Page 198 - The New Gold Standard

PRINCIPLE 4: DELIVER WOW!
and you told your mother about it, she would say, ‘I’m here for
you,’ and she fixed the problem. Mom didn’t say she’d check
with someone else to see if they would take care of it, and she
wouldn’t start arguing with you or blaming you for the problem.
But how do most hotels, and most businesses, for that matter,
handle such things? If you complain to a server that the remote
control in your room isn’t working, the server doesn’t say ‘I’m
here to help.’ At best, he or she says, ‘Let me call the manager.’
We have to give everyone who works for the company a chance
to offer genuine care and to say, ‘I’m here for you.’”
By affording the frontline staff the power to offer responsive
care and to improvise solutions, guests frequently report sub-
stantial Wow experiences. One guest relates how a less-than-
relaxed dining experience was remedied: “One night we dined
in the Mexican beachfront restaurant at The Ritz-Carlton, Key
Biscayne. We had an 8:30 p.m. reservation, and the restaurant
was rather quiet. However, at 9 p.m. we noticed that the staff
was starting to clear tables and blow out candles before we had
completed our meal. We mentioned this to the restaurant man-
ager upon leaving, and he apologized and explained that they
had a function at that location the next day and they had inap-
propriately started the setup during our dinner. We left and went
back to our room. Ten minutes later, a bottle of champagne to-
gether with chocolate-covered strawberries arrived with a hand-
written letter from the manager, apologizing again. Now that is
style.”

C Delivering Well-Being D

Not only are such actions viewed as stylish by guests but they
also reflect sincere and timely concern for the guests’ well-being.
A customer at the Kapalua resort notes, “We arrived at the hotel
very early, around 8 a.m., on the day we checked in, and the
room wasn’t ready. Rather than being reminded that the check-
in time wasn’t until 3 p.m., we were met with fresh orchid leis

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