Persistence

My wife has taught me something about being persistent. I've watched her on the phone before with customer service stay on hold until the right person that can do something gets on. I've also watched her confront people when the price is wrong. She's typically patient and knows how to ask the right questions.

So I put it into practice yesterday when we ended up having to switch our free Chase anniversary night through IHG. We needed to move our hotel reservation one night because of the weather. Unfortunately, the next day had no more free anniversary nights available for that hotel. The first person I talked to at IHG said she couldn't do anything about it, but she could check on other days. So I hung up.

I called back later and talked to another customer service person at IHG asking for the same thing, to switch to the next night. This person said he couldn't do it either, but he said what I can do is have you call the hotel and ask them if they can make an exception. If they can do that then I can book the night for you. The hotel can't actually book the night, but if they give you the exception, then I can book it for you. So I was armed with what to do next. So I called the hotel and asked them for an exception. The front desk person had to check with his manager. The manager said yes. Then I had to call IHG back, give them the whole story including that I now had an exception, and after waiting for a bit they got it booked for me still using our free Chase anniversary night!

Persistence!

Side note. I do wish that in cases like this there wasn't so much process. The best customer service people are the ones that have the freedom to do what needs to be done without having to have the customer do all the work.