“Over the course of the last several months we have had the pleasure of working with Suzanne Gardner in order to plan a trip to Germany. We found Suzanne through the American Express Travel website. During the planning phase Suzanne was extremely helpful, knowledgeable, always followed up and helped guide us as we planned the trip. We were extremely satisfied. Suzanne embodies all the characteristics of someone who excels in customer service. We expressed those sentiments in a survey which was sent to us by American Express where we documented our experience with Suzanne with the highest possible ratings.
Our last stop, during our recent trip, was Munich. We arrived in the late afternoon on New Year’s Day. We checked into the Hotel Excelsior and when we walked into our rooms we were extremely disappointed; actually that is putting it rather mildly. The hotel had been represented as a 4 or 5 Star hotel and we felt the rooms more closely resembled an old Super 8 badly in need of renovation. I won’t take the time to outline the issues we had with the hotel since the purpose of this note is to make sure you know how Suzanne responded when faced with very unhappy clients. We contacted the American Express Travel 800 number on New Year’s Day. American Express reached Suzanne and she contacted us immediately. She again demonstrated that, at her core, she is the essence of a person who defines excellent customer service.
The following morning, January 2nd, Suzanne had arranged for us to have a private driver take us to Dachau. By 9:30am we had confirmed that Compass Tours did not have us on their schedule and would not be picking us up. As you might imagine we were not pleased. I sent Suzanne a rather terse email regarding the mix up.
The reason I wanted to reach out to you is that it is my experience that you really understand someone’s commitment to customer service when things go wrong. As a small business owner I am keenly aware that generally speaking I only hear from our customers when things don’t go well and rarely do I hear when something goes right. I wanted to make sure that as the owners of your travel company you know that Suzanne Gardner’s actions reflect well, not only on her, but on your agency as a whole.
At every turn Suzanne acted on our behalf to rectify these situations. I am quite certain that had Suzanne not proactively worked to make things “right” for us we would have ended our trip on a sour note. Instead, solely because of Suzanne and the steps she took we returned as happy and satisfied clients and would not hesitate for one minute to contact Suzanne and your organization again to plan our next trip, which we believe will be this coming summer when we return to Germany and then travel on to Italy.
It is my hope that on our behalf you will recognize the outstanding job that Suzanne did, she represented your organization in a superior manner.”
– Jay & Cindy J.
