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A friend of mine had booked hotel rooms for her boss on one of the top 3 travel booking portals in India. Let’s call it xyztrip.com
3 hours before her boss was due to check in at the hotel in Malaysia, he realised that the reservations were in my friend’s name instead of his name (since my friend had paid by credit card she had mistakenly entered her name as the guest name)
My friend got worried since Rs 22k was on line for forfeiture – She called up xyztrip.com’s customer service department and very politely asked the Customer Service Agent if he could change the guest’s name on the reservation and inform the hotel in Malaysia so that her boss could check in.
“No Ma’am, it’s not possible. As per the policy no details on the reservation can be changed”
My friend and I had just come out of a meeting at 3 pm and had ordered lunch when she got on the phone. Lunch was getting cold and I was getting more and more irritated overhearing this conversation.
My friend is a very polite person and even though she was miserable, she was still being very polite to the customer service agent.
Finally after half an hour of ping-pong, I thought, let’s try it the ‘Indian way’ – I tried screaming at the agent and asked to speak to the supervisor hoping that a senior agent might have some more sense.
We were promised to be transferred to the supervisor and put on hold for another 15 minutes.
As a last resort, I pulled out my phone and sent a very polite email to the CEO of xyztrip.com (I know him as a vague acquaintance ) and went back to eating our lunch, not really expecting much.
We got a call back from the ‘Customer Delight Officer’ of the company within 15 mins and she just asked one question, “What should be the name of the guest on the reservation be modified to ?”
Boom -And just like that, her problem was solved.
While I was pleasantly surprised, it got me thinking –
How many people know the email id of a CEO of a large multi million dollar company ?
Or Why should one have to write to the CEO to get a simple issue resolved ?
Or Why didn’t the Customer Service Agent not take initiative in the first place ?
I guess he is too lowly paid / demotivated and probably just thinks of ‘Customer Service’ as a temporary role before he moves on to bigger things.
Why is customer service such a low priority in companies, especially when they form a large part of the customer interaction ?
Why is it thought of as a cost center when one should be thinking of it as a profit center ?
Thoughts ?