Small Gestures Create Big Rewards

A few weeks ago, I talked about my horrid experience with the Comfort Inn near JFK airport. On that same trip, I also stayed at the Ramada Inn New Yorker. When I arrived,the King bed I had reserved 2 months ago was not available, nor were 2 doubles. When lightly pressed, the counter person fetched the manager, who worked her magic and "found" a King: I felt appreciative of the extra effort, but a bit jaded as I figured I'd gotten an upgrade, or a downgrade to get that bed. The Front Desk man was so irritated (why, I wondered) that he all but threw the key at me and shooed me on my way.

The room was cramped, and on a floor that had not yet been renovated. (The hotel is slowly renovating, and on a reconnaisance mission, I found many other floors were in the same level of shodiness.) Indeed, the place was so run-down I had decided to take photos and post them on Yahoo, suggesting that travelers wait until Ramada had completed its renovations before staying there. every time I looked at the room, I felt a lingering sense of irritation with the Front Desk man, not understanding why he was so put out. I was only there for the late evening and much of the next day, which would be spent running around SOHO and Midtown, so I was ambivalent about wasting time putting up a post.

In the end, I decided to give Ramada a break based on one, small, unrelated incident.

I ran out for coffee and doughnuts, and juice to give me sustenance for the long trek up to MoMA. As I approached the bank of elevators, both hands full, a cleaning woman sweeping the rug for bits of flotsam saw me coming, stopped what she was doing, and walked over to hold an elevator door open for me, which had just disgorged passengers. It was a good 7 seconds for me to traverse the space between us, and I was grateful to be able to slip into the elevator, with her having pushed my floor button for me. That small rush of gratefulness was enough to tip me into not bothering to write my initial traveler's post, but this one instead.

What did I learn from this? Good customer service comes from small gestures; maybe great customer service can come from accumulated small gestures. It was not the grand, sweeping gesture of finding a King bed (which clearly they had anyway), but rather the tiniest of courtesies - and discourtesy - that had the biggest impact on me.

The manager should take note that it wasn't her finding a King bed, but rather, the courtesy of a cleaning woman that made a customer happy. I wonder if that manager knows the name of everyone on her staff.

Tags: customer service