A few days ago I wrote a post called Marriott’s Failure Could Make You Rich.  You can follow the link to read it for the back ground information on this follow up post.

Yesterday, I got a direct message on my twitter account from @marriottintl asking for my contact information.  In the DM they were apologetic for my experience and assured me someone would be calling me.  I gave them the information they requested, but based upon the last six weeks of experiences with Marriott, I wasn’t holding my breath that I would get a call.

Then mid afternoon today I got a phone call.  A very polite and professional lady introduced herself as being from Bill Marriott’s office.  She told me she had read my tweets and my blog regarding the experiences I recently had with Marriott’s hotel and customer service.  She told me that she agreed with my comments about what makes great customer service and that she wanted to win back my loyalty.  She was extremely apologetic for what had happened.  She said she had already been in contact with the general manager of the hotel that I had problems with.  She explained why the general manager made the decision to push me off (my words) on the claims department instead of take care of me herself.  Then she told me she was depositing a generous amount of reward points in my account.

So, let me share something about leadership and something about customer service that came to light from this conversation.

The hotel general manager had a female customer “recently” that had a damaged bathing suit while staying at her hotel.  The general manager agreed to pay to replace the bathing suit.  It was after that, the general manager found out the bathing suit was a designer bathing suit and would cost over $200 to replace.  Feeling burned by the situation, the general manager had decided not to take care of these things herself anymore and let the Marriott “Claims” department take care of these complaints.

Leadership Lesson Learned: Leaders can not shy away from leadership.  From the limited information I have on this situation, the general manager did a poor job of asking the right questions to see what the cost of replacing the bathing suit would be before making the commitment.  She is now running like a scared manager (not a courageous leader) behind her claims department so she doesn’t have to make decisions and get “burned by a customer.”  (My bet is she is steering clear of other hard decisions as well…although that is pure speculation on my part.)  But rewind this a minute.  If the general manager believes she should pay for the damaged swim suit…whatever the reason she believes that to be the right thing to do…why did she have a negative reaction to the cost?  If its the right thing to do…then do it, whether it is a $25 or $250 cost.

The leadership lesson is simple.  Do the right thing, always…your integrity is on the line here.  And don’t let a negative situation make you run from leadership.  Leaders need to lead!

Customer Service Lesson Learned: Forward thinking companies are using social media to keep their finger on the pulse of their reputation, their brand and their customers.  In my situation, I had gone as high as I felt I could with my problem within the customer service department at Marriott.  Every company is going to have some “bone heads” that make bad decisions.  Even some of the good folks at companies make the wrong decision sometimes.  I just kept running into bad decision makers.

When Marriott saw my tweets and blog, they reached out to me.  The lady from Bill Marriott’s office gave me a generous portion of Marriott Rewards Points because of what happened.  Marriott still didn’t cover the cost of my loss….something I think they should have done…but they did reach out to me, and they did do enough to keep my loyalty.

The Customer Service lesson is simple too.  Marriott gets an A+ on this one.  Organizations must go to where the customers are to find out how well (or poorly) they are doing in the area of customer service.  Your customers on the social media platforms…Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook and more.  Your organization needs to have a presence there and listen to what is being said.  Then do the follow through…if someone has a bad experience, reach out and make it right!

My hat’s off to Marriott.  I got home from work and the bonus points promised this afternoon are already in my account.  Just by reaching out to me (instead of me having to always reach out to them), providing a sincere apology with explanation and by being generous….they kept this traveler returning to Marriott hotels.