Holly Reynolds Shares Insights on Customer Service and Event Planning

Okay, so we learned about how to identify and clarify problems over the phone. Let's listen to someone talk about real-life customer service. My particular market segment is the smaller corporate meetings and I feel my favorite part about that is that I'm always busy. I'm working every day with multiple people trying to plan events that are quick turnaround. Sometimes I'll get a call on Monday for a meeting on Wednesday. It'll just happen. Sometimes I've got groups that are looking for October. It's completely different. I like that it keeps me on my toes. I'm always busy and I'm always striving towards the next level of customer service.

How else can I help someone book an event here and stay happy and want to come here in the future for events? We build relationships with local companies all the time. We work with pretty much all the big local things we've got here in Seattle. They've had events here at the Edgewater. I enjoy that. I love being a part of something that is unique to Seattle and unique to the Pacific Northwest. The biggest challenge is that we tend to run into is knowing how much information a client needs to have to book an event. I have quite a wide range of clients. I see there are going to be people who need a date and a room and if it's available, that's all they want to know. I have people who've never heard of the Edgewater. They've never been to Seattle. They want to know what makes us special. I'm always having to find the right balance between selling the event space, selling the Edgewater, selling Seattle, but also getting the exact info that they need in a timely manner that makes it easy for them to make a decision to come have an event here.

That's what I've discovered in the last couple of months that I've been here is that sometimes they don't want me to say this is how much square footage we have. This is what you get if you open the window. They want to know March 30th are you available? It's tough. That's one of my biggest challenges figuring out what the client needs for me specifically. Also figuring out what room is the best for them. We have nine different rooms. This is our smallest room and it holds up to 16 people, but it can hold two. We've got rooms that can hold up to 300 people for reception styles. Lots of different space options and finding the right balance for the client, finding exactly the setup they need, the atmosphere they're looking for, that can be a challenge as well.

I would say that one of my favorite experiences that I've had here was actually just a couple of weeks ago. We had a group from Starbucks coming in. They actually came in last week, but they came in for a site tour to check out the space because they'd never been to the Edgewater. People here are Starbucks. They think of Seattle. This was something I was really hoping that we could book so that we could build a really good customer relationship with Starbucks. They came in and the woman I worked with her name was Stephanie. She was just a joy from start to finish. She just had questions. Almost all the events space was open at the time of the day that she came in. I showed her almost every room. It gave me the chance to talk about the Edgewater, talk about the things that we offer. She was so sweet. Everything was really easy. I felt very... I mean, I felt a connection. It seemed like they really wanted to be here the same as much as we wanted them to be here. Then she called me back within minutes practically and said, we want to book the space. We want to come in. It was extremely positive and she was just a joy to work with from start to finish. They were here for four days last week, which in their event went incredibly smoothly. It was really pleasant. It was one of my first experiences planning from start to finish an entire event. I just felt like it was really good. It's not exciting, but it's positive. That just jumped into mind.