“I don’t need to pay attention to or satisfy my guests”, said no hotelier ever. Customer satisfaction is undoubtedly the key to your hotel’s success. The industry is becoming more and more competitive and having the best facilities and amenities is no longer enough to succeed if you don’t pay attention to your guests’ needs.
In the Age of the Customer, the focus is no longer on the services your hotel has to offer, but on your customer’s needs and wants. There are a couple of tips and tricks that will help you boost your Hotel’s Customer Care and have your competitors eat your dust. If you’re looking for the best way to quickly boost your hotel’s customer care, rejoice, because you’re in the right place.
Offer your guests exclusive experiences
I’m sure you’ve heard about upselling and cross-selling. These are not just some business jargons but strategies that will boost your business revenue and help you get more value out of your customer by either selling a more expensive version of the service your customer is buying (upselling) or selling an additional service to complement what your customer is buying (cross-selling).
But you can’t just start throwing them services or products they don’t really need. What you must do, first of all, is to profile your guests — what’s the purpose of their trip? what are they looking for? what are their hobbies? what add-ons do they value? — so, later on, you’ll offer only the things that are likely to be of interest to them.
A great way to put this in place is by sending them an email prior to their arrival asking about any preferences they may have. Or, during the booking process, make sure to include some questions that will help you assess which are the most valuable amenities and products for them.
Nowadays it’s possible to easily keep track of these preferences, by using hotel management software. There are several options in the market to help you manage your property, reservations and, most of all, your customers. This software will allow you to offer exclusive and personalized services, that will actually add up to your guests’ experience.
You can then use the data about your upcoming guests to offer a room upgrade on a birthday, a spa service for someone coming abroad and introduce them to some leisure activities in the city based on their travel taste. The possibilities are endless!
Whatever you present your guests with, just make sure to first profile your guests and keep track of their preferences. This way you won’t miss out on any opportunity to make them feel happy and special and, therefore, build customer loyalty.
Make use of technology
Technology is shaping the future of customer care. From software that helps you keep track of your guests wishes and preferences, to chatbots that help you handle your queries better and faster, nowadays most businesses are in love with the idea of how AI can help reduce costs while enhancing the customer experience.
Actually, there are studies available that prove that consumers don’t really care whether a chatbot or a real human help them. Truth be told, humans are just that… humans. They are people who wake up feeling grumpy sometimes, who get tired after working long hours and whose productivity decreases during a workday. But your guests don’t care about this. They want their queries to be handled fast and they need someone who assists them in the best way (and mood!) possible.
Chatbots are able to respond to every message when none of your human agents is available, and this increases the chance of conversion from visitors to guests. But they’re not yet intelligent enough to fully replace humans. They’re great for repetitive queries, that involve simple questions and tasks, but we need to remember that we sell our services to people, so we can’t dismiss or replace the human connection with a machine. Instead, we can and should use chatbots to create more immersive experiences by blending artificial intelligence with human wisdom. And when issues get more complex, bots will automatically switch to a human agent.
A global survey from MIT Technology Review Insights reports that between 25% and 50% of all customer inquiries are now completely resolved through automated channels and this number will increase over time. Keep up with this trend and make sure you aren’t left out in the dark when it comes to choosing technology as an ally.
Measure your Customer Care Performance
Just like as in any other business, after you implement the above (and other) business strategies, you’ll need to make sure you can and are measuring how well these indicators are performing. It’s definitely not enough to just throw some new actions out there, cross your fingers and expect a return.
You’ll have a chance to boost your customer care once you start measuring its performance in the first place. But which metrics should you be attentive to in order to improve it?
- Money Spent on Site: when your guest is having a positive experience with your service, he is more likely to spend more money during his stay. This includes being positive and accepting your upselling and cross-selling offers mentioned above. Keeping track of how often they’re willing to accept these upgrades and how much they spend will indicate if they’re happy with your services or if you need to improve them.
- Guest Engagement Level: make sure to reply to your guests before, during and after their stay. Comments, questions, and reviews, no matter if they’re on Facebook, Twitter or email, just make sure not to miss them. If you have a platform that helps you manage your communications from one single place, you’ll nail your customer care.
- Referrals: who hasn’t asked a friend for advice on which hotel to stay in? Word-of-mouth is a very important aspect of any business and it doesn’t change when it comes to hospitality. Make sure to ask your guests who referred your hotel, keep track of who these people are and reward them accordingly.
By gathering and analyzing these strategies you’ll be able to level up your guests’ experience and offer them better and more customized services that will scale-up their loyalty towards your hotel.
Just like as with any other business, you need to listen to your guests. Make sure to collect your guests’ feedback using methods like a hotel satisfaction survey. And don’t get overwhelmed by all the obstacles that may stand in your way. Instead, use them and turn these challenges into opportunities. You don’t want to be part of the statistics for chaos in the hospitality industry.
In short, customers tend to remain loyal to hotels that pay attention to them and take care of them as if they were family. If you can put in place strategies that show your guests how much you care for them, giving them personalized treatment, you will boost your hotel’s customer care making your customers more likely to continue booking their stays with you.
