Some people are overwhelmingly stupid, arrogant, idiotic hen it comes to business, especially in this day and age of the interwebs!
I run a service business that lives on customer reviews. (year round vacation rental) As a result, we do EVERYTHING to make the customer experince positive if for no other reason is that a bad review can kill you! The only recurring complaint we can't effectively cure is the remotes on the various devices, despite the best efforts of Harmony Remotes. We simply tell guests to snag a 12 year old on the street to figure it out. Seriously, we had a guest miss up his departure dante, and he didn't vacate. (but he was out doing vacation things and not answering his phone! We got in the horn with the incoming guest, told them to book a room at the local 5 star hotel on us,and go to dinner on us. The overstaying guest was aghast at his mistake, (once he actually read his contract. In his defense, we normally rent by the week, Saturday through Saturday during peak season, but 3 days in the shoulder and off season. It happened to be memorial day weekend, and he just misread his paper work.)
To make everything right, we simply charged him one extra night, and refunded the incoming guest one days rent. We ate the hotel and the dinner costs, chalking it up to good customer service. The bottom line, both guest left 5 star, glowing reviews, including mentioning how happy they were with the resolution, and in fact, both have been back since, one couple several times. The lesson we learned is anytime we have unusual booking dates we phone the people the week before they occupy to confirm that we are all on the same page, since we are usually 100% booked, and with only one house, have no room to put an over staying guest.
It cost us virtually nothing, but we get repeated benefit of doing the right thing. If a deal is a POS and treats you like a POS, (and you have genuinely tried to resolve the issue, instead of just windging) then yell it from mountain top. The inverse should also be true. When someone performs above and beyond the call, they deserve to be called out as well.
Icarus
I run a service business that lives on customer reviews. (year round vacation rental) As a result, we do EVERYTHING to make the customer experince positive if for no other reason is that a bad review can kill you! The only recurring complaint we can't effectively cure is the remotes on the various devices, despite the best efforts of Harmony Remotes. We simply tell guests to snag a 12 year old on the street to figure it out. Seriously, we had a guest miss up his departure dante, and he didn't vacate. (but he was out doing vacation things and not answering his phone! We got in the horn with the incoming guest, told them to book a room at the local 5 star hotel on us,and go to dinner on us. The overstaying guest was aghast at his mistake, (once he actually read his contract. In his defense, we normally rent by the week, Saturday through Saturday during peak season, but 3 days in the shoulder and off season. It happened to be memorial day weekend, and he just misread his paper work.)
To make everything right, we simply charged him one extra night, and refunded the incoming guest one days rent. We ate the hotel and the dinner costs, chalking it up to good customer service. The bottom line, both guest left 5 star, glowing reviews, including mentioning how happy they were with the resolution, and in fact, both have been back since, one couple several times. The lesson we learned is anytime we have unusual booking dates we phone the people the week before they occupy to confirm that we are all on the same page, since we are usually 100% booked, and with only one house, have no room to put an over staying guest.
It cost us virtually nothing, but we get repeated benefit of doing the right thing. If a deal is a POS and treats you like a POS, (and you have genuinely tried to resolve the issue, instead of just windging) then yell it from mountain top. The inverse should also be true. When someone performs above and beyond the call, they deserve to be called out as well.
Icarus