{"id":115,"date":"2015-12-08T15:51:09","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T20:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.surveyyoda.com\/?p=115"},"modified":"2016-01-05T20:31:15","modified_gmt":"2016-01-06T01:31:15","slug":"got-married-the-last-of-us-did","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.surveyyoda.com\/?p=115","title":{"rendered":"Got Married, the Last of Us Did"},"content":{"rendered":"
Ahh, siblings. \u00a0Love them, tolerate them, avoid them, you can\u2019t always help but be related to them. \u00a0Lucky for me, my brothers and I have grown closer over the years, and this year was a great year for The Brothers Mahoney. \u00a0You see, my youngest brother got married, and Brother Number Three is expecting a baby (due near March 17. \u00a0Coincidence? \u00a0Methinks not!).<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n

\"Just<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Excited for the wedding, and even more excited (to be honest) at the prospect of a night away from our two boys (whom we love dearly, but everyone needs a break from family every once in a while, right?), we headed up to the room I had booked at the resort hosting the event. \u00a0After a great round of golf with my bothers and dad (the round was great, my playing was less so.), I grabbed my bags and headed up to the room. \u00a0It was well-appointed, but warm. \u00a0The drapes were closed, and the AC setting appeared to be set correctly. \u00a0But after meeting the groomsmen for lunch and returning to room nearly two hours later, the room was still a bit uncomfortable, and I let the front desk know. \u00a0A promise of service was made, and I proceeded to get my things squared away.<\/p>\n

After taking a quick shower prior to dressing for the rehearsal dinner, I noticed on stepping out of the bathroom that the room felt warmer still. \u00a0So much so, in fact, that after dressing I had to take a slow stroll in the hallway where the AC was working to stop sweating through my suit! \u00a0Stopping by the front desk on our way out, the staff indicated to my wife and I they were aware of the issue, and that the service department was going to take care of it as soon as possible. \u00a0And yet, four hours later, returning from the rehearsal dinner, the room was even hotter than we left! \u00a0Calling the front desk, the staff offered to move us to a new room on the same floor. \u00a0So imagine how we felt at the end of the rather long day when my wife and I had:<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
    \n
  • Asked for, and were promised, assistance.<\/li>\n
  • Asked for, and were promised assistance a second time.<\/li>\n
  • Forced to pack up all our things and move to a new room that (wait for it)…<\/li>\n
  • Smelled musty, stale, and of three-day-old cigarette smoke!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    <\/div>\n
    \n

    We gave up, fell into bed, and awoke the next day mostly rested, and still more than a little furious. \u00a0Given what we had paid per night, we were tremendously disappointed. \u00a0To be fair, the staff were courteous and polite, the golf course was beautiful, the wedding and reception (both held on-site at the resort) were wonderful. \u00a0Ahh, but the room. \u00a0And the kicker: the survey.<\/p>\n

    Look, here\u2019s the thing: don\u2019t ask someone for their feedback if you\u2019re not going to do something about it. \u00a0If you ask for the feedback, you are committing yourself to one of two decisions: we will act on this data, through to logical and complete conclusion, or we will not, and become a pariah in the minds of our current-and-soon-to-be-former-customers.<\/p>\n

    \n

    Guess what the resort chose?<\/p>\n

    The survey arrived two days later, via email. \u00a0Most know, I\u2019m more than happy to take just about anyone\u2019s survey. \u00a0And this one was a solid example of a well-structured survey: personalized invitation, contextual respondent experience (to a point), and responsive design (I take most surveys on a mobile device these days, and I won\u2019t complete a survey if it can\u2019t render elegantly in that environment). \u00a0And I absolutely hammered the resort on the room quality, likelihood to recommend, and likelihood to return. \u00a0I provided exquisite details on the experience as a whole, and how so very much our perceptions had been tainted by one, single aspect of our stay. \u00a0And the manager responded!<\/p>\n

    With a form email.<\/div>\n
    To which I replied.<\/div>\n
    To which reply I have heard absolutely nothing, for going on four months.<\/div>\n
    \n

    Should I wait by my inbox, you think?<\/p>\n

    I\u2019m all for offering up and present and opportunity for feedback capture at and about each point of interaction, but: be ready to take action. \u00a0Don\u2019t ask the question if you\u2019re not prepared to act on the answer. \u00a0To do so yields angry and upset former customers, who will, in turn, write about you. \u00a0Tweet about you. Talk about you. Facebook about you. \u00a0Yelp about you. TripAdvisor review you. \u00a0Or, in my case, all of the above. \u00a0What do you think the long-term impact of this might be? \u00a0Watermark Consulting says you\u2019ll be labeled with Forrester\u2019s \u201cCustomer Experience Laggard\u201d label, and see significant negative financial performance. \u00a0In the Age of the Customer, can you really afford this? \u00a0And the fix is easy:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    <\/div>\n
      \n
    1. Ask for feedback<\/li>\n
    2. Tie the feedback to the interaction, and everything else you know about the customer<\/li>\n
    3. Identify the complete solution to the issue, and implement it (at a minimum, begin the implementation)<\/li>\n
    4. Engage with the customer, apologize, and document the plan to mitigate the issue going forward<\/li>\n
    5. Re-engage with the customer once the solution is in place<\/li>\n
    6. Wash, rinse, repeat<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Ahh, siblings. \u00a0Love them, tolerate them, avoid them, you can\u2019t always help but be related to them. \u00a0Lucky for me, my brothers and I have grown closer over the years, and this year was a great year for The Brothers… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cxp"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4bqFE-1R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.surveyyoda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.surveyyoda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.surveyyoda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.surveyyoda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.surveyyoda.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.surveyyoda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124,"href":"https:\/\/blog.surveyyoda.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions\/124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.surveyyoda.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.surveyyoda.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.surveyyoda.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}