Last week I was in the US presenting at a client conference when one of the attendees shared an experience with the hotel we were staying at.

When she checked into her room, she noticed what looked like blood on her bed comforter. She phoned down to the front desk to request that it be changed.

The person at the desk indicated that they could not just change the comforter, but would come up and strip the entire bed. The guest indicated this was not necessary, she only wanted the comforter changed.

However, the front desk was insistent, and began to argue with the guest until finally a a Manager was consulted. Eventually the comforter was changed as requested by the guest.

My Perspective: There were actually 2 lessons here.

1. Often, in our rush to recovery, we fail to ask what would satisfy the customer. It seems obvious, but before charging ahead with a solution, be sure to ask what the guest wants.  We often impose our values on what we think the customer may value, when in fact they often already have a satisfactory solution in mind.
2. Create guidelines not rules. Obviously, this hotel had a procedure about what to do when a guest complained about bed linen. However, they didn’t allow the employee the flexibility to use their common sense to respond to the customer request. They needed Manager approval to deviate from the standards. This creates issues with the guest and doesn’t inspire the employee to use their judgement.

Both issues could have been resolved simply by empowering the employee to use their common sense after apologizing to the guest and simply asking them what would make them happy.

As it was, even though the guest finally got the solution they requested, they had to argue to get it — and was left with a bad feeling.