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Question: If a 100-percent service guarantee is such a great thing, how come everybody's not doing it?
Answer: The lodging industry is not ready.
When L.L. Bean created its guarantee of 100-percent satisfaction, the offer was unique in consumer markets. Many still consider Bean's guarantee to be the standard against which all other such guarantees are judged. These words are posted at the front door of L.L. Bean's retail store in Freeport, Maine, and on the front pages of its catalogue:
Our products are guaranteed to give 100-percent satisfaction in every way. Return anything purchased from us at any time if it proves otherwise. We will replace it, refund your purchase price, or credit your credit card, as you wish. We do not want you to have anything from L.L. Bean that is not completely satisfactory.
Other retailers followed suit in building marketing strategies around a guarantee policy, including Kmart, Land's End, Nordstrom, Sears, and Wal-Mart. It was not a big surprise when the idea of an unconditional guarantee spread to the hospitality industry because hotels and restaurants have always had unstated policies of comping customers who are unhappy. The new wrinkle for hospitality firms is that the policy is now an express guarantee for some chains, as pioneered by the Promus Company in 1989. The company's Hampton Inn group became the first national hotel chain to offer its guests an unconditional, 100percent-satisfaction guarantee.
Promus's other hotel brandsHomewood Suites, Harrah's, and Embassy Suites-soon followed suit. Howard Johnson and Comfort Inns subsequently adopted their own chain-wide guarantee policies. One restaurant franchisor has taken the satisfaction guarantee to another level by offering a warranty on its franchise. Mountain Mike's Pizza guarantees to repay the full initial franchise fee after 33 months if the operator is dissatisfied for any reason. "If, at that time, you don't like it, we'll purchase the restaurant back....It doesn't matter what the reason is-you don't like the business, the location, anything. We'll buy it back."'
A service guarantee is a policy, express or implied, advertised or unadvertised, that commits the operation to making its guests happy. The phrase "service guarantee" really relates more to guest satisfaction than it does guest service. Most guarantees state that if the guest is not completely...