Room 324
Note: the hotel in this lovely photo is not the hotel featured in the story.
When a customer’s worst nightmare happens as a result of a series of consecutive missteps, this is a red flag that processes and training practices call for a serious intervention. This story can be used to help hotel chains around the world to improve their service quality and deliver superb customer experiences.
It was a long day. After a five-hour afternoon flight and a 45-minute wait at the conveyor belt for delayed luggage, I took off in a taxi to my pre-booked hotel. I needed to spend the night in Frankfurt near the airport as there was another, this time early morning flight to catch the next day. The taxi driver dropped me off at the hotel’s entrance and I found myself at the reception desk, with three or four hotel employees facing me, clustered in a medium-size reception space. Obviously, it had been a strenuous day for them, too, as my arrival time was close to 10pm and some of the employees looked tired and somehow demotivated.
I was greeted a bit sulkily by a young lady who checked my ID documents, asked for a bank card and gave me a form to fill out. She then handed me back the passport, a several-page invoice, and a small sleeve containing my magnetic-stripe room card where she had written down the room number, straight from her glaring computer screen. The lady finally smiled and wished me a nice stay. I was too tired to spend any time at the hotel’s cosy bar and decided to head straight to the room, even though I had not had dinner. After all, it was more important to get some sleep. And here it was, third floor and the place where I would spend the final night of my entire trip. Room 324. Only if the room door would open, of course… having realized that the likelihood of this happening was definitely low, after a few unsuccessful attempts I went back to the reception downstairs. The young lady and a couple of the male receptionists were still there and as there were no other customers in line, I quickly told them that the swipe card did not seem to be working.
There seemed to be a slight reaction of surprise that perhaps the room card had not been activated or an even more subtle one - that I probably don’t know how to open the room door; in fact, there were four different ways the card could have been inserted into the slot reader and, after all, not all customers are expected to be bright enough to figure out the right position from the first try. In any case, if these were their thoughts, thankfully they did not share them aloud. The sulky young lady came with me all the way to the third floor to open the door herself. She confirmed that there was something wrong with the card and let me in with her master key. As lights and electric appliances worked seamlessly with my card, she asked whether I really needed a card replacement. I was quite tired, knew that I would not go out for dinner and thought that she probably had had a hell of a day herself, so I smiled and told her that she did not need to do this.
Finally by myself… we humans are indisputably social creatures, but there is a secret beauty at times in being alone not only with your thoughts but also within the immediate physical space around you. Alone with all the memories from the long trip but also with special objects, such as your suitcase and even your pajamas. It was close to 10:30pm, so I quickly unpacked a few things, took a shower and sank into the sea of white quilts, fresh bed sheets and green, velvety pillows. The light was still on, as I was browsing through some last-minute stuff on my mobile phone before calling it a day. All of a sudden, I heard a familiar noise outside the room and before my brain had enough time to process this unexpected decibel disturbance, the door opened and there was a man in his late 40s or early 50s, dragging his suitcase into my sleep kingdom, looking at me as if I had been too daring to open an entire suitcase on the floor of his room. Instead of quietly exiting together with his suitcase, the gentleman put me through the ordeal of modelling my night clothes in “his room” and commenced a real argument concerning the entitlement to this room, waving his room number 324 on one of the familiar sleeves as a supporting proof. Lastly, figuring out that I won’t quickly change, pack everything in and leave the room, he sped up to reception downstairs as I closed the door on him.
Awakening from the initial state of shock, I did not have any room for other thoughts that would have disturbed the otherwise peaceful evening. Thoughts such as what if this had happened when I was not in the room, and what if there was a guest who would have taken advantage of a suitcase lying open on the floor, and what if he had entered as I was taking a shower… Enough! There was an audible knock at the door and, making sure to strike a subtle combat pose in advance, I opened. Standing under the bright corridor light was a tall hotel employee - it was hard to tell whether he was a team manager, security personnel or just one of the guys from the reception desk whom I had failed to notice. Brushing aside the fact that this was the second man in the past ten minutes who saw me in my night clothes at my hotel room (now this is starting to sound wrong), I muttered a semi-polite hello. The man looked me straight in the eyes and sincere suspicion was written all over his face. He wanted to know what I was doing in this room, as in their system it was listed as “free”, and he was somehow almost convinced I should know the answer. He then asked if he could see an invoice and what my name was. I did not look for my invoice and only gave him my first name, saying that I had just checked in and that they should figure out what happened. Without uttering any apology or carrying an air of remorse for having disrupted the peace of an (alleged!) hotel guest at 11pm, the man left.
