128: A Tale of Two Teas 🫖 On Botching the Basics and Correcting Mistakes (Or Not)

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My most mortifying business moments are how I teach myself what new boundaries I need and what new systems I need with my team and with clients. So the mortifying moments really do help create new systems and process.

This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Nothing makes me angrier in terms of how a business is run than when it's run poor and it steals time and money from the customers who are interacting with it. If you're a longtime listener of this show, and by long time I mean the entire year and a half that it has existed, you might remember episode 83 on Breaking Through Buyer's how to Never Lose a Customer Again with my friend Joey Coleman. Today I have decided after a year of simmering on this to share an episode of one of my biggest cases of Buyer's Remorse in recent memory. I never want to throw companies under the bus. I generally know that everybody is doing the best that they can, but this one has some really important family and meaningful moments involved that I won't be able to get back. What my friend and I call botching the basics was so egregious in the example that I'm going to share with you today. That would have been bad enough and I probably wouldn't have jumped on the podcast to talk about it, but they didn't even respond to my message. My thoughtful, which you'll hear in a moment message about my experience for what is supposedly a luxury brand. Again, I wasn't going to come on here and talk about this, but I just recently had a redemptive experience that provided so much contrast of what delightful business can look like, what it can look like to get things right. Especially if you're brand promise includes luxury and creating memories with family so now that I have both sides of this Oreo cookie, two sides of this sandwich, I'm going to share with you today a tale of two T's. First, a little context. It's December 2021. I haven't seen my grandma in two years because of the pandemic. My grandma is turning 90 years old, which is incredible. I dedicate a pivot to her. And Jima, as I call her, my nickname for her. She is one of the most agile, brightest people I know, and she's an angel in my life. I love her so much, and I wanted to think, how could we celebrate her 90th birthday in true style? So I was doing searches, I was racking my brain, and I finally landed on why don't we go have high tea at the Ritz? This was the Ritz in Southern California, has an Oceanside view, got really great reviews. And I thought this. That's it. Who doesn't love a good high tea? I didn't even know what high tea was 10 years ago. I'm a coffee drinker, so if anyone said the phrase tea or high tea, I just kind of brushed it off. But here in New York City, I've had so many delightful experiences with friends. Shout out to Dori Clark that I thought, what better than to make a reservation for my grandma and her friends, who she affectionately calls the YOLOs. This was after I taught her what the term YOLO meant. You only live once. And she puts this into practice way more than me. So the yolos get together, they like to do fun things, and I just thought, what could be better? Tea at the Ritz. And money is not gonna be an issue. I'm not gonna let that get in our way because I haven't seen Grandma in two years. And you just don't always know how many more opportunities you have left that can go for any of us. Simultaneous to trying to make this happen, I was feeling kind of nervous. I was super nervous during the pandemic to see her at all because I didn't wanna fly in and bring Covid. So now I've started scheduling one night of Hotel Buffer. As I shared in the previous episode on ways that I build Buffer into my calendar. As I was researching hotels near where I would meet them for tea, I thought, why don't I stay at the Ritz for one night? I will grant myself. And I was sweating over this decision, just sweating over it. Is this worth it? Was probably over 800 because it was Christmas time. I have never spent so much on a hotel room. And it's almost disgusting that I was even entertaining this decision. The way that I justified it was that I had had a long year, I'd had a stressful year. Free time was about to launch in three months. I thought, why don't I do something? Give myself one night in a luxury hotel. That way I'll meet grandma and her friends for tea the following day. And after so much deliberation and just weeks of wondering, should I book this? The part of me that did end up saying yes and booking it was also from the hat of me writing about business and writing about business experiences and brand and the promises that we make to our customers. And so I thought maybe I could write this off a little bit as research and see, because I do love me a good luxury hotel stay. I used to think that paying money for a hotel at all, like paying a dollar more than you had to, was just ridiculous because you don't even get to take anything home. You pay for that night or five of a nice hotel and then it's gone. But as my life has grown in complexity and things have been so chaotic over the last few years, now I really cherish a good night or two by myself in a really nice hotel where I feel hugged by this luxury experience. It's strange, I know. I hate shopping, I hate buying clothes, I hate trying on clothes, I don't shop a lot. And I notice that I tend to put my money into nice hotel stays and really nice meals here in New York City. So you get that picture. I book the hotel and we book the tea. And I'm sure you can imagine what happens next. I have all these high expectations and was just utterly, completely disappointed by the entire experience, A to Z. So my key learning from this quote business expense was what not to do. Now, before I get into that, let me just say this is obviously the bougiest podcast conversation. It's like, oh, no, your luxury hotel stay wasn't up to par and neither was the high tea. I get it. This is why I didn't talk about it for over a year, because it's a privileged place to be to even hit submit on booking this room and booking the high tea. And so I wasn't going to talk about it. To be honest. We could say this is definitely what they would call a champagne problem. But I still think there's a lot that we can learn from it. And it's incredible to see another business 10 minutes away, no less, knock it out of the park so completely. As I recently had that I figure maybe you could give me a little grace. Those of you here listening, fellow business owners, that yes, we're going to talk about some literal champagne problems in this conversation, but if we can step back, what are we learning? Because the other thing, I don't want it to just be a gripe fest. I'm usually really generous, especially with anyone working in the service industry. Waitstaff. I always try to over tip over deliver. Michael makes fun of me that sometimes service providers will tell me what I owe them and then I proactively pay more just because I feel like it or just because I think they did a great job. So I never want to throw anybody under the bus unnecessarily or even necessarily. I'd rather just walk away, just remove my energy. In this case though, feels a little bit like one of these PSAs, like buyer beware. Because if you think you're spending all this money to get a certain experience, you should just hear the other side of it. If the Ritz had resolved any of what I'm about to tell you, I also wouldn't be here telling you any of this. We would have come to a happy resolution. I would have felt seen and heard as a customer and I would have returned. But alas, that was not how this tale of two T's is going to go down. I think the best way for me to tell you what happened is for me to read you the letter that I sent to their customer care team after the fact. Here we go.

