Cust. Service Issues

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Owners 8 Association

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Customer complaints: Although it is a balancing act as many complaints are genuine, some of the customer complaints are not valid. The Franchisor’s call centers collect the guest complaint information and forward the complaint to the motels. The motels must resolve any guest issues to the guest’s satisfaction or they will face a fine and this is unfair to the franchisees.  The customer service department does not properly evaluate each guest's concerns and in many cases access a fine a motel of $ 60 - $120 per complaint. The fees for this department are part of the franchise fees that we pay the franchisor and additional fees being assessed for processing cannot be justified..

            Possible Solution:      Customer Complaints: This was a concept originally developed by upscale brands.
            It was adopted by Wyndham Worldwide a few years ago and since has been changed numerous times
            to benefit the brand at the hotel owner’s expense. It can be changed with a collective voice from hotel
            owners as it has happened with Carlson when they changed their policy of Customer Complaints after
            numerous Country Inn owners protested. While being fair to genuine complaints, we expect a program
            that benefits the hotel and the brand. The franchisor for a long time now has sold this concept as a benefit
            to the hotels who are up to the standards and owners that care of their customers. While going against the
            hotel operators who are not up to the standards and do not care of their customers. That is entirely
            incorrect.

                        The following changes can benefit all:

1) At the moment non quality assurance customer complaints (e.g. mistakes in billing or reservations problems) are not separated from quality assurance problems. They are all treated as customer complaints. We suggest that changes. Only those complaints that have a quality control issue should be treated as complaints and the rest should be resolved by the franchisor with three way communication with the customer and the hotel.

2) Any charge for registering the complaints should be eliminated. If a hotel has more than a normal amount of complaints then the issue should be resolved with the hotel individually through communication. The charge of $ 75 is outrageous.

3) The franchisor should not force the hotel to resolve all the complaints to the guest's satisfaction.
While we can be apologetic and reasonable, there are times when the complaints are products of individual customers and not the hotels. As Hilton and some other chains have a list of customers who repeatedly complain and they are black listed from the brand, Wyndham should have that type of list also. This will eliminate some customers who are not genuine.

Statistically, it can be proven that the median income of individuals is in direct correlation with their tendency to send in complaints. In English, the type of clientele that we have in economy motels tend to look for something for free and often result in disingenuine complaints.