Why comms needs to educate the front line

Apologies for the lack of my musings last week. Preparations for the upcoming Summit plus judging awards overwhelmed me…

Welcome.

The hotel trade rests on one simple promise.

You are safe here.

Customer service determines how that promise is delivered.

In December 2022, a young woman, referred to as Lily, was sexually assaulted in her room in the Maidenhead branch of Travelodge, a leading budget hotel chain. Her attacker had obtained a key to her room by telling the receptionist he was her boyfriend. He wasn’t.

When Lily reported that a man had entered her room while she slept, she might have expected sympathy. Instead, she was met with a shrug. He had said he was her boyfriend. Case closed.

The following morning, visibly distressed, Lily complained to a senior member of staff, as did her manager. Nothing was done. There was no incident report. No offer to call the police. She reported the crime herself. Even a visit from the local constabulary to seize CCTV footage failed to elicit any response from the hotel.

Lily then emailed Travelodge’s CEO, chairman and former CEO. She detailed the assault and the inadequate support she had received from the hotel’s reception and management. Her email was clear: she wanted to stop such an event happening to anybody else.

It never reached the CEO. Instead, it was sent back to the manager to whom she had complained. One 18-minute interview later, the investigation closed. Customer services responded, headed ‘without prejudice’. Proper procedures had been followed, it claimed, and staff were not to blame. It offered Lily a refund for her night’s accommodation. About £30.

Not one person seemed to appreciate the enormity of the situation. The customer services response ended: ‘I am truly sorry for the inconvenience and upset caused to you’, which is what you say when breakfast is delayed. Or the toast is burned.

It is an extraordinary thing to say to a victim of sexual assault. When Lily complained about the tone of the response, rejecting the ‘insulting’ refund, the reply came: ‘This is all we will be offering’. The final line: ‘Thank you once again for taking the time to contact us and share your experiences,’ as if Lily had just written to say she’d had a wonderful stay.

The police were the first to take Lily seriously. In January this year, her attacker was sentenced to an extended sentence of seven years and six months. The judge concluded that he was dangerous. Yet even though Travelodge supplied evidence for the prosecution, there is no evidence that anyone contacted Lily to express regret.

But how could Travelodge’s receptionists, managers and customer services act with such indifference?

An independent review commissioned by Travelodge suggests an answer.

And once again, it’s our old friend culture.

Customer service staff were judged on how quickly and cheaply they settled complaints. All complaints were treated as equal. There was no triage by severity, so her complaint was handled as if it had been about a faulty shower.

The organisation wanted the queue of complaints driven down. The culture was, as the review puts it, entirely predictable. And, perhaps most shocking of all, ‘room intrusions’, as they are so quaintly named, were considered ‘one of those things’.

Put simply, they happened often enough to appear normal. Front-line staff had been trained to spot child sexual exploitation and modern slavery. But nobody had trained them in key security, in violence against women and girls, or in how to respond to someone in distress. They learned on the job, and the job taught them to shrug.

That should make every internal comms team think. If your people learn the culture on the job, what is the job teaching them? Staff responded to what was measured and rewarded. Not Travelodge’s corporate purpose, or the three pillars of its Better Future sustainability plan: ‘inclusive, caring and conscious’.

But here’s the real killer: Travelodge says it gives customers a well-priced, well located stay they can trust. Oh yes, that one simple promise on which the hotel trade rests. Worthless.

Even the conviction didn’t spur Travelodge into action. Six weeks later, Lily contacted the BBC to make the point about hotel security, and name Travelodge for the first time. (She controlled the narrative, and who can blame her?) It was only then that the board was alerted to the attack.

To be fair, they did then respond with alacrity. An independent review was commissioned. Within days, a cross-business team rewrote its key security policy, and within a fortnight 14,000 staff had been trained in the new ways.

But a new policy does not maketh a new culture. When ‘mystery guests’ were sent to test the system two months later, housekeepers let them into rooms at each of the five randomly selected hotels without asking for any identification. Months after the training, it seemed, nothing had changed.

That’s the big lesson for corporate affairs professionals. Lily's complaint was a crisis waiting three years to happen. It spent that time in a customer services queue. If serious complaints don’t reach the people who understand reputational risk, they will reach somebody else. Journalists. Regulators. Politicians. Or, as in this case, the BBC.

Last few tickets

Had an accident that’s not your fault?

With two summits for comms professionals in London on the same day, mix-ups happen. If you meant to book the Corporate Affairs Summit but ended up with a ticket for something else with a similar name, you could be entitled to compensation.*

Our claims team is primed and standing by. Reply to this email, and we’ll get you sorted. No win, no fee.

*Compensation consists of a ticket to the right summit and my sincere sympathy for the distress the mistake must have caused.

PS For the avoidance of doubt, we did not pick this battle. Our date was announced when, for the second year running, another summit with a remarkably similar name chose the same day. Out of 365 days, apparently only one would do. Go figure.