Page 203 - The New Gold Standard

Wow: The Ultimate Guest Experience
concierge had promised him tickets for a local attraction, but no
tickets were presented to him.
While Brayno understood that there could be communica-
tion and technical issues with the opening of a new hotel, he was
unable to get a satisfactory resolution of his complaints during
his stay. Given the nature of his disappointment, he wrote a neg-
ative trip review on a popular travel site. But that wasn’t all. “In
addition to writing my review,” Brayno explains, “I e-mailed the
Ritz-Carlton corporate office with my complaint, and I also
e-mailed the regional vice president who was in charge of hotels
in Europe. Although the regional vice president was at a confer-
ence in New York, I received an immediate reply from his assis-
tant. About two hours later, I got a phone call from the regional
vice president, whom they had woken up in the middle of the
night (given our time differences) so he could talk to me. That
conversation was a very positive one, and we worked out a reso-
lution to my issues. In fact, I will actually be going back in a cou-
ple of months to that same Ritz-Carlton in Moscow.”
While there was personal attention given to Brayno after his
appeal to regional and corporate leaders, Debi Howard, man-
ager of corporate guest relations, acknowledges,“Failure to resolve
problems on site and at the time they actually occur can have a
lasting negative impact.” Prospective customers who visit the
travel Web site where Brayno left his review would not know
that his concerns were resolved to his satisfaction since his orig-
inal post is the only information provided about his visit.
In a world where customer opinions are archived on the
Internet and where people are more likely to share a negative ex-
perience, the lasting impact of delayed service recovery can neg-
atively affect prospective customers. With the ease of instant
worldwide communication and the popularity of social net-
working and customer reviews, companies can’t just practice
service recovery but must instead execute immediate service re-
covery. The sooner customers are satisfied, the less likely they are
to share a negative review that may have damaging consequences.

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