Staying at your own hotel
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2006-11-12 16:11:17 - Graham EllisThere's nothing like trying out the services of a business to learn about how that business works, and how it looks after its customers. And it's especially important for the owners of a business and their customer facing staff to know how they, their colleagues,and their service look to their users.
And so ... one of the things we planned at Well House Manor right from the start was to offer every member of staff who'll routinely be checking in guests, answering their questions are requirements from late afternoon through to breakfast time and beyond, the chance to stay for a night in one of our rooms. Well - actually we didn't really just offer - we made an offer that was hard to refuse.
Lisa and I stopped overnight during last week - we sampled bedroom 3, we got to try out the TV and the bathroom, to learn a little about the fixtures and fittings, and to see how our housekeeping team was settling in. And very well they're doing to - we just picked up on a couple of things that we should vary ever so slightly, but all in all there was a whole heap of congratulations flowing from the night. 
Both Martin and Leah have also stayed over - on different nights, trying our different rooms, and they've come back with very positive reports too. Again, I'm sure there's odd things that they noticed (and perhaps they'll see from both sides now) and the odd thing that they've told us about ... but most importantly we - all of us who are likely to get a customer query from 5 p.m. though to 9 a.m. - now know somewhat more about the operation and action of all the technology we've put in - from adjusting the temperature in the bath to remembering to take our keys out of the energy savers as we leave the rooms.