Dear Ritz Carlton Management and Customer Care Teams, I'm writing to you as a frequent traveler, Marriott member and former admirer of your esteemed Ritz Carlton brand. As a business owner myself for over a decade, I realize how trying these times have been, particularly for travel related industries and amidst labor market shortages. Still, this is the kind of feedback I value most. So I'm passing this along to you, given how dramatically and egregiously my recent experience diverged from your well known values. To celebrate my grandmother's 90th birthday, a special occasion so few people have the privilege of partaking in, I booked a reservation for tea service at the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel and decided to stay the night. Since I was coming in from New York City, this was the first time I would be seeing her since before the pandemic started. Two long years. So I chose the most special place I could think of to honor how important she is to me. Although $800 a night is a bit steeper than my usual accommodations. Side note that's me trying to pretend that this wasn't like the biggest deal of my life to book a room at that cost because I want them to take me seriously. I value luxury experiences and have long admired your gold standard operating principles and legendary customer service. As a business author, keynote speaker and podcaster, I almost featured the Ritz Carlton in free time. My forthcoming book on heart based business after this stay, I am thankful those snippets didn't make it into the final manuscript. My recent experience from mid December Number one Upon checking in, I was upgraded to a stark, cold room that overlooked a busy driveway and a man tending to the bushes. See photos below. There was so little privacy that I couldn't open the blinds without him or passersby directly seeing in. For $800, the room itself seemed more like a motel stay, not up to even typical Marriott standards, let alone a Ritz Carlton. With little time before our Raya restaurant reservation, I returned to the front desk and asked to switch rooms. Number two I arrived at the Restaurant Raya 25 minutes early to try to secure a table by the famed sweeping ocean view windows for my grandmother and her friends. I was told it wasn't possible. When we did check in, we were inevitably seated behind the view, a bit heartbreaking for me, even though I didn't want to make a big deal of it in front of her. How many more opportunities will she have for that oceanside view? I'm not sure. And this was top of mind three for $125 per person tea service. The food was beyond mediocre, dry and flavorless. When I told our server that I don't eat fish and therefore half the sandwiches, he declined my simple request for a second cucumber sandwich. I was told this wasn't possible. He brought two more of the mundane egg salad sandwiches instead. I don't need to visit a Ritz for day old deli fair. That's my anger coming through. Number four we mentioned it was my grandmother's birthday three times upon making the reservation to the host and upon sitting down. Still, there was no cake delivered until long after the check arrived and we were getting ready to leave. The staff had completely forgotten and we resignedly accepted for them to fix their mistake just moments before departing when the rest of the restaurant had already cleared out.

Number five upon checking into my room, I asked for newspaper delivery in the morning, something I had been delighted by during a previous stay at the Lake Tahoe location. When I switched rooms, I reminded the receptionist, alas, nothing at my door. This too was forgotten number six when I shared the above feedback upon checking out, the receptionist comped my breakfast. Kind of her, yes, But a tiny $42 drop in the ocean charge in comparison to the $810 room rate and $500 plus bungled birthday tea service.

