A Customer Service Story and a Moment of Silence

This week on the Saturday Morning Muse, I’d like to relay a customer service story. I like to periodically unpack customer service experiences I’ve had with the intent to provide a teachable moment or two for my readers and listeners.

In mid-January, we, along with several of our extended family members, rented a cabin near the Wisconsin Dells to go screaming down an icy hill in very large inner tubes. We were excited for our stay as the advertisements for the cabin were inviting and the unit was highly rated by others who had stayed there. Our pre-stay expectations were high.

Upon our arrival, our expectations met with the hard reality that the unit was not as clean and idyllic as we were led to believe. Everything was a bit dingy and the carpets throughout the home were well past their useful lives. The place was functional, but that’s about the extent of it.

When we returned home, I received the obligatory email from the rental company asking for my opinion regarding our stay. On a five point scale, I rated the unit as “average,” and in the comments field, I left specific feedback regarding the condition of the carpets, furniture, and the level of cleanliness on our arrival.

Two days later, I received a response from the rental company. I was eager to open their response to see if they’d actually read what I had to say. To my disappointment (but not surprise), I received the following:

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on your recent stay with us! It was our pleasure to provide the highest quality service and accommodations, and your positive review is a wonderful indication we are delivering the hospitality our guests have come to expect and deserve. The satisfaction of our guests is very important to us and we make our best effort to ensure everyone enjoys a comfortable, rewarding stay.

Thank you again for your feedback! We will continue to strive for excellence and look forward to serving you for many more years in the true spirit of hospitality for which _________ are known.

Ugh.

The reason I wasn’t surprised by their response is that I’ve become accustomed to marketers and business owners who ask for feedback, but then completely ignore it—opting instead for canned, automated responses. Remember the Seinfeld episode where they “take the reservation, they just don’t hold the reservation?” That’s how this makes me feel as a consumer. I find this behavior astonishing because why ask for feedback if you’re not going to do anything with it. Nothing says “I could care less about my customer” more than asking for feedback and then ignoring it.

The lesson today is to pay attention to what your customers are saying. Listen intently. Collect both qualitative and quantitative feedback and then provide a response that indicates the customer was heard. It blows my mind how many business owners, managers, and individual contributors completely lose sight of who pays the bills—the customer.

I likely would have used this vendor again if they’d said something like: “Thank you for staying with us. Your opinion matters and we are taking your comments into consideration as we work to update our facilities.” Instead, I feel like I did not receive the value-for-money I was expecting, wasted five minutes of my life by responding to their survey with kind, actionable feedback, and was rewarded with a passive-aggressive eff you.

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To conclude, here’s a moment of silence for Tyre Nichols… Let’s do better. We have to do better. Much better.