Last weekend, I had to travel to Chicago due to family emergency. During my short visit, I stayed at the LondonHouse Chicago for the convenience of its location.
Having stayed at different hotels in the greater Chicago area in the past few years, I unfortunately had a very unpleasant experience with LondonHouse during this visit.
If you’ve been following xproject52, you would know how much I love traveling. But here’s something you don’t know just yet…I have a habit of leaving hotel reviews on TripAdvisor after each stays. Why? Because I want to remember whether I should stay in the same place if I ever visit the same country/state again (or perhaps recommend it to friends since most of them ask me tips when traveling).
To summarize my unpleasant experience with LondonHouse, the problem was basically the lack of training and internal communications among their customer service reps and front desk staff. I had to change room 3 times due to their inconsistent and poor management. After checking out, I left a candid and descriptive feedback on what went wrong during my stay on TripAdvisor. The day after my review was published, I received two missed calls from LondonHouse and a private message on TripAdvisor from their management team. They explained in my voicemail that what I experienced was unusual and they would love to invite me back to the hotel again.
Part of me wanted to give them a chance to make up but the other part of me felt annoyed because I got no time for this. Time is perhaps the most precious thing I’ve got now and I simply don’t have the time to give it another try just because they want a chance for correction. So it got me wonder…. is it possible to replace a bad experience with a good one? In what circumstances are we willing to give things another try? That’s an important question to keep in mind as we design products. Perhaps, once we’ve lost a customer, we will never get him/her back!
X Project 52 