My Manager Will Call You Back

My Manager Will Call You Back

Welk ResortsAfter you share your tale of customer service woe to a representative, you are told that the manager will call you back the next day.  Do they?!?  Recently, I believed a manager from the Welk Resort would call me back to discuss my timeshare fiasco.  In fact, I waited two hours past the day and time the representative promised a manager would call me.  Telling me a date and time for the manager’s call is a very specific promise in my book.

After my Welk Resort Fiasco blog posted for the world to read, the Welk Resort tweeted me.  Here is their damage control twitter conversation:

‪@Market2Seniors – This is not the experience we aim to provide & we apologize. Could you DM us your email so we can reach out for more info?

‪@welkresorts – I reached out in 3 ways with no response, a manager was supposed to call me back by 9am on Sun.  The blog posted at 11am, Sun.

‪@Market2Seniors – or you can email our Director of Consumer Affairs at Hutch.farrell@welkgroup.com if you’d prefer. Thanks for the feedback

‪@welkresorts – You can contact me at diane@marketing2seniors.net.

‪@Market2Seniors – Thank you. I’ll have Hutch contact you.

This was my last contact with the Welk Resort.  I NEVER had a manager email me, tweet me or call me again.  Why not?  Why would a company have a Director of Consumer Affairs?  Obviously they must have ongoing customer service issues.  Why did “Hutch” never contact me?  Maybe he never got the tweet?  Maybe they thought I would forget that the sales people promised me a Catalina Island overnight on a weekend and what I received was a weekday trip that I could not use.

Have you had an experience where you were told the manager is going to call you back because they were not currently there?

Is this just a technique to calm down a frustrated customer and hope we forget?   Or is it a way for a  “C” player (last week I compared “A”, “B” and “C” players here) to not deal with you directly?  Maybe it is simply passing the buck.

Your tips could help others improve on a national basis, so please share by commenting on this blog.  If this weekly newsletter can help your sales and occupancy – why not sign up today so you don’t miss a single one? 

Diane Twohy Masson writes this weekly blog to support and engage with other senior housing professionals.  Her first book is Senior Housing Marketing – How To Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full.  Many sales teams and organizations have used the 12 keys contained in this book for their weekly book review.  Diane is working on her second book to help seniors select their senior housing options.

© Marketing 2 Seniors| Diane Twohy Masson 2014 All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog post may be reproduced, copied, modified or adapted, without the prior written consent of the author, unless otherwise indicated for stand-alone materials. You may share this website and or it’s content by any of the following means: 1. Using any of the share icons at the bottom of each page. 2. Providing a back-link or the URL of the content you wish to disseminate. 3. You may quote extracts from the website with attribution to Diane Masson CASP and link https://www.marketing2seniors.net For any other mode of sharing, please contact the author Diane Masson.
12 Sales No No’s and Timeshare Fiasco

12 Sales No No’s and Timeshare Fiasco

Lawrence Welk Resort Timeshare

Welk Resort in Escondido, CA

I was a sucker to think it would be fun for my husband and I to go on a timeshare presentation at the Lawrence Welk Resort.  My Auntie watched Lawrence Welk every week when I was little.  It was supposed to be a fabulous place and seniors from two of my Continuing Care Retirement Communities go there regularly for performances.  Our promised gift for participating in a 90 presentation was going to a trip for two to Catalina Island.

Well here are the 12 sales no no’s that happened:

  • Promising that the appointment would be 90 minutes and then almost doubling the time.
  • Asking us to arrive early and then making us wait.
  • Pushing a person for personal information in a non-genuine or unnatural manner.  (This is so uncomfortable!)
  • Not listening!
  • Giving a canned speech with a pitch type voice.
  • Sharing long boring stories and wasting our time.
  • Giving a promise that the company cannot fulfill.
  • After not listening, asking a closing question, when there was nothing to close on.  (This is so wrong!)
  • Failing to give us the promised gift.
  • Lying.
  • Trapping us in several closing sequences, because a golf cart was required to return us to our far off parking spot.
  • Making me feel like a number.

The appointment was almost three hours instead of the promised 90 minutes.  They persisted in a quest for our personal information (very awkward) without sharing the facts of their offering in a timely fashion.  They absolutely never listened and it was all a canned speech.  The worst is having someone try to close you, when there is zero interest.  You might be thinking, Diane, just leave.  There is no way to leave early because they force you to park your car in an area that requires a golf cart to return to it.  If all of that was not bad enough, the promised gift to Catalina was a lie.  I prequalified two people that our trip could be on a weekend.  The mail away certificate was for mid-week only.

So I sent an email explaining my disappointment and that I would be writing a blog post that 1000’s of people would view.  I figured they would call me immediately and rectify the situation.  How could Lawrence Welk Resorts possible sell all those timeshares treating people in this unsavory manner?

Ultimately, a timeshare fiasco can make a senior suspicious of real genuine sales people in senior housing.  How many times has a senior walked into your senior living community with his or her arms crossed?  Do you enjoy watching a senior open up midway through a “wow tour?”

Please share your strategies, successes, failures or comment below to join the conversation and interact with other senior living professionals on what is currently being effective to increase occupancy on a nationwide basis.

Diane Twohy Masson is the author of “Senior Housing Marketing – How to Increase Your Occupancy and Stay Full,” available at Amazon.com with a 5-star rating.  The book is required reading at George Mason University as a part of its marketing curriculum.  Within this book, the author developed a sales & marketing method with 12 keys to help senior living providers increase their occupancy.   Masson developed this expertise as a marketing consultant, sought-after blogger for senior housing and a regional marketing director of continuing care retirement communities in several markets.  She has also been a corporate director of sales and a mystery shopper for independent living, assisted living, memory care and skilled care nursing communities in multiple states.  Currently, Masson is setting move-in records as the regional marketing director of two debt-free Continuing Care Retirement Communities in Southern California – Freedom Village in Lake Forest and The Village in Hemet, California.  Interestingly, this career started when she was looking for a place for her own mom and helped her loved one transition through three levels of care.

© Marketing 2 Seniors| Diane Twohy Masson 2014 All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog post may be reproduced, copied, modified or adapted, without the prior written consent of the author, unless otherwise indicated for stand-alone materials. You may share this website and or it’s content by any of the following means: 1. Using any of the share icons at the bottom of each page. 2. Providing a back-link or the URL of the content you wish to disseminate. 3. You may quote extracts from the website with attribution to Diane Masson CASP and link https://www.marketing2seniors.net For any other mode of sharing, please contact the author Diane Masson.