover from it but also win back guest confidence and patronage.

What This Blog Post Will Cover

What can handling guest complaints teach us about their thinking and psyche?

Without further ado, let us dive right in.

What can a Guest Complaint be like? Is it avoidable?

In a service industry scenario of a hotel, there are bound to be situations where the service falters.

That is the nature of a service.

After all, the service is performed by human beings and to err is human.

However, even if the service falls short based on a mechanical piece of equipment, the human has to acknowledge it.

Mess ups occur often due to human error.

Employees are required to make judgements at work all the time.

This is particularly when they are handling guest complaints in a hotel.

Employees need to be trained on how to handle guest complaints.

Errors often are minor in scale though and can be set right easily.

In rare situations, something major fails which causes some damage say to the guest’s business.

These situations need to be handled in an empathetic way.

And now on to this experience which I went through personally.

It happened a long time back but left it indelibly etched in my memory.

Let us get to that..

Case Study of a Guest Complaint

The Setting

It was the year 1995.

I had been at the Portman Shangri-La Hotel Shanghai as Financial Controller for about fifteen months.

The hotel was a landmark in itself.

It was the second largest foreign enterprise real estate project in the history of China.

The property is situated on one of the premium land spaces on Nanjing Xi Lu in the heart of the central district.

The towering building was 40 floors high and housed 628 guest rooms.

It commanded the Shanghai skies.

The hotel itself was part of the iconic Shanghai Centre, a mixed use development.

It was the summer month of May.

The hotel general manager was away for the day.

As Financial Controller, I was second in command and was asked to take charge for the day.

At around 11.45AM, I got a call from the Secretary to the General Manager.

She said it was urgent.

There was an angry guest who wanted to meet the general manager.

She had informed him that I was in charge.

The Complaining Guest

The guest was waiting outside Function Room 2 in Level 3.

I quickly located the Event Order which was circulated to all division heads.

I found out that it was event for Reckitt & Coleman, a global giant.

Reckitt & Colman and Benckiser later merged to become Reckitt Benckiser - The world No. 1 in household cleaning.

I knew immediately that it was an high profile event.

And it was. It was a small group presentation by the CFO to regional bosses.

I realized it was the CFO calling.

I walked up to the other end of the corridor where my office was and climbed the grand circular stairs open to the atrium to Level 3.

As I walked to Function Room 3, I had to pass Room 2 whose event signage read DeBeers (the Diamond giant).

The function room door was shut but a loud blaring sound came from inside from possibly a television turned on very loudly.

I came across a tall clean shaven youngish gentleman with a sharp nose and hair pushed back.

He looked agitated.

I introduced myself and shook his hand.

He did not let go and literally pulled me into Room 3.

About 5 to 7 individuals who looked the corporate sort were seated in front of the presentation slide table.

The gentleman turned to me and in an angry voice asked me: “Is it possible to carry out a discussion in this function room with that noise on?”

He then took me out of the function room and ranted about how his regional bosses must be mad at him.

The problem immediately became clear to me.

The Complaint

As I walked into Room 3, the noise I had heard from the DeBeers event actually grew louder as this function room was next door to it.

The noise was indeed deafening and I could barely hear him speak.

Probably because I was standing next to him I could hear better.

I acknowledged to him indeed that it was impossible to carry on any discussion.

I used the same words that he used to complain to me.

I requested him to give me a couple of minutes and that I would revert to him with a solution.

The Resolution

I called the Banquet Manager and asked him if there were any vacant function rooms.

He said there was one in Level 4 on the other side but which needed a clean up as there was some furniture piled up there.

I asked to look at it.

I climbed another circular stairs to Level 4 and walked to that room.

It indeed needed a spruce up.

But it was clean and most importantly had a quiet about it.

The DeBeers TV could not be heard at all.

I asked the Banquet Manager to get rid of the furniture and call Housekeeping to give the function room a vacuum clean.

I said I needed the room set up in an hour’s time.

