A couple of weeks ago I was speaking in Miami, and my clients put me up in the Trump National Doral Hotel. It’s a beautiful hotel, and the Trump brand is known for excellent customer service, so I expected to have a nice stay.
The night before my program, I scheduled to have breakfast delivered to my room by 7:30 so that I could get ready and eat and not have to rush before heading to my meetings. But in the morning, after I’d woken and was getting ready in my room, 7:30 rolled around, and there was no knock on my door. I waited. At 7:40, still no breakfast. Finally, at 7:45, I called the front desk.
I told them that my breakfast had not arrived, but I was going to need to go downstairs to eat at this point since I was running out of time.
The manager quickly asked, “What can we do to fix this?”
I told him that I really didn’t have time at this point, and I was just going to head down to the breakfast buffet.
“No, really,” he said. “What can I do to fix this?”
I told him that if I could get just some scrambled eggs in ten minutes, then I might be able to eat before I had to leave.
“You got it,” he said.
Exactly ten minutes later, a hotel employee delivered a tray with scrambled eggs, bacon, and coffee to my room. I don’t know what strings that manager had to pull to get breakfast to my room so quickly, but I know that he was empowered to make whatever decisions he needed to get things moving.
That night, when I returned to my room, I found a tray of chocolates and a hand-written note from the manager, apologizing for the inconvenience. I was incredibly impressed. Not only did this manager take responsibility to fix the mistake, he went above and beyond to make sure that I left the hotel with a good taste in my mouth. He didn’t have to ask permission to make sure that he was allowed to get a chef to stop what they were doing and make me breakfast instead. He didn’t have to check before sending chocolate to my room. He saw something that needed fixing, and he took the necessary actions to do it.
Are your employees empowered to offer good customer service? Do you have a budget set aside for fixing mistakes and righting wrongs and making customers happy, whatever it takes? Too often, we don’t trust our employees enough to believe that they will make the right decisions. But when we entrust and empower our people with our brand, amazing customer service happens.
When I checked out, I brought a signed copy of my book to the front desk. I asked for the manager’s boss, and I handed him the book. I thanked him for the excellent service and experience, and asked that he pass along the book to the manager who had helped me. And that’s my last point: when you see good customer service, point it out. Reward it. Celebrate it. Let employees know that they are valuable for their service.
As a speaker and author, Curtis Zimmerman has impacted over one million people with his life-changing messages and award-winning programs. Curtis is an expert at transforming organizations by inspiring individuals to live their lives at performance level.
Want to be inspired? Check out his podcast The Next 24 Hours.
