Accor Hotels - another major Customer Service Failure

There is one thing which always gets me extremely angry, and that is bad customer service. As management consultant, who lives a life of order and well laid out processes (at least at work), it is such a painful experience when easy processes don't work. Currently, I am tasked to develop a customer service centre for a big financial institution in Frankfurt, and one thing is for sure, the Accor Hotel way of doing things is something I won't train my clients in. 

The Situation: Twice a year Accor Hotels do have a major points initiative in their reward scheme. Last September it was called September Boost for which one has to sign up and then, once the conditions are met, one gets points credited to one's rewards account. The September Boost promised 10000 points (which equals €200) and the conditions were: 4 stays à 2 nights minimum from anytime September till end of December 2016. One needed to book by mid October and that's mainly it. 

Usually any bookings till deadline count, also bookings that were made before one signed up for the offer. But just to make sure I asked Accor's social media team about it and they confirmed this to me.

As one can see, they confirmed that reserved nights before the offer came out would count. So I trusted them. Of course, everyone can imagine what's coming up now. I'm waiting for my points till today. The interesting thing is my e-mail exchange. I am blue, they are red.

First e-mail: Roland to Accor on 25 October 2016:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I took part in the September Boost promotion and so far have never received an points and i have stayed and will stay nearly every week in an Accor hotel. I signed up in September and it is nearly November now. I should have at least gained the first two layers. Can you please check whether there is a system glitch? I have registered twice, just to make sure and the second time I got confirmed that I was signed up. 

Second e-mail: Accor to Roland on 30 October 2016:

Dear Mr. BRUNNER,

We refer to your email dated October 25, 2016.

To further assist you with the September offer points please provide the reservation associated with it.

We remain at your disposal.

Regards,

K.T. (name deleted for privacy reasons)

Your Accor Hotels Customer Care Service

Third e-mail: Roland to Accor on 30 October 2016:

Dear K,

As far as I remember, the September Boost offer should have been granted to the following stays: 

Ibis xxx, 4 - 7 October

Hotel Mercure xxx from 10 to 13 October

Hotel Mercure xxx from 24 to 29 October

Hotel Mercure xxx from 28 bis 30 October

For those 4 stays, each of them were longer than 2 nights, I should receive all in all 10000 points now. Can you please credit my account with them? 

Thanks and kind regards,

Forth e-mail: Accor to Roland on  4 November 2016:

Dear Mr. Brunner,

Thank you for taking time to contact us.

We refer to your request regarding "BOOST SEPTEMBER 2016 - YOUR EXCEPTIONAL NEW BONUS" offer.

We regret to inform you that your reservation from to at the hotel Mercure Hotel xxx, ibis Styles xxx and Mercure xxx hotel are not eligible to the offer.

After checking your bookings, those were not booked on 12/09/2016 as per terms and conditions of this offer.

According to the terms and conditions of this offer, the offer is valid only one time per member, for maximum 4 stays of 2 hotel nights minimum, booked through 12/10/2016, and done through 26/12/2016 in hotels participating in the Le Club AccorHotels programme. Receive a total of 10,000 points maximum: 500 points after your 1st stay, 2,500 points after your 2nd stay, 3,000 points after your 3rd stay and 4000 points after your 4th stay.

Looking forward to welcome you soon in one of our hotels, thank you for your loyalty in the AccorHotels Group.

Regards,

L. V.

Your AccorHotels Customer Care Service

Fifth e-mail from Roland to Accor on 4 November 2016:

Dear L, 

Your answer is conflicting with what one of your colleagues told me on twitter. 

I signed up for this offer, and i have stayed nearly every week afterwards in one of your hotels. This year so far 32 stays and more than 100 nights, tendency rising. And now I would like those points that were offered to me by signing up to that promotion. 

As you can see on my twitter feed I even ensured my reservations were valid. All I now do is to claim what has been agreed through signing up to this offer and actually seeking advice from your colleague. 

A screen shot of the chat is attached. 

