No Sheraton, I Don’t Want a Free Breakfast
January 8th, 2010 by Don GallegosWhen I go to New York, I always stay at the Sheraton Twin Towers. I made my reservation on June 8 for September 9. That’s 3 months early. As usual, I reserved a king-sized bed.
As I was checking in, I asked, “This room has a king-sized bed, right?”
The clerk said, “Oh, we don’t have any king-sized.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She said, “Well, we’re booked up.”
“When I made the reservation 3 months ago, you should have told me I might not get a king-sized bed,” I said. “If you had told me that, I would have reserved at another hotel.”
She offered a queen-size bed in a parlor room so I took a look. The bed was in the wall and you could hardly walk around it when it was pulled down.
At this point I was steaming. But the U.S. Open was on in New York that week and all of the hotels in Manhattan were booked solid.
The desk clerk said, “We can give you two twin beds tonight and move you to a king-sized bed tomorrow.” So I agreed, and the next day they put me in a king-sized room. Then the clerk told me, “As a courtesy, we’re going to give you a free breakfast tomorrow.”
This is what Sheraton allows their desk clerks to do if they make a mistake with a room reservation and the customer is unhappy: a free breakfast. How cheap is that? This is NOT good customer service. If they couldn’t get me a king-sized bed the first night, they should have comped the first night. Period. I paid $300 that night for a room I didn’t want.
I’ve been going to New York every year for 24 years and I’ve always stayed at the Sheraton. But I’m not going back there.
The people at Sheraton just don’t get it. They act like they did me a favor. They got me a king-sized bed for my second night. That’s not a favor. I know there are people who don’t check out on time. I realize that. But I’ll bet you earlier in the day somebody got that king-sized room and he didn’t make the reservation three months in advance.
Sheraton has a customer service and a systems problem. And because of that, they’ve lost a customer. For life.
Customer Service Lesson: When you take reservations, you’re making a promise. If you have to break the promise, you owe your customer something just as good or better than what you promised. Not something worse. And if all you have to offer is something worse, your customer shouldn’t have to pay for your mistake. (And if your reservation system is so bad that mistakes happen all the time, you’d better get your system fixed – right away.
Don Gallegos is the author of “Win the Customer, Not the Argument.” His customer service philosophy is, “The customer is not always right, but she is always your customer.” For more information about Don’s book, visit www.brigantinemedia.com.
Click here to read an excerpt from Don’s book.