David Emery Online

Mass produced customer service

12 March 2007

I’m back from Brighton, which was very nice – I seemed to luck out rather nicely with the weather, which was ~15 degrees the whole time.

One of the most interesting aspects – other then the city itself – was the hotel we stayed in; specifically its customer service. Being someone relatively recently out of university, we went for pretty much the cheapest hotel we could find, and ended up in a little place called Millards. As fitting for the price we paid, the room we stayed in was pretty small (although that’s what we expected), but it was nice enough and had all the things you would really need in a hotel room.

Typically, I dislike staying in hotels mostly due to the customer service you receive. Obviously, good customer service is possibly one of the most important things a hotel can do and every hotel knows that.

The result is mass produced customer service.

“Thanks for staying with us.”

“I hope you had a lovely stay.”

Of course, in most places the people saying these things not only don’t mean them, I think they may have forgotten what they mean they’ve said them so many times. The result for me is that in most hotels I’d really rather they’d leave me alone – give me an option to check in/out online and I’d be straight there (maybe even have a credit card as your room key?).

At the hotel I stayed in, they really actually seemed to care, which really came as a surprise. The little things, like having a conversation with you and actually listening to what you’re saying; genuine friendliness goes so much future then simple please and thankyou’s do.

People in service industries seem to have forgotten why they are being nice to their customers, and most seem to be simply going through the motions. The human touch is incredibly important but, like in computer animated films where a cartoony person (like in “The Incredibles”) looks better then a “realistic” one (like in “Final Fantasy”), faking it just doesn’t work – no human touch is better then fake niceties.

Kindness just doesn’t scale.