Viele Grüße and kind regards

(ATTACHED THE SCREEN SHOT FROM TWITTER, see above)

Sixth e-mail from Accor to Roland on 12 November 2016

Dear Mr. BRUNNER,

We refer to your e-mail below.

We regret to inform you that your reservations were not eligible to the offer BOOST SEPTEMBER 2016 - YOUR EXCEPTIONAL NEW BONUS.

According to the terms and conditions of this offer, the booking date must be between: 12/09/2016 and 12/10/2016 .

We thank you for your understanding and we remain at your entire disposal should you have any further requests.

Looking forward to welcome you soon in one of our hotels.

Regards,
S. K.

Seventh e-mail from Roland to Accor on 15 November 2016:

As one can see, I gave up calling them by their name but went back to "Sir/Madam" as every time someone else answered. 

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thanks for your reply, but you did not answer my concern. I signed up for the September Boost promotion and asked a colleague of yours whether it was okay for this promotion to have booked stays before the actual registration date of the promotion and he said YES. I trusted him and did not book any further rooms. Suddenly you are telling me I do not qualify. And that’s unfair, because I could have easily booked more stays since I am staying with your hotels till the end of the promotion period nearly every week. In fact, with all my stays I could have fulfilled three times the requirements for September Boost. 

Since I relied on your colleague’s advice I would expect now to get those 10,000 points. 

I have attached a photo of the actual Twitter conversation between your colleague and myself. 

In your reply I would ask you not to send me another automated and pre-fabricated message again but actually refer to the case I am making. 

Thanks and kind regards,

Eighth e-mail from Accor (Guest Relations Coordinator!) to Roland on 17 November 2016:

Dear Mr. Brunner,

We refer to your account regularization request related to the offer "Boost September 2016!"

In the first instance, we offer our sincere apologies for the processing time of your request. Please be assured that this is not a true reflection of the high standards upon which Accor prides itself.

As we have explained in our previous exchanges, we regret to inform you that your bookings # is not eligible this offer. Indeed, according to the terms and conditions of the offer: 

< The offer is valid only one time per member, for maximum 4 stays of 2 hotel nights minimum, booked between 12/09/2016 and 12/10/2016, done for stays through 26/12/2016 in hotels participating in the Le Club AccorHotels programme.>

Indeed your booking was made on 17/08. As mentioned by our Social Media team, we can oversee the fact that the booking was made before the actualsubscription to the offer, however, the booking dates, as well as the other conditions, must be respected in order to benefit from the offer.

We sincerely regret this situation, however, as we are bound by these conditions, we are unable to bypass them and for the reason outlined above, we thank you for understanding that we are unable to respond positively to your request.

Please note that all our promotions are conditioned by terms and conditions that are presented usually at the end of the offer’s description.

We deeply hope that this isolated incident will not leave you with a bad impression of our group. Thank you for your loyalty and we look forward to welcoming you soon again at Accor hotels.

Kindly,

S. B.
AccorHotels GR Coordinator.

Ninth e-mail from Roland to Accor on 21 November 2016:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thanks for your reply. 

Let me just reiterate: Even though I asked one of your colleagues via twitter whether my bookings were okay for the September Boost offer and he said „Yes“ you are not granting me those 10000 points. If he had not said yes I’d have made a few more reservations, as I have been staying in ACCOR hotels weekly; since from September till Christmas I’ll have 16 stays à 2 nights minimum. There are no other conditions I could have not met, as I booked them all via the internet. Basically, I cannot trust your own staff and it is tough luck for me that I did. 

Customer Service for me is something different. I’m a management consultant and am currently implementing a customer service centre for a big bank here in Frankfurt. I will copy our e-mail exchange for a case study and use it for a training session in how to not treat our most loyal customers. 

I am booked through till the end of the year with ACCOR hotels, but from January on and my next year in Frankfurt I will look for another hotel chain. I am not staying where I am not welcome and appreciated. And I am most certainly not begging for those points that should actually be mine. 

