Adam Kirby
The Greatest Twitter Hotel Service Story Yet
December 17, 2009
When a guest tweets a complaint about his or her stay at your hotel, do you ever see it? Do you try getting in touch with the person to apologize?
That’s all well and good, but Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts has set the bar for social media customer service quite a bit higher than that.
When a guest at Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore went on Twitter last month to make a lighthearted complaint about the hotel’s turndown music (”Okay, the turndown music in my room at Four Seasons Biltmore is so not soothing. More appropriate for a funeral or beheading.”), she wasn’t expecting anything to come from it. So imagine her surprise when she returned to her guestroom the next day to find a bottle of wine and a note from the general manager apologizing for the substandard tunes-along with a listing of local radio stations.
Turns out the Toronto-based corporate interactive marketing team behind @FourSeasons saw the tweet and took the time to notify the California resort about the problem. Making the story all the more impressive is that the guest is not identified by name on her Twitter account, meaning the Four Seasons folks had to do a bit of sleuthing to figure out who she was en route to rectifying what was at most a minor nuisance.
(Read the first-person account at HotelChatter.)
I talked with Cherry Kam, Four Seasons’ director of interactive marketing, about the incident. In keeping with the hotel company’s exemplary customer service ethos, she passed it off as all in a days’ work. “That’s what Four Seasons is about: Taking the guest service seriously,” Kam says.
She told me about a similar situation at Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok, when a guest lamented via Twitter that there were no good movies on TV that night. The comment got relayed to the hotel’s management, which then informed the guest about the hotel’s in-house DVD library.
Impressive though it is, Kam remains modest about Four Seasons’ social media effort. There is still plenty of room for improvement, she says. “We need to do a better job. We want to further tweak and refine.”
For example, Kam says there remains some trepidation about the best way to respond to guest queries on Twitter. When possible, @FourSeasons tries to respond via private direct message. She is wary of setting a precedent for social media interaction that is unsustainable long-term.”Once we publicly respond, then all the people expect us to respond publicly, so we need to gauge that,” she says.
As for future social media plans, Four Seasons is “fully committed” to Twitter and Facebook, Kam says, but she is hesitant about branching out too broadly across more networks and letting customer service slack as a result. “Instead of trying to extend ourselves too wide, let’s do something well and continue our engagement,” she says.
Hoteliers, the social media customer service bar has been set. Go out there and top it. (And then tell me about it!)
Posted by Adam Kirby on December 17, 2009 | Comments (3)

December 21, 2009
In response to: The Greatest Twitter Hotel Service Story Yet
Fiona commented:

The situation in China is quite different, people are using social media on a trial basis. They are still hesitatiing to practise with it and doubt if it can help with their business and improve the service. Social media, in China, is immature as for its own readership construction and commercilization. It's only a few month ago, I knew from a friend work in Shangri-la, they just started an e-marketing dep try to fiture out what'a new online, how they work and how they can help with their business. I don‘t know the results though, hotels in China are probing the market and it needs time.

December 18, 2009
In response to: The Greatest Twitter Hotel Service Story Yet
The Twitter complainer (a.k.a. @global_gourmet) commented:

Hi Adam,
Thanks for taking note of Four Seasons' incredible, spot on service. Four Seasons' has set the bar for me with top notch service (Four Seasons Maui at Wailea has forever spoiled me), but this social media, snap-to-action response to a semi-in jest comment on Twitter really blew me away. And then some.
If used effectively, Twitter is just another tool in the customer service toolbox for guests to get up-to-the-minute information and to convey communication. I didn't expect (or require) such a response to my tweet, but cannot tell you how impressed I was by the response or how many people I've told about it. Mission accomplished from a marketing standpoint and kudos to FS for "getting it."
Thanks,
Charyn Pfeuffer

December 17, 2009
In response to: The Greatest Twitter Hotel Service Story Yet
Hotels-inNewYorkCity.com commented:

Twitter is an excellent way to communicate to hotel guest, every hotel should have a twitter page this will allow them to communicate to guest about the new food menu, decor improvements, tariffs, new services, if added.
The cost of managing Social Media Marketing pays off in long run.