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  • Every now and again I get to tell a great story about great customer service. And while

  • it may seem that I get some kind of kicks from the many bad customer service stories

  • I tell hereor our establishment of The Answer Guy's Customer Service Wall of Shame

  • to immortalize particularly egregious examples of customer service gone wrong or even customer

  • service ignored, like 1and1 Internetit's the great customer service stories that make

  • me happy.

  • And do I have a great customer service story for you.

  • Last week, the better half and I had occasion to stay at Ludlow Hotel (note, not the Ludlow

  • Hotel, probably because The Ludlow, an apartment building, is directly next door to Ludlow

  • Hotel on Ludlow Street).

  • Ludlow Street is on Manhattan's too-hip-for words Lower East Side. It's an odd neighborhood;

  • The Lower East Side was a place that back in the days of yore my people worked very

  • hard to escape and now is the place to be, with prices and often attitudes to match.

  • So when you see Ludlow Hotel's location and its style of accommodations (really nice,

  • really small), you might think 'boutique hotel, boutique prices; of course that's what's opening

  • on Ludlow Street'. And you'd be right; Ludlow Hotel, while not in the category of, for example,

  • The Peninsula, is not a low-rent kind of place.

  • And Ludlow Hotel understands customer service.

  • You'd think that would be obvious, right? Ludlow Hotel is an expensive boutique hotel

  • in New York City, and part of a series of expensive hotels in New York and elsewhere

  • from hotelier Sean MacPherson. But while the hotel business seems like the kind of place

  • where amazing customer service would be second nature, it's not necessarily so and there

  • were some customer service problems at Ludlow Hotel until I dealt with its general manager

  • Bruno Vergeynst, himself a guy with an impressive hotel background.

  • Which is the bad part of this story about great customer service; Bruno's treated me

  • very well, but I should never have had to reach out to him at all.

  • Our experience at Ludlow Hotel started inauspiciously, when we booked a room at their web site. We

  • received no industry-standard instant email confirmation of the reservation, nor was there

  • even a success acknowledgment at Ludlow Hotel's web site, so we called to confirm. I spoke

  • with a young man who was polite and friendly and assured me that the reservation had gone

  • through.

  • The next evening we arrived at Ludlow Hotel, and after about fifteen minutes of confusion

  • found that the folks at Ludlow's front desk had us in the system for the wrong date. It

  • wasn't a problem as Ludlow Hotel is undertaking a soft launch and is far from fully booked

  • right now, and Mr. Vergeynst showed me that his records actually had the correct reservation!

  • In other words, Ludlow Hotel's reservation and confirmation systems aren't really working

  • together just now. Hey guys, The Computer Answer Guy is available, OK?

  • There ware a few minor problems in our room, like the lack of a price list at the minibar

  • and a few things that hadn't been cleaned properly after they were installed—I presume

  • we were the first people to stay in this particular room. But there was also a larger problem;

  • taking a bath in our room at Ludlow Hotel last week would have required being OK with

  • brown water. I visited the front desk, spoke with the same young man I'd met on the phone

  • when the reservation kerflooey had begun, and he told me two things: Ludlow Hotel had

  • bottled water for me if I needed it, and the entire Lower East Side was experiencing a

  • problem with brown water.

  • It gets especially uncomfortable here because I wasn't looking for bottled waterwe were

  • trying to run a bathand we happen to rent an apartment directly across the street from

  • Ludlow Hotel, so we knew that the statement about brown water simply wasn't true.

  • Let's take a detour. This is a story about great customer service, but to get to what

  • was great at Ludlow Hotel we we going through quite a few things that were un-great. So

  • let me point out something I've said before: if you can make something good, being negative

  • can be a great thing. And I made this point to Bruno Vergeynst; I could see that Ludlow

  • Hotel is striving to be a great hotel and I wanted him to understand the constructive

  • nature of the criticisms I was bringing to him when we spoke the next day. And whereas

  • the folks at Virgin America were anything but nice, everyone at both Ludlow Hotel and

  • their sister property The Bowery Hotel were lovely at every step of things.

  • Bruno Vergeynst both comped our entire stay and invited us to return as his guest. And

  • I hadn't asked.

  • I like free stuff, and free stuff times two is ... well, twice as good. And I'm looking

  • forward to taking Bruno up on his offer. But as someone who gets paid to manage others'

  • customer service and business process issues the real story for me is that Ludlow Hotel,

  • still finding its way through the customer service maze, is being run in a way that actually

  • strives for improvement and understands that the single most important part of customer

  • service is showing your clients that you care. Bruno Vergeynst gets it.

  • Do you get it?

  • Great customer service takes a lot of things done right. Contact me and let's take a look

  • at the way you handle your customer service and other business processes. In the meantime,

  • remember that whether you're running a hotel or pretty much any other business; sometimes

  • it takes a village.

Every now and again I get to tell a great story about great customer service. And while

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