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When Customer Experience Goes for a Toss – My Stayzilla Experience

By Adarsh Thampy on 17 Comments / 7775 views

Startups raising millions of dollars in funding. Expanding like crazy. Plans to expand to 20 cities in a month.

We are not new to these.

However, what startups fail to realize is that having presence in multiple cities or growing 50% month on month is not enough to turn their startup into a real business in the long term. Customer experience matters. That’s why Apple is the most valuable tech company in the world.

Being an ardent believer in the startup ecosystem, I decided to book a hotel using one of the startups in the hotel booking space, Stayzilla, when I had to plan a sudden trip from Bangalore to Chennai.

Everything was good. Stayzilla had a comprehensive network of affiliated hotels. They had key criteria as filters. It was also “appeared” cheaper than oyorooms. Most importantly, I was looking for 24 hour check-in as we needed the room from 8 AM Saturday morning to 9 PM Sunday night.

I zeroed in on a hotel and booked my stay. The marketing copy on the website was impressive and promised concierge. It assures “end to end travel assistance”. I had also clearly mentioned my requirement of the early check-in and late checkout during the booking process.

The order went through when I booked at night. After an hour or so, I receive a call from them saying that my booking was not confirmed since the hotel did not have vacant rooms.

I was surprised because normally hotel bookings are made based on available inventory. I never had an issue when I booked through the bigger portals like booking.com.

Since I was too tired and I had already gone to bed as I had an early train to catch the next morning, I agreed to their alternate suggestion.

My booking went through again. However, this time, they did not take upfront payment. I was asked to pay the entire money to the hotel during check-in. The amount quoted was around Rs 1500 for the duration of the stay.

The problem started on Sunday morning at around 8 AM. The hotel guy started banging on the door to let us know that the booking time was over and we need to vacate. This came as a shock to me as I had made a booking till 9 PM for the same day.

I showed the hotel management my booking email and they said the amount quoted was for one day and since our total time in the hotel was more than 24 hours, we need to pay one more day’s rent.

I tried to call the Stayzilla helpline multiple times. Every time I was promised a resolution. However, nothing happened. After 3 hours of arguing and waiting for the Stayzilla call (which never came), we had to vacate the place.

I had to walk around the rest of the day with my luggage. This was even more frustrating as I had to be in the hospital OP waiting area where my luggage caused inconvenience to a lot of patients.

My suggestions to Stayzilla from a user’s point of view

  1. Please do not accept bookings when you were not sure of the availability of rooms. This makes it extremely difficult to plan short term stays with Stayzilla- especially business travels

  2. The website copy and the actual experience differs a lot. For e.g. your website says concierge service. However, I was not offered any help even after repeated calls to the customer care and promises of quick call backs

  3. Please look at customer requirements very clearly. When I specifically said 8 AM to 9 PM, I should have received the quote for the entire stay duration

  4. I received the refund for my first order after 4 days. It would have been nice if I got an intimation from your end that this was processed. Most banks do not send alerts for small amounts that get credited to the bank account

  5. Give a quote when booking is made. I am sure somewhere there was a fine print stating the cost would be additional for more than 24 hour occupancy. But since I mentioned my requirements and you offer concierge service, I assume what you quote me is the final amount

The surprising part is, a few days later, I received an email claiming 100% money back if the experience is not to my liking. I responded to the email 13 days ago and still haven’t heard back from them.

Customer experience matters. Rather than trying to expand too fast, ensure the current markets you are in are well served before moving to the rest.

This is not a one-off case in my experience. Too many growth startups face this issue. Maybe VCs, before deciding to fund companies millions of dollars in subsequent rounds, should look at current customer satisfaction as a key metric.

UPDATE: Stayzilla reached out to me. We discussed ways in which users would be comfortable using Stayzilla and what Stayzilla can do to improve the customer experience. Willing to give them another try.

About me: I am the co-founder of LeadFerry, an all-in-one marketing platform. You can connect with me over LinkedIn or Twitter.

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17 Comments

  1. whoa! not nice 🙁

    adarsh, thanks for sharing the suggestions. most people just rant and use another portal. i believe customer feedback always helps in improving processes.

    we have 1 or 2 rodinhooders from stayzilla. i’ll try and share this post with them to see if they can help you with the “money back” since the customer experience can’t be changed…

  2. Thanks Asha.

    I am not keen on the money back. As a marketer, I find it sad to see marketing promises going undelivered. This typically happens when different teams work in SILOs and the customer experience get’s lost due to lack of cross-team communication.

