I want to remember my experience as a customer trying to solve a problem with Intrawest’s Winter Park Resort. Last week, we went to Steamboat and I had an issue with my season pass there, they told me that it was to old and needed to have the steamboat logo on it. I was directed to the ticket office who looked me up, voided the old season pass with WP/Copper logo’s and issued me a new one with logos from all three resorts. Not a problem the rest of the weekend. Yesterday, I went up early as usual and was excited because they finally opened up the Cirque. Got good parking at the Mary Jane lodge, got ready, and headed over to the lift. Thats where the my experience began to degrade. Something was wrong with my seasons pass. The ticket scanner directed me to the ticket window. The women at the ticket window, after a 20 minute delay, direct me to the Winter Park base, seasons pass office because they were not picking up their phone. Go there and speak to the women at the counter. Twenty minutes later she tells me, “I’m sorry you never paid for your pass.” Thats weird. This is my ninth time at your resort this year, and I have used my card for discounts at several of the stores, the rental place and the cafeterias and I have used it at a different resort to ride for two days just a week ago. I ask her about this. She tells me that they have new computers and they take time to catch up. She also say’s that she can’t help me but if I want to either buy a pass for the day or, pay for a seasons pass at current rates I can ‘figure it out later and get a refund.’ Not only does this raise my eyebrows, but it raises my scam alert meter. I tell her thats not acceptable, that I am here, we can figure out the problem and solve it today so I don’t have to come back on a different day. I think to myself, my customer experience is getting worse my the minute and the person representing customer service is making it worse because my problem is not a standard problem. She doesn’t know what to do and has no support (human or tech) to rely on. She also does not have either the training or the autonomy to determine the best way to solve this problem. Sigh, breath deep focus on solving the problem and getting to the snow. I want to tell her, ‘why would I trust you to give me a refund if; you can’t figure out how to charge me for my seasons pass or tell me that you were unable to get payment from me, if you let me use the services for two months already and have had numerous times before this to help me correct the problem as well as giving me discounts at your resort. In fact, if I had not swapped out my old seasons pass for a new one at Steamboat Springs a week ago, I bet that I would be riding right now. without any problems.’ Instead I say, “I want to fix the issue, thats why I ended up speaking to you. Lets figure out what needs to happen so we can understand the problem and come up with a solution.” This was not well recieved, it is obvious she wants me to go away; she makes a call and ignores me until a male co-worker comes over and stands behind her. She does not introduce him but tells him that I haven’t paid for my seasons pass and now I am upset. I tell them that I want to resolve the issue. The system shows that I paid the deposit and gave them permission to charge my card for the remainder. They ask me for proof. Seriously, seriously, they think that someone who has been using the resort for almost two months would bring proof of their payment with them? Seriously? After much whispering and several dirty looks she tells me that their system does not have a record of my payment, it only tells them that the auto charge failed. I respond, “It would have been nice to know that when it failed.” You were called they tell me. No, I wasn’t or I would not be standing here right now. But, heres my credit card, lets fix it now. She taps her keyboard and sighs at me, like I am a really big inconvenience to her. Then she says, you will have to talk to my supervisor. But she isn’t here right now. After prompting her for help I get the name and number of someone I can call, tomorrow. The guy who hasn’t said much to this point does prompt her to give me a ticket for the day. Driving home I had numerous questions rolling around in my head about how the system they have in place could be so flawed and how important that is to the experience.
- If you have people representing your company, make sure they want to help people. When it is obvious that the person you are talking to just wants you to go away it makes me question the integrity of your company since you hired them.
- If getting paid is important, you should use any point of contact with the customer to help them understand what they have paid for so far, what they still need to pay and make it easy for them to give you more money.
- Don’t make me wait to learn that there was a problem with my payment to you. I want to pay you for the service that you can provide. Help me get the money to you. You have my cell phone, my email address and my snail mail address. If one of them doesn’t work, try the others. Or, when I first visit your facility and there is still a problem, tell me then. Don’t pass me off from person to person only to tell me that no one can help you today. Call this number. This type of behavior reflects poorly on your organization and customer service in general.
- Don’t make you customers jump through hoops, prompt you for the details and then tell them to call someone else.
- If you do make your customer jump through hoops, talk to multiple people and then tell them to call someone else for help make sure that person is there when they call, don’t make them leave a message.
Follow-up: I called Elaine back on my lunch hour and got through to her. She was able to help me. She listened to my complaints (not about having to pay for the season pass, the difficulty in actually completing the transaction) and offered her apology. After trying several times to figure out where the disconnect occurred, she simply gave me the truth - I fell through the cracks, you know the corner cases that are hard to optimize for until production has an issue in real time. As in irrational human, it amazes me how nice it felt to 1) Talk to somone who could solve my problem and 2) hear empathy for my experience coming from the other side. Questions still to answer: how did this affect my customer experience? How did I expect the problem to be handled. Is there a reason why it could not be handled in a way that was satisfactory to both sides?