Side note, I'm going to add a number seven. You didn't even reply to this message. Which of course I gave them a month or two to try to correct any of the above by me writing this very letter. Back to the letter as I close out with a couple more paragraphs. Were there things this location did? Well? Sure, the seaside location is a primary selling point, but this has already been established. Yes, the team allowed me to change rooms and the staff were expedient when I called down for water bottles and toiletries. Other than that, at every single moment that your ladies and gentlemen had a chance to over deliver. That's what they call them. They failed, then failed again to adequately correct these mistakes. After gentle feedback and reminders, let alone to innovate or surprise and delight. Given the preposterously high cost financially and emotionally, at the ruined celebration, the unimpressive room assignments and the subpar customer service followed by more missed opportunities to correct initial mistakes, I cannot imagine ever staying at a Ritz Carlton again. The only quote mystique lingering with me after this day is how a luxury hotel with such lotted values has fallen so far. Mystique is one of their values. I truly wish I were writing to sing your praises instead in good faith to prevent others from such an abysmal and costly mistake. I can only imagine actively dissuading friends, many of whom are fellow luxury travelers, from making their own reservations in the future. The value, in more ways than one, just isn't there. I send this letter with care in my heart. Otherwise I wouldn't have taken the time to write it. I would have complained on a public review site. Instead. However irrational though it may be, I still have a flicker of hope that someone somewhere up the management chain cares enough to correct these errors or at least take them seriously. As I stated at the start, as a business owner and author who is passionate about studying companies with strong customer centric principles, I would want to know if my team or any one location were so actively marring my esteemed brand. I appreciate you reading Jenny.

Now.

I was partly inspired to write this letter by a book called the Road Less Stupid. I'll put it in the show notes. He too had sent a letter to a five star golf resort in California and that Kind of helped me frame this. I genuinely meant what I said, that as a business owner, I would want to know if the customer experience was so vastly different than what was promised on the website and in the company values. It doesn't matter. There's no way I'd be writing this for even a regular Marriott location because Marriott bought the ritz in the 90s. I don't care if you promised me, like an airport hotel stay, that's cool, I'm down for that. I'll choose that, no problem. But if you promise me the Ritz and I pay rich prices, I'm going to write the letter that I did in as caring, but, you know, making the point as possible. Maybe I lost you already. You think I'm just being a whiny brat. I don't really write these very often. I just write it when so many things go wrong. And I happen to be studying small business and brand and operations and experience. So if you want to see the Keith Cunningham one, you can check out the book. It's a great book overall. The Road Less Stupid. He talks about all the mistakes and things he's learned the hard way as a business owner. So this letter to the Ritz, first of all got an immediate bounce back from an address. We careitzcarlton.com. sure, sure. It's a tiny little autoresponder. And then a month later, when I had had no response, I wrote back this time, yes, with a little bit of snark. It was a full month later. Now we're into January, around January 20th. So I gave them over a month to respond. And I just checked in. I said, hi, team Ritz Marriott. How much do you actually care? Because again, their email address is called we carearriottsomethingsomething.com. how much do you actually care? No updates even to the letter I sent in December. It's been a month now. I figured I would at least hear back. Jenny. And then. Crickets.

Nothing. Ever. So here we are, a year now after all this. And that's why I'm recording this podcast. Because if you don't have the decency to even write back to the best, most straightforward letter that I could think to write about a caring customer who has long admired and aspired to stay at a hotel like this even once in my life. Nothing. No response. Unbelievable. How did this fall through the cracks? They even assigned a case number. So, hey, Ritz Marriott, if you're listening, the case number is 315-90-0713. Where are you at.

We'Ll be right back just after this.

Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.

Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.

And breathe.

Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste.