    This is exactly what prompted me to build LeadFerry (That’s my startup).

    Hopefully, Stayzilla (along with other startups facing these issues) can correct these and deliver an awesome customer experience.

  3. Hi Adarsh,

    I take care of marketing at Stayzilla and I apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. Completely agree on all the points you have mentioned. Have escalated this internally and you should hear back from us today.

    Best Regards

    Veda

  4. whoa… what a shitty experience… why didnt you just pay that guy and stay there??? why vacate??

  5. Alok,

    The room was not worth Rs 1.5K per day. The AC would either work at 19 or not work at all. The TV remote didn’t work and the room was very congested.

    Plus after the heated discussion we had for almost 2 hours, we did not feel like staying there anymore. And most importantly, as someone who was serving notice period and going to bootstrapping a company, 1.5K was too huge to let go 🙂

  6. Thanks Veda.

    Hopefully, things get better. And surely, will try you guys again next time.

  7. Thanks Adarsh for sharing this.

    I was wanting to write a feedback on Oyorooms for quite sometime. I had also specifically booked Oyorooms for 5 nights (14th Sept to 19th Sept) in Goregaon east. The primary reason was to be close to our office and experience the concept first hand.

    My experience is summarised as below:

    1. I sign up on the portal and am not able to register as I do not get a sms to proceed. I click the button on the portal 4-5 times but it seems unresponsive. I give up and suddenly after around 45 mins or so get a barrage of sms. Had no option but to register again.

    2. I reach a residential building (was aware of that as I had stayed in that area for around 12 yrs) prior to this at around 7 pm. The guard at entry gate is not aware about Oyo rooms. Had to check the email to figure out the wing

    3. The watchman at the specific wing was also not aware of Oyorooms

    4. Reached 3rd floor (address was 301,504,603 ). 4 flats on one floor. I ring the doorbell.

    5. A caretaker opens the door. Asks me if I have a resrvation and for how many days. I say 5 days and he says take master bedroom. (he probably was not aware that I had a booking along with my details).

    6. Basic furnishing in the room as specified. The caretaker comes in after 10 mins and asks me to fill a form (really shabby form asking me for all details). After a digital booking, why u want me to fill all details is beyond comprehension.

    7. He asks me if I have an id. I say yes I have a passport. He says passport doesnt work. I was surprised and after sometime he thinks and then says yes it works, he confused it with Pan card. (From the looks of it I can assume that caretakers documentation (and there were 2 which I found out later both aged between 20-25 yrs) will be questionable). He furthur says do you have a photocopy of your identification. My reply was simple its your job to get a copy/ scan etc. He requested if you can get it tomorrow.

    8. I see another gentleman was there in the other room (it is a 2 bedroom flat)

    9. Wash room didnt even have bathing soap.

    10. Breakfast time is 8-10 am (very surprising as normal bkfast time in any hotel is 630 am onwards)

    11. Day 2 – I had to go to Pune and leave at 7 am. I get ready, come out of the room, and see one caretaker sleeping on a matress in living room and the other in kitchen. You cannot lock your room or cupboard. They dont wake up with noise of door opening and closing.

    12. Day 3 – they ask me if we want breakfast. An they can make an omlette/ tea or poha

    13. Somehow, day 5 reached. I checked out by filling a satisfaction survey (how diffcult it is to fill a satisfaction form I realised on that day. especially when there is nothing to be satisfied about)

    Issues:

    1. Apartments rented out as hotels – How compliant are they will be anybodies gues. Have they taken permission from society/ local bodies).

    2. Do they pay commercial rates for electricity/ water/ property tax. Do they even have a shop and establishment certificate

    3. Security – Imagine a woman signs up and checks in with 3-4 unknown males in the house.

    4.  Anyone can check in on my behalf as well (as I did not see any evidence of those 2 caretakers expcting me to comeover)

    5. What if some society members get together and complain to the police about this. What if the police/ society memebers ask them to evict immediately. Very much possible in Mumbai as normally socities dont allow commercial activities except for specific verticals (doctor/ lawyer etc).