Now, I was feeling a bit confused. I went straight to my travel bag and found the invoice snuggled somewhere at the bottom of it. And here was my room number together with the payment details, in the middle of all the other numbers and text. Room 324 was… room 342. No wonder the entry card wasn’t working. I picked up the phone next to my bed and called reception. A polite male voice answered. I introduced myself and said that I am the guest in room 324, but I have realized that the number on my sleeve did not correspond to the number on my invoice. There was a brief silence on the other end of the receiver, and then the receptionist said that they had already found out what had happened and it was a new employee in training who had caused this confusion. He apologized shortly, assured me that their employees receive the best of training, and wished me a good night.
My curiosity whether anyone would say anything the next morning was not fed properly, as there were two brand new receptionists that must have arrived in the morning who checked me out. During the next flight, sitting next to a very talented Bulgarian orchestra conductor living in Germany, who was quite busy rehearsing the score for his upcoming concert on his tablet, I started scribbling down some notes quite different from his. (In all frankness, being classically trained, I would have rather chatted with the conductor and marveled at his digital (presumably) Eroica partitur, had there not been another man in the middle seat listening to the Best Russian Hits on his mobile.)
How could this situation have been avoided by the hotel’s management? People are prone to making errors but how does one reduce the incidence of human error in situations like this? I wrote out all the fragile chain links that were important contributors to this nightmarish customer experience and security breach. While the first error sprouted the original situation that unfolded, it was the ensuing consequence of faulty steps that caused the ultimate “crash” of the customer service system.
Copying the room number by hand from the computer screen
Obviously, this mistake is easy to make, as our brain can quickly switch the places of numbers and this happens more often in our daily lives than we would like to believe. So why would such an important part of the customer journey as giving a guest the (right) room number be done manually and with so much space for error? There were several solutions I could think of right away:
have a second pair of eyes check the numbers before handing out the sleeve to every guest. This reduces the possibility of making mistakes if one is tired and absent-minded;
after printing out the customer invoice, put the sleeve directly under the room number written on the invoice before writing down the room number - having the three-digit number directly under the original one would reduce the possibility of a human error;
print out a sleeve with the room number on it directly linked to the number on the invoice in the software, thus eliminating the necessity for a manual entry;
eliminate all physical cards, have hotel door locks with numbers and have customers type in a code other guests would not know - e.g. the last four digits of their phone number. I had this at one of the last hotels but while more sophisticated, this solution also opened up the possibility for other types of man-induced error.
The failure of the reception team to identify the correct reason why the room’s electronic key card does not work
Had the receptionists immediately checked the invoice against the room number written on the sleeve as I went downstairs to report that the room does not open, the mistake would have gotten fixed before it was too late. Instead, they assumed that either I did not know how to properly use the card or that there was a technical flaw with the magnetic stripe.
Not supplying a replacement of the room card to the guest
Making it obligatory to supply card replacements to hotel guests in cases of malfunction (instead of asking the customer whether to do so) would have led to the activation of the room number 324 and could have potentially rung an alarm bell that the room is still listed as available in the system.
The hotel’s automatic sensor system did not link to room availability in the customer service interface
Wouldn’t it be nice to have integrated functionality in the guest management software that sends out red alerts to hotel desk staff when rooms that are listed as available have electricity switched on? Enabling such functionality after room cleaning hours may not prevent errors but could ensure better monitoring and quicker staff reactions.
And now that we got the hard factors out of the way, here are the soft ones that contributed to a customer experience disaster:
Sending a hotel employee to a guest’s room at 11pm instead of analyzing the situation first and finding other options
Comments are hardly necessary on this one - the employee who appeared at my door did not make any effort to apologize or make the guest feel at ease. Even if it was not easy for the reception team to react adequately and identify the root cause for the situation right away, picking up the phone and calling the guest on the room’s direct line would have been a much more appropriate thing to do first.
Lack of adequate training and monitoring on guest communication in cases that would be rated high in the escalation level matrix
Had I not made that phone call myself to reception, I doubt anyone would have bothered to inform me that they had made a mistake and what had happened. The guys at reception the next morning did not say anything either.
Failing to provide a formal apology or another form of compensation, which would be imperative in healthy customer service environments
After not getting any proper apology from the hotel or the personnel, I did leave feedback about my negative experience on the booking site. Nobody got in touch even then, perhaps raising valid questions about the overall customer culture at the organization.
Punishing the one employee who made a very likely mistake given the state of the existing processes would not have been a solution in this case - instead, it would have been used as handwashing for poor quality practices, inefficient processes and inadequate employee training and screening. Lots for the management team to get started on, especially when one is dealing with a well-known international hotel chain headquartered in Germany.
A fun fact: Room 324 is not in any way related to Room 426, a very important room in the history of lodging and travel. For more information about this, please visit Room 426.