Customer Care: AN EXTRAORDINARY PERSONAL

experience

CUSTOMER FIRST

#1

Following a bad experience in an hotel

in Florence (Italy), I decided to

compile this small, Kandinsky like

presentation, to paint the picture

of excellent after sale service

provided by Booking.com. Their

promptness to respond to my

complaint and their resolution

made me feel like a valued customer.

I have no affiliation with the

portal, but I do work for multinationals

where the new mantra seems to be

customer first.

Many companies nowadays go great lengths, even by revolutionizing their

entire worldwide organization, if necessary, to ensure the mantra is put into practice.

BOOKING .COM

IS A COMMERCIAL

PORTAL DEDICATED

TO ONLINE HOTEL

RESERVATION

OWNED BY PRICELINE

#2

Customer Care

////////////////////// A ROOM

GUESTS IN HOTELS

WANT MORE THAN

#3

SERVICE

PROCEDURAL DIMENTION

PERSONAL DIMENTION

- THE TWO DIMENTIONS OF CUSTOMER SERVICE -

The Procedural Dimension: Consist of the established system and procedures to deliver products and/or services.

The Personal Dimension: How service providers (using their attitudes, behaviors, and verbal skills) interact with customers.

#4

GOOD PRICE

GOOD LOCATION

OUR EXPERIENCE

In March 2014 my girlfriend and I decided to visit Florence.

As an espresso lover, that was also an occasion for me to attend a 3 day course on coffee roasting - something I

wanted to do for some time.

In January 2014 we reserved an hotel with

the perfect mix of Price and Location through Booking.com: no initial charges and payment upon arrival. The accommodation had one of the highest Ratings for its category and we thought it was going to be a safe bet.

We paid for the full stay upon arrival in March and the owner seems like a nice guy who kept his premises with maniacal tidiness. Unfortunately, during the first night we realized our mistake. The hotel, located on an extremely busy street, was one of the noisiest we’ve ever experienced due to its paper thin windows. A different room, provided promptly on request, did not relieve much our sleepless nights. We thought it was very peculiar no one had mentioned “the noise” in other Booking.com’s commentary, but after all we all have different needs and levels of noise endurance.

HIGH RATING

#5

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Ou

r Eva

luatio

n

The aftermath: 6.3 #6

We tried to be as fare as possible and objective with our review by posting both positive and negative aspects of our permanence. We were perfectly aware the owner had worked really hard to make his hotel one of the top ranking in its category.

We also agreed with the overall reviews posted by other travellers but we couldn’t condone three sleepless nights in a row, which completely ruined our vacation.

Busy location above

What followed was a series of events and childlike behaviors that left us speechless. Upon posting the

review my girlfriend received a 1200 characters long insulting SMS.

The owner stated we should have not posted an anonymous review. He continued by asking why we

kept staying there (we had prepaid for three nights), and that if had we wanted something cheap

we could have gone somewhere else (sorry for taking advantage of the promotional offer). I

immediately called him back asking to apologize but he decided not answer.

At this point of course we had no respect left for this individual, and I sent an email asking

again to remedy for his deplorable behavior.

As a response, I received three emails:

In the first one, he seemed like he wanted to clear things up,

but he was mocking us yet again. The second email

was a direct insult to my girlfriend, the

third a direct affront to me.

THE AFTERMATH

#7

PART II

Emails & SMS #8

I am not going to dignify the insults by posting the SMS and emails I received; beside they

would just spoil the presentation. Moreover, my intention is neither to promote the insults

nor to denigrate further the owner of the hotel.

Instead the purpose is to highlight the happy ending to this very unpleasant situation

thanks to prompt and efficient customer service.

I decided thus to contact the

customer support immediately,

and they invited me to send all

the “documentation” in

regards to the matter. After a

brief email exchange they

probably managed to contact

the owner and talk some

sense into him.

The response was fairly quick:

briefly after that..

the owner came through.

Perhaps not the most sincere

apology, but still a small

victory

#9

#10

T R A N S L A T I O N : I see there was a misunderstanding, I apologize for the inconvenience,

let’s “close” it here.

Best Regards

The Result

THANK YOU

MARCO DANIELI

cz.linkedin.com/in/danielimarco/

#11