Thanks.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen and with kind regards,

And that's where we are today. This is absolutely horrendous. At least I can make a nice case study from it and present it to my clients as how NOT to run a customer service centre. It is not so much the €200 that I would have liked but the sheer stupidity of procedures that seriously get on my nerves. Obviously, I am a good customer; I have platinum membership and am very loyal. This year so far my account shows the following with 6 more stays (and 21 nights) in the pipeline till Christmas:

I don't think I am a difficult customer, in fact, quite the contrary. But I don't like it if they take the Mickey. And this is beyond taking the Mickey, this is stupidity, ignorance and a wrong understanding of customer service.  

__________________________________________________________________

On 24 November I posted on twitter that there is this blog entry and added @accorhotels; just to see if I get a response. The story goes on: 

Tenth e-mail from Accor to Roland on 25 November 2016: 

Case N°: CAS-1297798-V8V4Z4 

Dear, Mr BRUNNER,

Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience that has been caused which does not reflect the quality of service we wish to offer you.

We would like to remind you that your booking was made on 17/08. in order to benefit from the offer, the booking dates, as well as the other conditions, must be respected.

Kindly note that our higher department is working this, we will get in touch with you shortly.

Thank you.Regards,
A. C.

Your AccorHotels Customer Care Service

Today is Wednesday, 7 December and I am still waiting for the "higher department".... I think I'll give up. One can only bear that much incompetence in one's life. 

__________________________________________________________

Okay, I tweeted again to see whether I got any reaction. And that's what I received: 

Eleventh e-mail from Accor to Roland on 14 December 2016:

It is an e-mail by "Member Assistance Level 2"

Dear Mister Brunner,

I have been solicited to answer you concerning your request to get bonus points relative to the "Boost September" offer.

Firstly, I would like to apologize for the time it took to give you a feedback, which doesn’t reflect the quality of our service.

It is with a great attention that I have read your comments and please be assured that I regret any deception caused during your first exchanges with our customer service.

I would like to reassure you that a total of 3 000 Le Club AccorHotels points have been credited to your account in relation to the Boost September offer.

These points were added for the stays from the 21^st to 25^th of November 2016 (500 bonus points) and from the 5^th to the 9^th of December 2016 (2 500 bonus points) at the hotel Mercure Hotel Frankfurt which were both made on the 6^th of October 2016. In accordance to the Terms and Conditions of Use of this offer, these stays were eligible to gaining bonus points.

However, acknowledging the confusion that this situation might have caused and to thank you for your loyalty, I am pleased to offer you 4 000 courtesy points, already credited on your Le Club AccorHotels Platinum Membership number xxx as an exceptional commercial gesture.

Wishing to keep your trust, on which we pay the greatest attention, I hope that you are having a delightful stay at our Hotel Mercure in Frankfurt.

Kind regards,

M. S.

AccorHotels Customer Relations Supervisor 

And that's the case. I will leave the interpretation of it to the reader. 

Earlier on, I had to write a message to their Customer Service Department because of some missing points for a stay in Lithuania this year... If they have a clever CRM system in place, they will probably think "Good Lord, that one again...." 

Triggering Epiphanies

Have you ever had those moments when you suddenly and completely out of the blue decided something which has had a long-lasting impact, which has changed your life? Those are "epiphany moments". One has to cherish them, as they don't come often in life, but once they are there, we need to grasp them and just go for whatever there is to do! Epiphanies should always result in actions. That's why coaches and consultants like me like them so much. 

There is always a way out!

I have had a few in my life, they tend to appear very sporadically, unexpectedly, some are stronger, some are weaker, and of course, the stronger the better. They can reach levels of excitement to an orgasmic scale.

I had one recently:

It happened on 30 June 2015: I got up, had a coffee, decided to go to the local gym and sign up for membership, went to my wardrobe, packed a bag, went down the hill to the new local health and leisure centre, signed up without having seen what the place looks like, and started to exercise. I did it as if I had been remote controlled. I walked down the hill like a zombie that has smelled fresh human flesh.

Me on day 1! 

