Kym Illman, an Australian businessman based in Perth, was put on hold for 6 hours by Grand Hyatt Singapore, while waiting to confirm a dinner reservation for one of the restaurants in the hotel. In our previous article, "Put on hold for six hours", AsiaOne reported that some netizens questioned if the call was an honest mistake, or if it was all just a ploy for publicity.
Mr Illman now gives his side of the story in his email to AsiaOne.
He first pointed out that he has been a loyal and long time guest of Grand Hyatt and confirmed that he was put on hold for six hours by the hotel.
Grand Hyatt Singapore's spokesperson, in the previous article, told AsiaOne that they were unsure as to what may have caused this time-consuming error.
Mr Illman also said that there was nothing out of the ordinary for him to turn up at Grand Hyatt Singapore after the on hold call as he had dinner reservations at Mezza9 last week.
He also revealed that management went to great lengths to apologise for the poor service when he dined that night and even picked up the tab for a bottle of champagne and desserts. This was confirmed by the Grand Hyatt's spokesperson.
According to Mr Illman, Grand Hyatt's front office manager also approached him after that dinner to personally pass on his apologies to Mr Illman.
In our previous article, we reported that the Grand Hyatt's spokesperson said that Mr Illman had tried to sell his service training programmes to the hotel while he was there. However, Mr Illman feels this is a "bizarre" claim as he only spoke to the front office manager for less than two minutes while walking down the stairs and this also only after the front office manager approached Mr Illman.
He added that he does not sell seminars anymore.
Mr Illman also said that he is a savvy marketer and is the sort of business professional who would never let a chance go by to secure free media exposure.
Kym Illman is the author of a best selling book on service standards called "The Future IS Customer Service" and has been described as a "customer service specialist", an "ambush marketing guru" and "the king of unauthorised advertising" online.
