Customer Service is crucial. If you check into a hotel, you want to be received straight away rather than having to wait while the proprietoress finishes chatting with her friends, and on checkout you want to pay and get going rather than have to wait for her for five minutes while she scrambles eggs in the kitchen. Occasional lapses and busy patches which degrade service can be forgiven, but a pattern such as the above (my experience on Monday night, together with breakfast delays, being seated and moved, and previous guests's debris still in my bedroom) forms a very bad impression. It's not about how good the food is in a restaurant - it's also about how you are received and looked after.
I came back from Cheltenham, having stayed in a B&B that won awards last year and is Egon Ronay listed this - and I found many elements of it interesting and charming. I might even go back some time. I liked their policy of upgrading single to double for single occupancy if there were unlet doubles, I appreciated the offroad parking that was included in the base price, and I enjoyed my breakfast. Light shone into the dining room, and there was a homely feeling. But, alas, my first memory is of looking around to find someone to check me in being a confusing set of "ring this" and "look there" notices, and my departing memory is of having to rush to (and being slightly late) at my appointment because of a frustrating wait at checkout. I have documented my experiences and forwarded it (some 20 bullet points) to the Well House Manor team - but that's along the lines of "let's just make sure we don't fall for this one", and on most of the points I'll admit to being rather smug. We have the occasional issue like everyone does, but we learn from them, they're usually fixed, and not frequent.
It's not just hotel guests who can suffer in this way - Lisa and Dad went out into the local countryside yesterday for a cream tea, and found themselves being given a somewhat surley reception, being offered a very limited choice of places to take that cream tea, and having to wait for the waiter to place their order. The being sent around the place when they wanted to pay ... all of which took the shine off their tale of what sounds like a rather nice offering.
It's not just the filling that's important - it's the bread product that surrounds it too!
Our team at Well House Manor has a growing experience, and a real enjoyment of having people and activity around, and everyone's increasingly confident at handling regular and irregular ("curved ball") issues, putting the customer experience first.
Many of our hotel guests are repeat visitors. Others are delegates who have been on our training courses, and like what we do so much that they choose to come to see us - with their partners - in their own time. I'll very often write here (on this blog, where the original article will be posted) about our superb rooms (they are), our wonderful courses (though I say so myself) and our great garden, library, and location. But it's really the total package that counts ... and I'm really proud to have such an excellent team that makes that total package; I don't say "Thank you" to them often enough - I know they're paid for the job, I know they enjoy the job - but each of them goes over and above to look after our customers's needs and our customers, and Lisa and I too, really appreciate that.
(written 2011-05-19, updated 2011-05-20)
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