Monday 30 March 2009

Ridiculous Customer Complaints - A fun activity

I recently came across 20 ridiculous customer complaints. A list made up from research by Thomas Cook and ABTA.

Having looked at the complaints and laughing a lot, it occurred to me that this might make a fun activity to carry out during a customer care or complaint handling training session. You simply provide the participants with the list of ridiculous complaints and ask them to come up with the best response possible by way of feedback. This will test their ability to respond to customer demands as well as providing a bit of fun to the training session.

Here's the list...

  1. A tourist at a top African game lodge overlooking a waterhole, who spotted a visibly aroused elephant, complained that the sight of this rampant beast ruined his honeymoon by making him feel "inadequate".
  2. A woman threatened to call police after claiming that she’d been locked in by staff. When in fact, she had mistaken the “do not disturb” sign on the back of the door as a warning to remain in the room
  3. "The beach was too sandy."
  4. A guest at a Novotel in Australia complained his soup was too thick and strong. He was inadvertently slurping the gravy at the time.
  5. "Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women."
  6. "We bought 'Ray-Ban' sunglasses for five euros (£3.50) from a street trader, only to find out they were fake."
  7. "No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled."
  8. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England it only took the Americans three hours to get home."
  9. "My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."
  10. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller."
  11. "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers - will we be OK staying here?"
  12. "There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners."
  13. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white."
  14. "We had to queue outside with no air conditioning."
  15. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."
  16. "I was bitten by a mosquito - no-one said they could bite."
  17. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."
  18. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned."
  19. "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food at all."
  20. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels."

This training game and many other training resources and course materials can be found at Trainer Bubble.

Tuesday 17 March 2009

Self-Study Workbooks


We've been working hard to add Self Study Workbooks to our growing portfolio. In the fast paced work environments we encounter today, these workbooks provide the perfect opportunity to develop and build on skills that might otherwise be neglected.

The workbooks provide clarity and insight to the specific topic, whilst including activities, questions and practical tasks. So far we've added four of these workbooks to the Trainer Bubble website (Business E-mails, Leadership, Report Writing, Time Management) and we are working on providing a complete range. So visit
Trainer Bubble to find out more.

Monday 9 March 2009

...and more on airline service

Following on from the Ryanair post last week. Here's an interesting new promotional clip I've spotted...


Friday 6 March 2009

Low cost, or, customer service?

So, Ryanair seem to have upset a lot of people again with their plans to charge people £1 to use the toilet on one of their flights. It begs the question, what is more important, low cost or customer service?

Ryanair would no doubt argue that the fact they charge people for heavier luggage, eating and now possibly going to the toilet, means that they can keep their low cost flights at the smallest costs possible and if people really want more than to be flown to their destination, they will have to pay for it. In a lot of ways, this is reasonable, after all you know what you are getting when you sign up and if you expect first class service, then you'll have to pay for it (with another airline).

I heard a story of a Ryanair staff member who was rude to a customer and upon complaint was told that if you wanted great service, which I guess included being treated politely, you should pay for it. The trouble as I see it is that people want both. They want to pay a cheap price for things, but when they don't get exceptional service as well (this includes the 'extras' mentioned above), they are not happy. Is this reasonable? Well, to a certain degree it has to be. After all, without customers, no company will succeed and they can always vote with their feet.

What you cannot deny though, is that Ryanair is a very successful airline. So, are they right or wrong in their approach? Well, to be honest I'm undecided. I could argue that people who book Ryanair know what they are going to get, but then in the same breath, I put my customer care hat on and say that all companies should work towards providing exceptional customer service.

Whatever my thoughts are, the ultimate truth is that the success of the company will provide the answer. Because, I suspect, people will still book flights with Ryanair and continue to complain about them...after all, we all enjoy a moan don't we?

I think the following image provides a perfect example of this...