Davina, you figured it out!!! Middle initial? I just looked, and my spam settings prevent comments with more than two words too. Who knew…

It’s a pretty big chain, so my guess would be that room service trays sitting out for 12+ hours is definitely an execution issue — and not something the Corporate office would consider OK. Whether this chain’s training programs and culture allow this to happen frequently across its brand, well, that is another story altogether.

Great to have you back Davina!

Travel is such a great example, good and bad, of how customer experience impacts the whole brand reputation. Have to link back to this for something I’m working on for sure, it’s all about being proactive vs. reactive, about PR.

I wonder if these are not the brand, but the specific hotel? I’d post this on TripAdvisor or Yelp — and see how the local management responds. If they don’t, send it up the food chain to corporate and let them know this hotel certainly has dropped the ball. FWIW.

Agreed Joe! If you address the situation in a forthright and timely way, it can go a long way towards neutralizing the impact.

I do think you need both culture and process, particularly in larger organizations. The culture makes sure the person who’s job it is not still picks up the tray; process makes sure that the person whose job it is walks the halls so no tray sits too long.

One thing I’ve noticed is that it helps a lot if you acknowledge those things (e.g. “yikes, that doesn’t sound very fun, let’s figure out a way to get things back on track”), but you only have a certain window to do that. People don’t need you to perfect, but they need to know you understand what the experience is like for them. And w/o getting too long winded, I don’t think the fix for those little CX moments is process, I think it’s culture and having one that’s strong and clear and empowers people in the org to take care of things like trays sitting in the hallway of a hotel.