I recently stayed at one of the more modern hotels in Las Vegas and was reminded of one of the most often overlooked tenets of customer service: in order to respond to the voice of the customer, you must first be able to hear it.

The hotel where I stayed has a popular lounge on the top floor with a beautiful view of the city. (Ok, beautiful is probably the wrong word to use for Las Vegas, but you get the picture.) The lounge was accessible from my room elevator, so one evening I left my room, went up to the lounge, and was having a great time until I realized I had forgotten to take some prescription medication. So I went back to my room and after a few minutes went back to the elevator to return to the lounge.

From this moment on, the hotel experienced a customer service disaster. To this day, I don’t think they realize the financial impact of this disaster.  After I got into the elevator, despite numerous attempts, the elevator button to take me to the lounge wouldn't work.  After going up and down a couple of times, inserting my room key into the security slot, and asking other hotel passengers to do the same, I went back to the lobby to try another elevator.  No luck.  I tried other elevators in two separate elevator banks, but none of the lounge buttons worked.  Then I noticed a dozen or more other people going in and coming out of the elevators looking dazed and confused.  It became obvious we were all having the same experience and we were all getting very frustrated and angry.

No one was at the service desk near the elevators, so I told a nearby bartender about the problem.  He told me that the only way to get to the lounge after 11pm is to use an elevator located 50 yards away, outside the hotel.  I looked at my watch and it was 11:10 pm.  I had left the lounge before 11pm and I tried to return after 11pm.  I looked everywhere and found no signs informing guests of this policy.  Someone at the hotel apparently decided to let its guests figure out this unfortunate policy on their own.  

When I finally made my way to the lounge elevator outside, I found a long line of people waiting to get in and a door man with an anti-customer attitude.  After I explained my situation, he curtly informed me “it has always been this way” and told me to wait in line and expect to pay a cover charge.  I believe “no thank you” is the proper English translation for what I said to him after that.    

I decided to take my displeasure to someone at the front desk.  I asked to talk to the shift manager.  He was very nice, heard me out, and offered his apologies….but provided no solution.  He didn’t even write down my complaint.  And then it dawned on me.  The reason this problem had not been fixed is because hotel staff, upon hearing about the problem, did not capture the complaint in a way that made it actionable by the organization.

I asked for the hotel manager's email address and I sent him a message detailing my experience.  I heard nothing from him during the duration of my stay, though I did receive a call from him soon thereafter.   Once we're able to connect I’ll probably be offered an explanation and an apology, but the hotel already missed its window of opportunity with me and with the many other guests it angered that night.  I’ve already posted my experience on a couple of English and Japanese travel-related web sites, undoubtedly influencing the decisions of other travelers for years to come.

The Web has a perfect memory that cannot be erased.  Organizations need to stop deflecting customer problems and start systematically capturing the customer experience from every touch point, building organizationally processes that spot problems quickly, react to them effectively, and, more importantly, anticipate customer needs in a way that results in customer delight.

We built Helpstream to make it easy for every customer-facing person in an organization to systematically capture and respond to customer issues, even providing customers an easy way to submit information themselves.  Helping organizations listen and respond to their customers is what Helpstream is all about.