Last weekend, my family and I visited Great Wolf Lodge in Mason, OH. It’s right next to King’s Island Park and a great place to get away for some indoor waterpark fun during the cold winter months. I’ve got 5 kids under age 10 (plus one on the way) and cabin fever can take on an ugly face at our house. 🙂 GW does a great job online of showing you the rooms and letting you make reservations online. Because I’ve got a large family and I wanted to get the details right, I chose to confirm my reservations on the phone with a GW customer service rep. At the end of our call, the rep suggested we use one of their playpens for our 15 month old. I took her up on the offer. One less thing, right?
Well the bad news is that when we arrived, the play pen hadn’t been communicated to Lawson, my on site customer service guy. So he called a guy and they agreed to bring it to our room. We hit the waterpark for a few hours and came back to the room; but no playpen. I called Lawson and the bad news got worse…the hotel was full and all of the playpens had been given to other guests. Oh man…I’m tired, it’s late, and no playpen means no sleep for me that night. And I wasn’t in the mood to go out in the snow looking for a WalMart to buy a playpen…
That’s where Lawson stepped in and saved the night. He sent someone to buy a new playpen at WalMart. It arrived just in time and our baby boy slept wonderfully in his brand new, never been used, playpen. Thanks to Lawson for taking it upon himself to send someone out just for us and thanks to GW for providing a culture where people do what it takes to solve problems with short notice.
The Lesson: Dropped balls are part of being in business. It’s your willingness to dive on dropped balls that sets you apart from the pack.
Reminder: There’s never a better chance to win the customer service game than when you are dealing with people who aren’t at their best and really need your help.
Customer Service... 
Wow, that could have ended SO badly!! They almost under-delivered on something that you werent initially expecting in the first place! But since they offered to provide a play pen, of course now you were planning on having it. I’m so glad Lawson stepped up to make it right, and its a great example of QBQ too.