Customer Service

I've been meaning to rant about this topic for a little while now, and now I have the perfect case study. And a pretty comprehensive reference to boot.

Wife and I just got back from our weekly ski trip. She works weekends, which works in our favor when it comes to finding good skiing deals here in New England. This week we headed up to Lake Placid to ski Whiteface, a mountain I grew up racing on, to take advantage of a "Gore-Whiteface Gift Certificate" my father and mother-in-law gave us for Christmas.

Flashback: The intent was to use this at Gore Mountain, much closer to home growing up and where we used to go after exhausting the Pepsi Program weekends at local hill West Mountain. In December we made the drive from the Nutmeg State for a couple days chillin' with the family and a day on the slopes at Gore.

Unfortunately we arrived at Gore without the printed receipt from the online purchase. Turns out we could have just used my name to redeem the certificate, but we didn't know that.

Fast forward to this week, the last week of February. Having already skied Gore Mtn, and most of the major spots in Vermont, we were willing to go the extra 100 miles or so to Whiteface. The northern tier of New England was supposed to get a good little storm, so the extra drive time seemed worth it. Plus we'd get to stay in Lake Placid, home of the 1980 Olympics. Ironically we staying right across the street from the Olympic Center building, site of one of the two Sportcenter Greatest Highlights ever (vote now on ESPN).

Imagine my frustration when the ticket sales agent at Whiteface informed me I had to physically pick up the "Gore-Whiteface Gift Certificate" at Gore Mountain, "because that's the website it was purchased from." Thoughts of driving over to ski Stowe or Smuggler's Notch, then home to write a very angry blog post bounced around in my head.

Having worked for years in ski school, I kept my composure and offered suggestions like "You can't override the system?" The response was something you might expect the first week of the season, "I need the gift certificate to scan it right here" showing me the infrared scanner attached to her computer terminal.


I implored the ticket sales person with something to the effect of "You mean to tell me that, in this age of technology, you can't just call down to Gore?" Long story short, she relented, and things worked out. It took a few minutes, but as she pointed out we were "lucky it wasn't the weekend." The extra time inside didn't bother my wife, as it was all of 2 degrees outside at the time.


So in the end, good job to Whiteface for finally making it right. Hopefully they make the system a little more user-friendly by next season. It will be hard to attract people from outside the Adirondacks otherwise.

And just in case you're interested, you can purchase from Gore Mountain. Oddly enough, the site didn't show up in the top ten when I searched for "Gore-Whiteface Gift Certificate." And I couldn't find anything on the Whiteface site.

If you have a few minutes, a guest blogger writes a interesting and deep graduate level example of a customer service from the tech side of things. At the very least, every ski school and ticket sales office needs to have a full slate of scenarios thought out before the start of the season. And when that fails, flexible and adaptive employees who aren't afraid to think outside the box and go the extra mile.

Via Web Strategy by Jeremiah.