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What I want all of us to take away from this are a few things. And then I'm going to tell you about how we redeemed this with the most delightful tea service of all time. Because that was very recently. First of all, decide if you want to be a luxury brand or not. That's okay. If not, we don't all have to be luxury brands with red carpet service for our clients. But if you do and you're going to price that way, meet your promises or price accordingly if you don't have the capability to do that. Number two, we all make mistakes. There's been a lot of turnover at companies. It's been hard to keep people, especially in the hotel and restaurant industries. I get it. There were probably a lot of new people staffing the hotel. Then if you make a mistake, over deliver to make it right. I try to do this. If people write in and they're upset about something or they want a refund or they want something that I can't even give them if I feel that the request is sent with a good heart, I over deliver to make something right. When clients sign up for services with me, like recently the Voxer coaching, I gave them everything I have. I gave everything I had in terms of resources and access to past courses, things that were way over the value of the investment for that Voxer coaching because once you sign on to be a client with me, I want to roll out the red carpet and I Stop thinking about, oh, well, I don't want to over deliver to precisely what you paid for this certain thing. Yes, I keep it in mind, generally. And that's when things are going well. So if you bungle so many different things over deliver in order to make it right, especially if this is the promise of your brand. So again, if you're going to be the lauded Ritz Carlton with mystique and all these fine touches and surprise and delight and all the things that we read about in these books that are written about these companies, then when things go wrong, you got to over deliver to make it right. There are so many ways to delight somebody in the response to correct something. And in this case, okay, you put me in a room where the gardener can't see me changing. Okay, great. That's table stakes. That's the basics. But there were so many other opportunities. Even me arriving at the restaurant 25 minutes early. Come on, like, you gotta figure out how to delight people if you wanna run a luxury brand. Number three, respond. Even if there's nothing you can do, even if your hands are tied, you gotta listen and empathize. I mean, they had this one final chance that I thought if they respond to my letter, and maybe the team that was working at that time was so new, so green, they didn't know what to do. They didn't even know how to over deliver when things went wrong, that's okay. But maybe someone up the corporate chain can see my letter and see that I did put thought into it and I wasn't just trying to rip them a new one on a review site. I genuinely felt hurt and disappointed by the experience. Nothing. Crickets. If someone can't even write to say, we're so sorry you had this experience, then I have no qualms a year later recording a podcast episode like this one. Because that, to me is. It's just inexcusable. How many cracks do we need to fall through before I, Jenny, am going to just say something about it. We'll see if this podcast gets a response. Because again, I'm not in the business of throwing businesses under the bus. And I really made a point that even in free time, I always say that we can lear from our mistakes. And many of my most mortifying business moments are how I teach myself what new boundaries I need and what new systems I need with my team and with clients. So the mortifying moments really do help create new systems and process. But part of that, I'll add number four, is you gotta be open to feedback and listening to people who say, hey, this was my experience recently. Just want to let you know, I'm always so grateful for the people who write in. So somebody told me, if you're listening, thank you. They said, I listened to your podcast episode on Grumpy Business and I think that your Pivot website is a bit grumpy because the links are too light, they're hard to see. And this is the second person that had said that recently. So I said, I apologize for the grumpy links. You got it. I'm going to make it a darker green now. Again, I don't always jump when someone says jump, but okay, two in a row feedback. I'm grateful for that feedback because if those are the people taking the time to write, then what's everyone else thinking that's just kind of feeling a little bit off or some friction and not saying anything at all because that's a lot of effort to even figure out how to get in touch and write all that. So I'm always grateful when people provide feedback, even if I disagree. My brother and I have always had a no spinach in your teeth policy. If someone has spinach in their teeth, you got to tell them. And we know that we can accept feedback or not, but that we'd rather tell each other anything that we're noticing or suggestions we want to throw out. He's running his own business too, and so we have always said to each other, thank you, thank you, thank you when someone gives feedback, even if it's hard to hear. For more on that in a corporate setting, check out Radical Candor by Kim Scott. I'm sure many of you have probably already read it or heard of it. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. I worked many layers under her at Google and I always admire how she would run meetings, how she showed up, and so it's just cool to see her book doing so well in terms of customer experience. I also want to give a shout out to tripit Pro and Delta because I had this experience yesterday that really shows what's possible on the other side of this TripIt Pro, if you travel at all. I highly recommend TripIt Pro, especially with so many cancellations among flights. Usually many times I've been the first to know before even other passengers, if a flight is getting delayed, moved to a different gate or canceled. It's not very expensive. TripIt Pro is just $49 a year at the time of this recording, and I just recently booked a flight for my first in person Speaking engagement paid in two and a half years. Oh my goodness. So I booked the flight and I've flown since then. But mostly personal, not that it matters in this case. Yesterday I got an email from tripit Pro saying tripit Pro just paid for itself. By the way, your flight, if you call this number, give them this confirmation number and tell them this, this and this, your