Emotional Intelligence | Customer Service

This is about a conflict I had in a hotel in Uruguay.
S.Hein

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hi anacecilia

i was just thinking about the conflict we had. i admire the way you handled it.

i feel a little bad for getting you involved though. well actually i
didnt get you involved as much as your father did. he just left it in
your hands when he was the one who didnt explain to me in the first
place that he was planning to charge me 250 pesos to use the room past
10:30

you said you were going to pay for half day charge out of your own
pocket. i feel bad about this because it was not your mistake.

i also was thinking about it more and realized that you didnt really
understand what i was doing with the web page. i had explained part of
what i do to some people and part to other people. i am not sure
myself now who i explained what to.

but let me try to explain again because i still dont feel completely
good about what happened.

at around 10:50 i went up to the front desk and asked your father what
time check out was. he told me 10:30. Then he said something like but
it is no problem, you can leave your bags here or you can use the room
until the after noon because we don't need it. I remember him using
the term medio dia but i thought he meant i could stay till noon with
no problem. Later he said something like you can stay till 4 if you
want to. I am nearly 100 percent sure he never said he would charge
for this.

In my experience in staying in many hotels in many countries, there
are not many who rent out rooms by the half day or by the hour. I
understand now that people come over from Bs As, but in the morning
when your father was talking that never entered my mind.

If he would have said they charge by the hour past 10:30

Something else that bothers me a little still is that no one ever told
me that check out was 10:30, as far as I remember. And when it was
10:30, no one asked me if I were planning to stay another night, and
no one explained that I could pay extra to stay a few hours longer.

Something else that bothers me is that your father said that someone
had come to use a room for a half day and he had to turn them away
because I was in the room. I wonder if this is really true because it
seemed to me the hotel was almost empty most of the afternoon. Also,
as I understood it there were a few people coming from the Buquebus at
night, more than would occupy just one room. So this would imply to me
that there was another room available all afternoon. Please correct me
if I am wrong because this is a detail which I have been wondering
about.

Anyhow, about the web page....

Originally I was going to take a few pictures of the hotel to show it
to potential backpackers who might be interested in helping the staff
with English. I was not planning on putting it on my salta
page, but instead just on the volunteer.eqi.org or the english.eqi.org
page. And I was not planning on putting it into the format of the
hostels.

If you look at this page on paysandu and compare it with the pages I
make for hostels, you will see what I mean.

Here is the page on paysandu. I am not sure if I showed it to you or
someone else.

http://www.volunteer.eqi.org/paysanvol.htm

On that page I just put the pictures in and write about them. But I
decided since everyone was being nice to me I would spend a little
more time on the pictures and put them into a nicer looking format, as
you see here

Link inactive now

As you can see the Rivera page is  on a different website. It is on
the website with all the hostels and tourist information. See the
colonia pages for example

Link inactive now

As you can see the saltainfo.com site is primarily designed for people
looking for a place to pay to sleep, not a place to teach English in
exchange for a place to stay. I hope that you can understand the
difference now.

By the way when I said "being nice" above I mean, for example, they
let me use the kitchen to cook some eggs and I assumed they were being
nice in letting me stay in the room longer.

I want to clarify something else. When I first talked to your father
at 10:50 or so I was not planning on spending another night in the
hotel. Then later I decided that since it was a nice quiet place to
work, I would stay another night. I think that is when I first told
told someone I wanted to stay another night. I don't remember now if
it was you I told or someone else, but when I did, someone told me the
hotel might be full at night. They also told me that it depended on
who check out, so partly I was waiting to see if anyone was going to
check out.

Then I continued working and just assumed I could leave whenever I
wanted, or I could stay if I knew there was going to a room for me.
But when you told me it might be as late as 8 before you knew for sure
if the people from the Buquebus were coming, I decided I would go to
Montevideo. So shortly after that I packed and talked to your father,
who told me  expected me to pay the extra 250 pesos.

