An interpersonal communication issue occurred to me during my internship in the telecommunications department of a hotel. One day, I received a call from an in-house guest who wanted to check if breakfast was included in his room package. I followed the standard operating procedures and checked the code number in the system before informing the guest that he could proceed to the restaurant for breakfast.
A few minutes later, the duty manager called the department to find out which officer attended to the call. He mentioned that breakfast was not included and the guest was extremely unhappy with the false information provided.
Reprimanded for my carelessness, I remember feeling very disheartened for the next few days. However, a week later, my supervisor told me that the guest service officer was also responsible for this incident. As he was lazy to change the code in the system, he added a note in the guest’s profile to inform all staff that breakfast was not included. Unfortunately, he forgot to make the note visible and staff will not be alerted unless they clicked into the notes section.
What could have been done to prevent this from happening in the first place?
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Hi Jiayun!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing about your interpersonal communication problem. I understand that in such situations, there are quite a few parties involved (telecommunications, F&B department, guest) which might have caused such miscommunication. Thus, I think that effective communication between all parties is very important in order to prevent such incidents from occurring.
In your case, I think the guest service officer should have alerted the telecommunications department about the changes made in the guest folio to prevent any miscommunication between the guest and the tele officer. On the other hand, the tele officer should also do their part in contacting the guest service officer to see if there are any new changes made by them (e.g. using the other functions like the guest folio in the PMS instead of the standardized code to convey a message).
Overall, it is an interesting read and I hope that my suggestions would have helped you in finding the right way to solve the problem!
Katrina
Hi Jiayun.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this insightful post. I think that miscommunications tend to happen easily in the hotel as there are so many departments involved and there are so many tasks to be completed.
For your scenario, I agree with Katrina that the guest service officer should have alerted the telecommunications department about the changes made in the guest’s reservation. I also feel that you could have checked the notes other than checking the standardised code to ensure that the information given to the guest is correct. In the case where the standardised code does not match with the notes, the tele officer can call the guest service officer to check on whether which is correct to prevent the wrong information from being conveyed to the guest.
I find that this is an interesting read and I hope that my suggestions would help you in finding the right solution for the problem.
Alicia