flight may be $250 cheaper than when you booked it, which was just a day prior to that. Sure enough, right there in the email, I go ahead, I call Delta, I give them my confirmation number. TripIt Pro emails told me exactly what to say. And so I'm on the phone with Delta. By the way, the wait time was zero minutes. Good job, Delta. And the woman helping me out said, oh, yep, you're right, I can reduce this. I can credit it back to your account. So I got $250 off my trip. You know, I'm putting that toward the luxury hot when I go to this city. Hardy har har. No, it's not a Ritz. And then she proceeded to tell me, by the way, you're a diamond medallion member. You don't need to pay for Comfort plus every time you fly. Book main cabin. Not economy cabin, book main cabin. And right after you book, usually within a day, you'll get automatically upgraded to Comfort Plus. So not only did this person helping me reduce the cost of my flight answered quickly, that's an overall systems and service issue in terms of customer response time. Answered quickly, helped me immediately super clearly and then has now saved me money every single time I book a flight far into the future. Talk about save someone. Next steps. Talk about free time. What steps can you take now to save yourself time in the future? This wonderful person just gave me a travel tip that I didn't know about and she's asking me, why are you paying for Comfort plus every time? Because of course, you know, I want the leg room and I like to board early so I make sure my travel carry on has room in the overhead. There are just reasons I like to do that, especially for business trips. And now I'm going to save money every time. And maybe if some of you fly Delta. I really love Delta. I use the Delta Amex card. That's how I get my medallion status. I'm not like a road warrior flying so much to earn it just by my flight segments alone. It's my business credit card. So anyway, maybe some of these tips that I'm sharing with you about the Delta Amex about booking Main Cabin getting automatically upgraded if you have any sort of status with Delta and tripit Pro. These things are going to save us all time, save us all money. Not just today, but into the future. So I'll close out with the redemption story for grandma's birthday. I just was really missing her and so I flew out to see her and I did this Google search where near her home could we possibly go for another tea service? I just had this open loop, this really bad taste in my mouth from that Ritz experience. Even though of course we did our best to have a lovely time. And it's always about the company. Well, company in two ways. The company we had invited and were spending that meal with, not so much the capital C company of the Ritz and whatever they did or didn't do. But we went to this adorable place in a historic part of San Bernardino called the Teahouse at Los Rios. And this was absolutely exquisite, A to Z, delightful, spectacular all the way through. When you walk up, there's all these flowers, you really feel like you're stepping into Alice in Wonderland. There's a quirky birdcage filled with artsy china tea plateware and things. There's this gazebo sort of flower covered opening you can take pictures under, there are these bright orange monarch butterflies flitting about. And we had a six course two hour tea service for $49 each that included a beautiful scone with clotted cream, my favorite. We got mango mimosas that came with our meal, a soup of the day. This happened to be cream of mushroom. We got a salad, then we got this gorgeous assortment each of finger sandwiches and a little fruit cup in the middle followed by an actual gold dust sprinkled chocolate cake. And of course I told them it's her birthday because even though it was almost a year later, we got a redeem last year. So they brought the birthday cake, they brought the candle, we had this gorgeous watermelon ice cream tea. When my grandma didn't love the first type of tea they brought, they brought another one. Every single aspect of this service was on it. And again, like everything from the ambiance to the pacing of the service, to the presentation, to every detail, large and small, being taken care of. It was so heartwarming, it was so memorable. I leapt to leave this restaurant or review and even my grandma said just absolutely spectacular. And this like filled our hearts, gave us such big smiles, gave us memories. I miss my family so much. It's really hard living across the country from everybody and never feeling like I get enough time with anyone, whether it's my mom, my brother and his wife and their three kids, my grandma, my dad lives in a different state. Michael's family lives across the world in Beirut. It's really hard. There's a constant feeling of time preciousness, let's call it that. And so shout out to the Teahouse at Los Rios for really giving us the memory of a lifetime. I'll close with a quote I saw recently from a book called Raving A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service, written by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon bowles. They say one raving fan is worth more than 100 satisfied customers. The teahouse at Los Rios definitely created three raving fans and one with a podcast, so I'm here sharing it with all of you. If you're ever in Southern California, make your way there. Hope you found something in this episode helpful even though it's tea and champagne problems. Thank you for listening. I'd love to hear any of your stories. You know you can always leave me a voice memo@itsfreetime.com Ask in free time. I mentioned my friend and I call it Botching the Basics. So do you have an example of a company botching the basics? Do you maybe have an example of a company botching some basics but then apologizing and over delivering with their correction? Because I think that's as instructive that way. None of us need to be perfectionists, we just need to put some care into the response. Or maybe you have had an experience recently where you want to sing the praises of a company's systems to deliver a truly red carpet experience to clients. I'd love to know any of the above. And of course, for more on this topic, that episode I mentioned right at the start is episode 83, Breaking Through Buyer's Remorse. Never lose a Customer Again with Joey Coleman. He has a fantastic book called Never Lose a Customer Again. Highly recommend so that we can all avoid all of these putting off the Ritz mistakes. Thanks again for listening everybody. Have a beautiful rest of your day.

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