Then he left and had Juan Carlos handle it. I then asked Juan Carlos
if he might not charge me for the extra fee since I had made the web
page. He was pretty uncompromising about it, or let's say pretty rigid
and inflexible. Uncompromising is a word that might not have a direct
translation in Spanish, just as compromise in English does not mean
compromiso in Spanish. Compromise in English means reaching an
agreement that is somewhere in between what either party wants. For
example, in our case for you to pay 125 and me to pay 125, sharing the
cost of the misunderstanding.

I did not tell anyone in the hotel this but I have done a lot of
writing about customer service, and that is one reason I am taking the
time to write this letter. I will put it on my website, www.eqi.org in
the hopes that everyone who reads it can learn something.

To make a generalization, after having been in South America for three
years, I would say that the people here are pretty bad at customer
service when it comes to conflict resolution. I have thought about
writing about this in Spanish for the site, and thought about offering
myself as a consultant to those who want to improve their customer
service.

I also did not tell anyone I write about what is called emotional
intelligence. The name has been used, misused and abused, but it still
is a fairly popular concept.

Here is a link, if you are interested to my page on customer service,
in English.

http://eqi.org/cserv.htm

If you are not bored yet, you could look at this article I wrote a few
years ago about emotional intelligence and business...

http://eqi.org/hrcom1c.htm

Ok that is a lot to read, but if you are still reading this email then
I will add a note about when you asked the question "What could I do?"
Maybe you remember me saying something like, "I can tell you what you
could have done... You could have said, 'I am sorry for the
misunderstanding, don't worry about it, thanks for the web page, have
a nice trip.'"

Then that is pretty much what you said. But sadly everyone had already
spent a lot of time and emotional energy on it all.

Before I forget, I want to say that I feel understanding when you say
that you were not trained in hotel management. I know you studied and
worked in graphic design. Maybe this is why you were more
understanding and more reasonable about the situation than the others.
Or maybe it is because you are younger, or maybe it is for a
combination of reasons. But in my opinion, once I made it clear that I
was not satisfied with paying 250 pesos, and I suggested what you
could do, you handled things well.

I also noticed how you understood my intentions after you told me not
to worry about it I then offered to pay for half of the disputed
amount. Juan Carlos did not understand this. I heard you explain to
him something about me wanting to show that I was not trying to be
abusive or take advantage of anyone. I appreciate this. One thing I
wanted, and probably we all wanted, was to feel understood.

I also want to thank you for proving that you are not merely a
hypocritical person who says "I am not materialistic". I believe that
you really don't care that much about the money, and this is
encouraging. This is another reason I have taken the time to write
this.

As I was on the bus I was thinking "I want to write something which
will help Anacecilia become a better manager". But I am not sure if
you want to be a hotel manager, especially after our big disagreement!

If you do though, I would like to help you. Maybe one day I will give
a conference on emotional intelligence and customer service in
Montevideo and invite you as a special guest for giving me the
inspiration to speak at the conference!

Seriously, I have been thinking of offering to give a talk on
emotional intelligence and customer service to the members of AHRU -
the association of hotel and restaurant owners of Uruguay. I met the
executive director last week and we had a nice talk. His English is
quite good, by the way! His name is Eduardo Brandon. I will say hi to
him here, so "Hi, Edward!"

As I was on the bus I was also wondering if you would make a better
manager than someone who has studied hotel management. I am afraid
those who study management are taught to think too much about money,
and too little about human feelings. Yet feelings are an important
factor in business. This is one reason a lot of consultants are making
a lot of money talking about them under the umbrella term of emotional
intelligence.

Well it is about five AM now. After I went to Montevideo I decided to
catch a bus to Paysandu. So that is where I am now. I got here about
3:30 AM.

I slept a long time on the buses from Colonia to Montevideo and then to here.

Thank you again for being reasonable, understanding and sincere. Oh, I
did catch the bus at 6:00 PM to Montevideo! Thanks for your help with
that.

Take care and best wishes,

Steve