More Customer Service Rants
It seems the economy has had a negative impact, not just on the bottom line, but on customer service as well. Businesses are shortsightedly trying to save dimes at the expense of dollars, as experienced this past week. My last rant was about caterers; this one is about hotels. I managed a two-day conference for nearly 200 attendees held at a local hotel. The problems began before the event with the front desk employees, some of whom were apparently not trained in how to make a reservation. When attendees called to reserve a room, some employees transferred the calls to a toll-free number at a national call center rather than handling them locally. The call center had no information about our conference, the special rate we were receiving, or those individuals we were paying for (about 20), so they charged credit cards. Just try to get the charge reversed. That was like pulling teeth. One person called several times and insisted to the desk clerks that they make his reservation local...