The Commitment

I walked down the stairs to Level 3 and Function Room 3.

I suggested to the gentleman that he should consider a change to a quiet function room on another level.

I also offered that in the mean time, they could have an early lunch by which time I would have the function room ready.

I asked him to come with me to take a look.

He did and okayed the function room.

I told him the room would be ready by 1PM when he could continue his presentation.

He was fine with that.

I called the Director of Sales & Marketing who was a trusted colleague to appraise her of the situation.

The two of us set the banquet tables, chairs, the table linen, stationery and everything else ourselves after Housekeeping shampooed the carpet.

All this took until 12.45PM.

For the record, I had never set up a banquet room for a function in my life.

It was a novel experience like no other.

I then called the gentleman and got him to take a look at the new set up.

He was very happy.

The presentation would recommence at 1PM after their lunch.

He thanked me for the quick response.

The Guest Complaint Turnaround

I returned to my office.

At 5PM, I got a call from the general manager’s secretary.

The gentleman wanted to see me again right now.

Four hours had elapsed since his presentation had recommenced.

I went up to Level 4 and met him outside the function room.

He seemed delighted, offered a handshake and said his presentation had been a great success.

He thanked me again.

I said he was most welcome and that I am thrilled his presentation was successful.

The gentleman's next words had me dumbfounded!

He said there were three board meetings and a couple of seminars he was involved in organizing over the next two years.

He wished to book our hotel for all those events.

I thanked him for the continued trust in us and asked for a contact we could reach out to.

Again he shook hands and thanked me.

As I was walking back to my office, I was thinking.

Not only had we managed the mess up but also turned it around delighting the customer.

There are some great lessons I learned from that situation.

Step 1 - Listen actively to Guest Complaint

One of the most powerful lessons I learned from this case study experience was listening actively.

So, what does that mean?

How is it different from just listening.

Well, active listening means placing yourself in the guest’s situation.

It is showing genuine empathy for the guest situation

How would you react if this happened to you?

Listening actively helps you work on a solution that would remove the guest’s problem.

If you did not understand the guest's problem or misunderstood what was at stake, your solution would follow that thinking too.

Remember the problem was not as much as that the next door function room was noisy.

No, active listening told me this CFO was losing face in front of his bosses.

That was the real problem.

And that was huge.

It needed a totally satisfying solution for him.

I was able to give him that.

Step 2 - Acknowledge the Guest Complaint

The next critical step after active listening is acknowledging the mess up.

It takes courage to do that.

And remember, it is not the end of the world.

It however achieves two things.

First, it calms the guest down.

They feel better that the hotel is agreeing with his predicament.

It is much more impactful than it sounds.

The worst thing that can happen is to not agree with the guest's situation.

It is counter productive and potentially explosive.

Second, the guest knows that there is sincerity behind saying we messed up.

They get assured that we will do something about it.

Step 3 - Take sincere action (with feedback to guest) to resolve guest complaint

Last but certainly not the least, show sincerity and commitment in resolving the guest’s problem.

And give them feedback.

I not only acknowledged the guest problem but also got him to tell me if he liked my suggestion - alternate function room, early lunch etc.

I again brought him back when the room was ready for his opinion.

I was showing empathy and care for his loss of face in front of his bosses.

And I was resolving it to his liking.

When we sett up the new function room and I invited him to take a look, he realized that we were sincerely trying our best to resolve his situation.

He liked it and said so.

It gave me an insight into a guest psyche like no other.

The moral of the story:

You can turn around the worst of situations if only you listen actively, acknowledge the mess up without hesitation and take action sincerely.

We not only earned back the trust of the guest but did it such that he was continuing to give us business.

Your Takeaways

What are your thoughts on this real life case study?

Do you agree with the moral of the story?

How are guest complaints handled at your hotel?

What are the Top 10 guest complaints at your hotel?

If you are an aspiring general manager, build The Ultimate 10 Tools in a Hotel General Manager Business Toolkit with the Mastering Hotel Finance Online Course.

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