Hospitality Overview

Cater to your guests by providing an experience he/she will tweet about! Harness your guests loyalty and transform that into future business and recommendations. Hospitality businesses can avail customer expectation predictive intelligence that will help in creating brand loyalty and furthering revenue.

The Hospitality Industry Needs to be More Hospitable
The Hospitality Industry practically invented customer experience, so why is CEM (Customer Experience Management) being touted as a necessity? Forrester Research surveyed 12 different industries in order to assess the effect of improved customer experience. They found that hotels and hotel industry would experience the highest increase in revenue if that happened. This increase would depend on the following three factors:
  • Customers loyal to a certain hotel keep doing business with it
  • Reduce customer churn because of improved service and customer experience
Companies’ considering service as source of generating more revenue has decreased by 10% in past few years!

They commit their resources to ensure that a customer is offered the best customer experience. Harvard Review study had found that customers who had a good experience in the past were likely to spend 140% more as compared to those that had a poor experience. Customer experience management is all about managing customer experiences and creating value. The need for implementing robust CEM software in this competitive environment has become essential.


How Hospitality Firms Can Make That Happen

Great hotels know that to remain great they need to engage and improve customer experiences to acquire a loyal customer base. Customer experience is directly proportional to customer loyalty. Research shows that to maintain a loyal customer is far less expensive than to attract a new one. The Hotel Industry needs to look at the totality of their guest experiences and not look at them in isolation. Their business cannot be isolated from the direct experiences of their guests. The guest experience is their brand which is their business. The three are intricately linked and the only way a hotelier can ensure a competitive edge in this cut throat business is by harnessing a good CEM.

  • Holistic Customer Service

    From the moment the customer visits the hotel website, or interacts with a customer helpline, their guest experience has begun. Engaging the customer and providing a rich and meaningful experience right from the start till even after their trip has ended is of utmost importance. Gone are the days of customer satisfaction, the mantra for today’s customers are customer delight. Customer delight is surprising a customer by exceeding his or her expectations and thus creating a positive satisfaction score. This increase in the level of experience leads to loyalty.

  • 360 degree guest profile

    In today’s technological era hotels need to manage and maintain a 360 degree guest profile. This is essential to gain customer confidence and loyalty. Detailed customer profiling enables the staff to serve the customer a personalized service right from floor preference .
    With an integrated system, data collected across various touch points, both online and offline, are unified in making a comprehensive guest profile. Real time reporting dashboard interface empowers staff i.e the front line desk professionals or call centre personnel, to connect and attend their guests at all interaction touch points. This extreme degree of personalisation can translate into increased duration or frequency of stays and recommendations.

  • Connect with Customers at Functional and Emotional Level

    Customer needs, expectations and aspirations are ever changing, from visit to visit or even during their stay. Hotels need to connect at both functional and emotional levels to enhance the customer stay at every visit.

    Embedded with high level data analytics, vast data harnessed from different sources is analyzed providing insights to customer sentiments and needs. These insights or suggestions assist hotels in serving at both functional and emotional levels, such as arranging a transport for airport transfers or providing a variety entertainment during their stay. This helps hotels in raising the bar for customer satisfaction from his every visit. It also makes the customer come back again and again looking for more. In short, customer experience management provides the hotel with the frameworks and tools to offer first class hospitality customer service and gain a competitive edge.

Key Takeaways

To help create a value based differentiator in the hospitality sector CEM software, such as Geckolyst needs to be implemented. Hotels can completely transform their guest satisfaction scores. Geckolyst, helps hotels:

  • Loyalty and preferential treatment could be given to the guest recommended by the customer
  • Make the customer know that the feedback he has given has been implemented or is at what stage of implementation
  • The staff who the customer felt were the best could be put to his service for the delight factor
  • For repeat customer, hotels would know what are the things he likes starting from the room to food & same arrangements could be made for the customer