In my previous post I wrote about the great experience I had at the InterContinental Le Grand Paris. Speaking of IHG brands, on our last night in Paris we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Charles de Gaulle Airport in order to be at our departures gate with plenty of time to check in the next day. As I mentioned in the previous post, I usually look for IHG hotels whenever I travel, but especially when I am not very familiar with the destination. And so we booked a room at this Holiday Inn Express. But this experience did not meet my expectations. It felt short. However, the post-stay-Twitter-customer-care experience made up for it and it's a great example of how a global brand in hospitality is looking after the brand and its customers.
We arrived in the afternoon and checked in. The front desk attendant was very friendly, polite and professional and she gave us an upgrade to an executive room because of my loyalty card status, which was great. Only thing was, this executive room's bed is awful. I was not surprised that the room is very small (as they tend to be in many hotels in Europe), but my wife and I were surprised that the bed in this executive room is a Murphy bed (wall bed). The bed has two metal feet jutting out on either side which one can keep bumping into on account of very little space between the bed and the wall. But we took that in stride and even thought it was a funny thing since we kept bumping into them (as long as we didn't hit a toe, it would be alright).
But then we tried the bed and this bed is very uncomfortable – uneven – like Murphy beds and pull out couches can be. We decided to ask for a different room and – coincidentally at that point – there was a blackout at the hotel. All electricity went out. We went to the front desk and waited for Rommie, the front desk manager, to have a minute since she was really trying to do something about the blackout (she was on the mobile phone speaking to someone about it). Once we were able to talk to her, she understandably told us that she couldn't tell if she had another room to do the switch because her computer was down. Being close to dinner time – and not knowing if the electricity was coming back any time soon – we decided to go to Paris for supper and deal with the room upon our return to the hotel. When we returned Rommie had gone home and we told the front desk person in charge about the bed and that we would like another room. Unfortunately by then all he could offer was a regular smoking room. My wife thought that room could be worse than the exec room (because the smoking room might smell of smoking, which we don’t like at all). So we kept the exec room and slept there as best we could. When we checked out and the attendant asked us how our stay was, we said – ok, “but the bed in that room is terrible, really bad.” She did not know how to react and just gave us the bill for € 221.20.
Before we left for the airport, I tweeted that the bed in question was the worst I had ever slept in at any hotel. We flew back home and several hours later when I checked my Twitter account I saw a reply by IHGCare "We would like to assist w/ your exp..." inviting me to email IHGCare to explain. So I did. Very soon after I sent the email, I got a very nice response and apology for the inconvenience from Global IHG care indicating that they would forward my comments to the appropriate people at the CDG HIE. They also said they would credit my loyalty program account with a few thousand points.
As I said in the first paragraph, this experience is a great example of using Twitter strategically to protect and enhance a brand's reputation and of showing customers that they are important to the business. IHG is out there listening and responding to customers concerns and doing it in a timely fashion. This ensures that customers remain engaged with the brand and hopefully satisfied. However, having said all this, I do think that in cases such as this one, it would be much better to empower front line workers to deal with issues like these. The front desk person in charge should have been able to apologize on the spot and to offer me the loyalty program points. If I wasn't a loyalty program member then she should have been able to offer a discount on the rate right there. Many customers are not on Twitter and might not be inclined to try and escalate the issue. You would just lose those customers. So the moral of the story is: yes, use Twitter to listen, engage, respond and promote, but you should also empower your front line workers to do the same in person and on the spot.
Happy travels.
Jaime
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