I am still amazed about it, as for the last 15 years I avoided the gym and any kind of physical exhaustion like the plague. Suddenly this! Now, 4 weeks after, I am quite happy about it and I like going there. I don't overdo it, I don't think I ever will; looking like Arnold has never been on my to do list, but a little bit of exercise is actually quite nice. 

Some of those epiphanies can be triggered, some probably come completely out of the blue. It must be similar to dreams; many stem from activities and occurrences that took place in our active lives, others come from deep within our subconsciousness. 

Epiphany moments in a business context are rare. I can imagine entrepreneurs probably have them when coming up with an idea and then take action. The role of a coach is to pave the way for them to happen. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's like with dreams, you can't force anyone to dream something specific. 

Epiphany in Bulgaria, where on 6 January every year men throw themselves into ice-cold water to fetch a cross that has been thrown in by the local priest. My coaching method isn't that drastic...  ;-) 

I have an example where I managed to trigger such an epiphany moment: 

Imagine a factory, break time for the workers is at 11:00 and there is no canteen on site, just a vending machine with sandwiches, chocolates, and the like; and then there is this little van from a local bakery that drives from factory to factory selling warm food, no meals, just warm sandwiches and rolls. For our German speakers, they sold Leberkässemmeln, but I am refraining from explaining this in English. 

Anyway, whenever I walked around the shop floor I heard a siren at 10:15 and most workers left their work place and went to that van to buy their "Leberkässemmeln". Those were kept in aluminium foil to keep them warm in order to bridge over till 11:00. What happened though, in most cases, break started at 10:15 because people wanted to eat their rolls straight away. Production figures plummeted daily during that hour. 

I went to the plant manager and just enquired about that sandwich van and he proudly told me about managing to finally have the van stop at 3 different locations inside the factory so that his workers would not have to leave their work place too early in order to walk all the way to the main gate where the van used to stop in order to be able to buy their "well deserved rolls". 

One morning after sitting over the project goals, which was to raise output by a certain percentage and we were far from the target line, I said to him a little bit after 10:00, "I need a break, why don't we take a stroll to the coffee machine in the factory and I get us a coffee...?". We went and of course at 10:20 the factory was empty, as everyone was queuing up at the van outside. I said, "It must be break time, nobody is here anymore, the machines are all switched off..."

The sandwich van does not exist anymore and break time starts at 11:00 again. We discussed this issue with the workers' council and came up with a good solution. The plant manager told me after a while: "Roland, I was so embarrassed when you showed me what happened down there without rubbing it in. It was the moment when I knew we really needed to sort the business out and start pushing mountains". 

We did and managed the turnaround and hit the target line. Happy Epiphany! 

That's an epiphany gone wrong!

Technocratic Thinking about Behaviour Change

It seems that my behaviour change entry sparked off the most interest from what I can see in the Google statistics about my blog. Reason enough to elaborate a little bit about the fact that behaviour change is not some mufty-flufty stuff, but has to be taken seriously when being in the process of change. 


Whenever I want to write down an actual process in a company which is ISO certified I get the remark "Hold on, I will bring the ISO files". I would then reply, "There is no need for that, as I want the real process, not the written down one" and with that remark I usually bump into a brick wall, which in return, I will bring to fall most of the time. 


There is this perception out there, especially amongst people who believe in structure, process, order and organisation (let me call them technocrats) that once a process is written down and communicated it is also lived and effective! I am afraid to say, but this is the biggest reason for downfall after major change projects. 


In the very most cases I can prove that real processes are almost always different from ISO ones, especially when processes and steps in those processes are depending on people rather than machines. This means, a process "manufacturing steps of a metal tool" is more likely to be ISO-true than a process "the daily planning and review meeting". The first is a mechanical process with lots of machine and computer based activities, the latter is solely depending on people's behaviours. 


So, why do particularly people based processes vary so greatly from the agreed ones which one can find in ISO books and any other official process documents? The reason is that behaviour change did not take place! 


