Dealing with painful customers
Last weekend I had a very painful group of people who had hired my Villa for a 2 nights stay. As some of you may know, I have a property which I rent out on Airbnb. I get all types of customers, most of them are pleasant, but then once in a way I also get some chaotic ones. At the time of booking it is difficult to understand anyone's personality with just 1 conversation. Me being away from home, all my interactions happen on the phone and at the property I have a full time care taker who takes care of attending to the customers and taking care of the need.
During the stay, I do keep checking with the guest if everything is going well with them and if there is any problem they can let me know. This particular group was of 10 people and they had booked a 2 night stay with us. For us, now being in this business for 8 months, we have got good hang of it. So everything operates on kind of auto mode. When they arrived, I checked with them, if they liked our property, and they were very happy, they praised it a lot. In-between their stay I sent them a message checking on their stay, and they replied saying, they were having lot of fun.
I was relaxed that everything was going well. Once they checked out. I sent them a message as my usual practice, thanking them for their stay with us, and if they would like then they coud share their review with us on their stay experience. That's the time, one of the lady of the group told me, she had feedback for me, which she would like to give on a call. I called her up, and she started complaining about almost anything and everything at our property. I was completely stunned with this behavior. It was so conflicting with their previous messages. So, I asked her that why she mentioned earlier that they were enjoying their stay and why she did not tell me about her grievances before only. To which she had no answer, and she tried to ignore my question by talking of other things. At the end she told me that this was her worst stay experience. I was very upset with it, because in the 2 days that I was checking on them, they had very different things to say.
Her major complaint was around the food. Before they arrived, I had checked with them, if they would have any meal requirements, because we do provide meal packages during the stay. They refused to that, but then after arriving they kept asking my caretaker to prepare something or the other. I guess, probably they wanted to save money on the food. The caretaker is for overlooking the property and not for preparing meals, he can do some small things like preparing tea or snacks, but meals for many people would become a challenge for him. He was trying to accommodate, but then the individual request were too many, so it all went chaotic. They would ask him late at night to prepare something for them, and our property is away from any market, so during night time it is difficult to buy anything. In all of this it seems like their food demands were not met well and the lady had all complaints about it. Then I checked the food bill, and for 10 people it was like peanuts.
I could understand the whole situation but then at the end of the day in service industry you have to be tactful to deal with people. I was super annoyed but I could not express it to them. For their own stupidity and not being well organized with their meal request, they were eventually trying to put the blame on our services. I have blacklisted them, in future any time if ever they would come to book with us, I am not going to entertain them. I found them very ungrateful and wicked type of people. I did call her up and very subtly told her that they should have taken proper meal packages then this chaos would have not occurred, and if they cannot be organized and have last minute food requests then it would be better for them to book a stay near a market area next time and not in the mountain areas.
Every such customer also brings some learning for me. Till date I was not very particular on mentioning about food requirements, because majority of the people have been organized. They know they are coming to mountain area, so they come well prepared. Either they arrange for their own meals or they inform us in advance. From now on I am going to mention some more terms and conditions around the food part.
Even a single negative feedback is upsetting for me. Especially when we work around so much to make sure that we give the best experience to our customers.
Thank you for visiting my blog. 👼🏻👼🏻💖💖🌹🌺🌸
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You should strictly say NO, and not entertain to any request, because once it starts, they take it for granted.
Ya, it all becomes part of learning and improving from my side :-)
Some people are a mess. Use the experience to tweak and adjust your offering, aka the copywriting. Adding it to the T&C is good practice; you might want to add a further catering option, though. Make it pop, cause nobody bothers with TC anyway; that's more for you as a host - to be covered legally. And most importantly, don't let it affect you emotionally, even if it's super annoying.
That's true, I have rules and regulations mentioned and we ask the guest to read it when they arrive but many of them just put it away and completely ignore and not follow the rules. I take a security deposit amount to be on the safe side incase of any damages, and that's legally done.
It bothers me for a day but then it's business so things keep moving ahead :-)
Didn't even know these Air BnB locations offered food service.
If I found any snacks beyond beyond bottled water, while renting, I would consider it a bonus, not a necessity.
The only time I would ever expect full food services would be at an inn, hotel, or fully staffed B&B, where usually one hot breakfast is included.
Having your staff on-site to help them is a wonderful way to ensure expectations are being met by both you and the customers.
Were you communicating with your staff prior to the end of their trip to learn that the customers were requesting more food choices than you prepared for?
It is up to you whether or not you want to charge more up front, and offer more services based on the number of people planning to stay. Do you offer different levels of services guests can choose from?
If you want to give a follow-up post, I think it would be an interesting article many people might enjoy reading. Your property is lovely, and I enjoy learning about the types of challenges involved in running this type of business.
We do offer food services at an additional charge because our place is secluded and it becomes difficult for the guest to manage meals. We do have a equipped kitchen, but not every guest wants to spend time cooking.
In India things are a little different, people expect to get much more then what they pay and there's tough competition so everyone adds up to their offerings.
The problem with them was, they wanted to pay little but demand more and it does not work that way, right?
Though I have my rules and I do not go beyond my line in offerings. At the time of booking all the add ons are clearly mentioned with charges so that there is no problem later on, but then some people like these still want to play around.
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