Happy

This may be worthy for its own thread - as I can't figure out where the link of the article should be posted nor I can find it has been posted in this forum somewhere already...

https://loyaltylobby.com/2019/03/14/...ce-april-2019/

Highlight of the article -

Here’s the former employee’s point of view:
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I worked for Marriott for a little over 3 years. Marriott had a motto “Take care of the associates and they will take care of the guests.” In April of 2018 Marriott rolled out their new “Service Delivery Module.”
At the same time, they stopped taking care of the associates.

Before SDM, there were several departments to contact. Sales, customer care, rewards, etc. Now, no matter who you call, you are getting a sales rep. If you need to get sent to “loyalty” you are getting a sales rep that 3 hours more of copy and paste training. If you get sent to “elite” they had 2 more hours of the same training. And just to add, it was SPG employees leading the training.

An entire new reservation system was forced on us that barely works because Marriott didn’t want to pay Oracle to use the system they had been using before. To add to this, the agents were able to call supervisors that would help them fix things. The supervisors are now ordered not to help.

Everything has to be “make a case.” Cases are “supposed” to be resolved in 3 to 5 days. When I left, there were cases that were 4 months old untouched. The cases started in April. I’ve been told that since then, they have reached 110 million cases.

When the changes started in April, agents that had worked there for 20 years were walking out in the middle of their shifts. The company scrambled to hire a bunch of people with less than normal training. There are a lot of agents that are just terrible. There are still a lot that want to help but can’t. Even the former SPG agents are new to all of the system changes.

Marriott tried to change 50 things at once with them all working at 25 percent. It needed to change one thing at a time. Waiting until it was running well. Then make the next change. My former coworkers say there is a new change that is about to take away their last resort system away next week. Good luck.

So it is not IT like everyone says. Or usually lack of agents trying. It is the company not wanting to pay for a third party software anymore. And SPG training Marriott employees on a system that barely works. And neither company has used before.

I almost left out the best part. The CEO visited a call center for the first time ever two weeks ago. Best of luck travelers. Don’t blame the person on the phone. They are trying.
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Note the SPG role here - wonder who bought who?

AndWhatsYourPoint

I personally opened at least half a dozen cases between August and November 2018. Less than half ever got any kind of response, and those that did always followed the same script, explaining that there was nothing they could do but that my issue should fix itself in x amount of time, which it never did.

In my prior 25 years with Marriott I never once had to open a case. If there was a problem I simply called Marriott and the phone was promptly answered by a competent and empowered associate that would quickly rectify the situation. It really is sad how far Marriott's customer service has fallen.

PointWeasel

+100

This is crux of the ongoing issue. Nothing was being fixed or addressed, even simple things.

Only reaching out to the OCA staff did some thing finally get addressed but that was a waste of my time.

Having phones answered by useless agents does not help anyone and a frequent guest should not have to wait on hold thru ridiculous messaging, and then a useless agent.

I will have zero stays with Marriott Bonvoy this month, which has not happened for years. Voting with my wallet.

MSPeconomist

KRSW

The franchise model works very well in the restaurant industry. Many (most?) of the chain restaurants are franchises, yet with a few exceptions, they've managed to standardize the experience and quality. McDonald's is pretty consistent no matter where you are in the world. Ruth's Chris Steak House has ~150 locations and the experience has been consistent. There's a lot of parallels between foodservice & hospitality. The whole point of aligning yourself with a Flag (franchise) is for that blueprint of consistency and customer familiarity, and assured profitability. It's mostly the same reason we stay at them instead of independents.

Gabdawg

I have had a few ... moments and disappointments this year so far with Bonvoy customer service. NO issues whatsoever with the properties I have stayed at. All positive experiences.

I didn't get my 15 elite night credits for having my credit card. When I sent the online request in to rectify it was completely ignored. After 30 days I called and was told by an agent that I was indeed due the 15 nights elite credit for 2018 which put me well above the 50 night threshold for Platinum. She told me to wait 3-5 business days for my account to reflect the update. After 7 days I checked n with the Lurkers and was told, no I was not due the 15 elite credit nights because I accepted the 10,000 bonus points when I upgraded from the Rewards card to the Premier Plus card in Mat of 2018. I still don't know if the first agent was correct or the second agent was correct. Did the first agent tell me what I wanted to hear to get me off the line or was she overruled after our conversation?? Did I miss something in the T&C or was this a sneak attack on Marriott's part. So back to Gold I go.

My other issues have been having to request "Missing stays" to be credited to my account on about half of my stays this year. Then I needed to reach out again because i was shorted a night on a stay that they credited. You really have to watch them like a hawk. If they are in fact overwhelmed with requests they might consider accepting everyone on their word on the back log just to get a fresh start.

hockeyinsider

This is a false analogy. Most of the complaints don't deal with the inability of a Marriott property to provide a clean room or whatever. They deal with the consistent delivery of loyalty program benefits, the correct posting of stays by properties and the computer system and corporate customer service.

Imagine if the minimum wage McDonald's teller had to deal with a loyalty program. Teller: "Oh right, sir, you have titanium status and because of that you get the double Big Mac hamburger instead of the junior hamburger." Yeah, no.

Or imagine if you had to call corporate McDonald's to get the franchised restaurant to correctly place your order. Yeah, no.

nacho

I used to think IHG customer service sucks but now I think Marriott is definitely ahead.

catsfroggy1

Interesting. Before I got in the points game I probably stayed at Marriott's twice in my life. Really prefer independent hotels and independent restaurants. As my Marriott points will probably run out this summer and my Hyatt points ran out last fall, I will probably go back to the independent hotels. Can't imagine eating at McDonalds or Ruth Chris Steak house. But I guess to each their own.

deniah

Symptomatic of most corporations of this scale. Well, maybe wouldnt be so if some of those metrics were to measure satisfaction (internal or external)... but do companies ever try to sell wall street on that?
Everytime management level N visits, management level N-1 sweeps everything under the rug and show how nice and rosy things are. None of these guys at the P or VP level ever has the balls to speak up.

ou81two

Isn't the easy solution for this to move on to another program? Clearly they've made changes that hurt the company. Higher management is unlikely to do anything about it unless there's a financial reason to do so.

tfong007

I think that we are all hoping that someone in Marriott management is going to start paying attention to our comments as our unhappiness. Don't know what kind of collective spending power we as a group have and wether it will affect the bottom line. It seems that profits is a major motivator at Marriott. In the past Starwood did make changes based on Flyertalk threads.

hockeyinsider

The lurkers have been very, very quiet. You know they're reading these threads.

lotemblizej

An entire new reservation system was forced on us that barely works because Marriott didn’t want to pay Oracle to use the system they had been using before. To add to this, the agents were able to call supervisors that would help them fix things. The supervisors are now ordered not to help.

This is almost exactly what happened when United decided to use the old Continental Shares reservation system after the merger because it was "cheaper." It turned out to be far more expensive in terms of reduced capabilities, frustration for passengers and many (ex-United) agents alike, and the need to spend much more money to fix the problem. This cannot end well...

SkiAdcock

The UA/CO reservation system debacle was the first thing I thought of when I read the above.

Cheers.