Let's refer back to the "daily planning and review meeting"; I am sure, when it was installed, an agenda has been designed, a room planned, the participants chosen, and the chairperson has also agreed on running the show. "Fine", we think (we as in technocrats or junior consultants like me back in the 90s then), "they all agreed, we explained the layout of the meeting, it should run smoothly. And in the end, it is a very simple tool in the management system anyway; it's only a meeting". 


But what one forgets when doing so is:
- Have the chairperson and participants bought into the meeting?
- Did we train the chairperson in running an effective and efficient review meeting? 
- Have we ensured the agenda is widely understood?
- Is the chairperson able to confront all participants in case they miss deadlines?
- Has the meeting time and location been agreed and communicated?
- etc, etc, etc....


Whenever a new process is installed, it needs following up! This is mostly forgotten. Whenever people are involved, one needs to ask oneself whether they have received sufficient training and coaching in performing these tasks, even if those are only basic ones. Regular follow-up after sufficient training is also important. Think about the 3 phases of learning (please look it up again on my previous blog about behaviour change), mechanical compliance is by far a stage in the process of change a company wants to find itself in. 


And now sit back, take out your ISO book and review its contents! Have fun! 

Budapest, August 2009

I visited my client in Budapest for the week and undertook an audit of the management system I installed 2 years ago. The management system basically comprises the 2 main parts - an organisational separation from planning and operations, and the implementation of lean management tools which would help them to manage the operation efficiently.

I am flying to Budapest again in 2 weeks and continue and follow-up on the audit. I am also presenting a tool for stock management which will help them to make their stock situation visible and act accordingly.

Otto Bock - Balanced Scorecard (2)

I must congratulate Frank for his BSC implementation and development. He did an extremely good job thinking about that he did not have any experience with BSC. Neither of us really had. We had to get the original Kaplan & Norton book and implemented it the way it has been suggested there.

Implementing a measurement system was our daily business and we all knew how to do it, but linking those indicators to strategic targets was something we have never done. We and the client did not even know in those days what the short-, medium-, and long-term targets were. Those had to be defined first.

Implementing a BSC takes quite a while if doing it right and with the methodology suggested. But once it is done, it is amazing what a fabulous tool it actually is.

Anyone who wants to know how to implement it, please get in touch. Going into detail here on my blog would be too much.

On the photo is Frank again.

Post Mortem

Even though it ended all spectacularly dramatically I actually must admit I enjoyed those nearly 3 years with IMPAC. I cannot even tell how much I learned during that time.

I was able to stand in front of people and "perform" and train them on any subject. One learns to be fully flexible and able to anything in front of people.

I learned that the behavioural part when it comes to change management is even more important than the sheer operational implementation. Implementation of management tools is important, but in the end my client's managers and staff have to use them even after the project. And the role of the consultant is to make sure changes are sustainable and stick.

I learned how to coach and train my clients effectively.

I left the company with a big management consultant "toolkit" and am able to analyse and develop any area or department in any industry.

I learned how to deal with people within a team and be a good team-player.

And most importantly I learned how to "read" people's behaviours and take appropriate action. Some would call it manipulation, well, a minor version maybe. A disaster like the last project would never happen again.

Oh yes, most, most importantly I learned how to deliver results for my clients regardless whether I am technically able or not. Just go for it and "swim"!!!

Management Training

Management Training goes along with the operational installation. The main responsibility of training is to ensure "behaviour change" and that all installed new systems and tools are being used properly and that management does not fall back into old behaviours. Training is never ever there just for the sake of delivering training!

There are a few topics which are mostly on the training schedule (more detail in a later entry):
- What are management systems,
- Openness to change and the "curve of change",
- Efficient meetings,
- Confrontation skills,
- Effective Communication, and a few more.

Other topics are very specific and need to be tailor-made for the client. They would normally be in line with the area development.

Between training sessions are always coaching sessions where trainer and client work on the client's personal progress throughout the project installation phase and his behaviour change.

After my first project, the ice-cream one, I decided to go into training and was sent off to the corporate headquarters in Florida on a 3 weeks intensive course.