    6. What if anti social elements use lax security and verification checks to do any unlawful activity after staying at the premises

    Customer satisfaction is the least of the issues I see here. I assume the basics itself need to be revisited.

     Sandeep Sehgal

    sandeep.sehgal@tivre.com

  8. my god – sandeep that is horrible. have you written to ritesh??

    pls do!!

  9. Sandeep,

    Thanks for sharing. Did you mean oyorooms or stayzilla?

    From what I have seen, OYOrooms apartments are branded with a big OYO signage while stayzilla is not.

    If your experience is indeed with OYORooms, that means the whole shared economy and aggregation space needs to have better control over the listings. To a certain extend, ratings can help solve this issue (AirBnb does the same).

  10. I meant Oyorooms. There was no signage at the door as well (they have signage where they do co brand with a hotel). But they have lots of residential properties as well.

    Yes, Airbnb model is much better (I have used airbnb globally since 2011). And rating and feedback mechanism is much better. From a control perspective, its actually the other way round. Oyorooms have more control than airbnb on the properrties as they manage or comanage those themselves. I see the issue more in terms of lack of processes, business basics etc and a mindless zeal to expand without addressing basics.

    More frightening might be the regulatory aspects for which I dont see any disclosure on their portals.

  11. Yes Asha…was wanting to write this for quite sometime..

    Can you share it with Ritesh…

  12. I think you nailed it with the urge to expand as soon as possible without ensuring the processes are in place and work smoothly.

    I think VCs are to an extend responsible for this as they want hockey stick growth and place little to no importance on the basic metrics.

    Hopefully, businesses would realize the importance of quality service and ensure key metrics required for fundraising and growth is structured around customer satisfaction.

  13. I don’t have any such experience about OYO or Zilla as never used there service , but i agree about ur point of negligence of customer satisfaction by new start-ups  & concentration totally on bubbling valuation .

    I recently used PAYTM for emergency mobile recharge, it was night time & nearby shops were closed so i thought to give PAYTM a try.I visited web, there was offer of full talktime in X amount recharge, so i accept offer & recharged it.

    After few minute recharge was successful but instead of talktime i got 3G data (which was of no use to me as i have other SIM for internet purpose). I called IDEA customer care, they told me in X amount recharge we provide internet only , there is no offer of full talk time.

    So i reach out PAYTM about problem & they replied recharge is successful, they have responsibility till that only. Benefit given is responsibility of IDEA.

    After arguing & giving print screen shot of offer at their webpage, they promised to solve it in 72 hours, but it’s more than a week, still no solution. So i agree to the point, START UPS really don’t care customers. 

  14. Hi all,

    Customer satisfaction is indeed very important. But I wanted to add a few points

    1. Its not that they do not care for customer satisfaction its just that they do not have the guts to apologise to customers that they went wrong and do not know to give stick to suppliers or partners for not following the rules and guidelines set by them.

    2. Sometimes customer satisfaction is a double edge sword flipkart was duped by a Hyderabad man for very large amount of money as they always were believing that the customer returned the genuine product. We were selling our books on amazon. And one customer returned to us a book which looked as if it was bought at roadside and accused us of selling fake items. Amazon customer care were quick to jump to conclusions and kept on our account on suspension mode. I was furious and wrote back to them that we are reputed organization operating since last 53 years and they should have mechanisms to check if Customer can also be wrong.

    At the end I feel that each customer complaint should be looked into detail and mechanism shud be set to check for finding the truth.

    Regards
    Madhuresh shah

  15. madhuresh,

    pls chk out the first few comments. the head of marketing at stayzilla is a rodinhooder and i pinged him as soon as the post got published. he responded in no time, apologised and share the feedback with his team.

    🙂

    that’s why i say, online communities like trh rock!!

  16. Madhuresh shah,

    I agree with your concerns of running a business being a double edged sword. It can get tricky if the customer is not honest.

    My sister used to work with a big hotel chain and she  used to tell me how certain people used to exploit the customer friendly policies the hotel chain put in place. If customers gave negative feedback about the stay, they got 100% money refunded.

    Of course, some took advantage of this. However, there’s a huge enough customer base who are genuine. The pros of having customer friendly policies far outweigh the cons of pulling back due to a few customers who can go rogue.

  17. completely agree with your view

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