Originally Posted by
DrPSB
So you had to ask her to call the restaurant instead of just relying on her online information?
I think this is like my experience. Instead of going the extra step and making a call they rely on what they have online. This strikes me as a bit lazy and unlikely to result in the desired outcome. I can look at online reservations systems just fine by myself. Where a concierge can come in handy is doing a little leg work to see if there are other options.
Well, asking her to call the restaurant is one of a few possible replies to her telling me of her online query. If I wasn't really dead set on the restaurant I had mentioned, I might have asked for other highly rated steakhouses or other highly rated restaurants in the same area where there might have been more availability first. And although I called myself first, if I was in a hurry, I might not have made that initial call to the restaurant.
My point here is that there are a lot of possible questions I could ask after she gives me the results of her online look up. After she gave me that info, I told her that I really wanted that restaurant for that day in a specific time range and asked her to phone the restaurant. She took down my call back number and obliged quickly.
The concierges aren't mind readers, and I prefer they not pretend to be. Few things annoy me more then when someone thinks they know exactly what you want when they don't. Every request I made was done to the best of her ability, and I ended up with the best res I could get at the end, even if it wasn't the exact one I wanted.
Now if I asked them to make a call or two, and they start giving me the runaround, then I'd have a problem with them.