A big misconception in the modern age is that technology is a replacement for human-run jobs, and while that may hold true in certain industries, for the hospitality industry it is far from the truth. For a hotel, human connection is a necessity, it’s how you build lasting connections with guests and continue to drive loyalty.
This is especially true when it comes to your hotel’s concierge. As many hoteliers know, your concierge is a major asset of guest engagement on your property, and someone many will interact with. This makes the level of efficiency and enthusiasm at work essential to maintain, a tricky undertaking if you don’t know where to begin.
Thankfully, an ideal Customer Experience Management or CEM solution can help improve your concierge team’s level of efficiency, without the colossal uplift.
With that, we’re sharing the top benefits of adopting a CEM solution for your concierge team and how it can help them go above and beyond to generate greater revenue and a better overall guest experience.
What is a Customer Experience Management (CEM) Solution?
Before we dive into the many benefits that come with adopting a CEM solution, it’s important to understand what it is.
As we’ve explored in a number of articles before, a CEM solution is a customer-focused software that helps businesses streamline operations, elevate the guest experience, and generate more revenue through the use of analytics, messaging, request management, customer-generated feedback, and much more.
With an ideal CEM solution, you can understand the customer experience in real-time and manage a range of customer and team messages from one unified inbox. As a hotel, it’s the not-so-secret advantage for efficient operations and happier guests.
The Benefits Of A CEM For Hotel Concierge
Improve Guest Messaging
For a hotel concierge in today’s technologically evolving landscape, communicating on a range of devices and platforms can be daunting, to say the least. Imagine toggling through Facebook Messenger, email, text messages, Twitter DM’s all while answering the phone every 10 minutes and researching activities for a guest – it’s a hefty task with a lot of upkeep.
Today, a hotel’s concierges need a technology solution that allows them to make the first move and keep in touch with guests in an easy and effective manner. With a CEM, you can access messages from a range of channels (like Facebook, WhatsApp, SMS, Twitter, etc) in one unified inbox, which means that regardless of how your guest decides to communicate you’ll see it all on one screen. This saves your concierge time toggling through multiple native sites and allows them to focus on what really matters – the guest.
What’s more, having multiple avenues of communication provides an opportunity for your hotel to reach out and start the engagement process on the guests preferred channel. Allowing you to provide a great tailored and personalized first impression, and increasing the likelihood of response.
Drive More Direct-Bookings
With a customer experience solution, your concierge team can optimize the number of bookings your hotel gets. By simply being available on channels that resonate with your guest, you increase the likelihood that they’ll engage and eventually book one of the many on-site experiences you offer. Whether they scroll across your Facebook and are prompted by a live chat directed to the concierge or they receive an SMS text pre-arrival, it’s an easy way to engage and begin to personalize the experience at your property.
Another way a CEM prompts more engagement is by getting more guests to write reviews. As many hoteliers know, reviews are a critical component of the booking process with 77 percent of travelers claiming they read reviews before they book a hotel. Using a CEM, you can encourage more feedback by prompting guests with a survey at multiple touch-points during their stay through the use of on-site kiosks or mobile messaging. By offering a survey at critical touch-points they’re more likely to provide feedback and write more positive reviews on third-party sites. Having more positive reviews is a great tactic to improve your bookings and stand out from the crowd.
Improve Guest Knowledge
For a team member who is focused on delivering upon the unique needs of the guest, being cognizant of their needs is a top priority. Any bit of information that a concierge can use to go the extra mile can make all the difference in a guest’s stay. For example, let’s say a guest has previously stayed at your hotel and enjoys having dinner at 5 PM with a glass of Merlot. As a general observation, your dining team can make note of that within the platform. When the guest writes in to book their next stay, the concierge can access the guest’s notes and offer a reservation at the in-house restaurant for 5 PM. If the restaurant is having any wine specials, the concierge can also inform them of it to upsell a dining reservation. Offering a simple upsell or a reservation at their favourite restaurant is a small tactic to make a big difference with the guest.
Using a CEM, your concierge has a proper understanding of guest preferences and can be better equipped to make more informed decisions on what to recommend, how to communicate, and what kind of service they should offer in order to provide a more tailored experience.
Having a simple understanding of the guest and their needs helps improve their stay but also creates a great reputation for your hotel as a leader in guest experience.
Streamline Requests
Beneficial to a number of departments, in addition to the concierge, a CEM solution can ensure that all customer requests are being received in real-time and routed to the right hotel employee. This can help quicken the time it takes to fulfill a request and give the guest greater visibility into whether or not their request has been received and if it’s being worked on – both critical aspects of delivering a superb guest experience.
For concierge teams specifically, this eases their workload. Instead of all messages being routed to the concierge with them having to read, analyze, and route it, a CEM can do all of the work by quickly tagging and routing a message to the appropriate team – saving them time and resources. What’s more, an ideal CEM will have quick replies enabled so your concierge team can streamline conversations with pre-populated answers to common questions like “What time does the restaurant open?” or “How much is a poolside cabana for the day ?”
Cross-Team Collaboration.
In most instances, the concierge is glued to their desk. Having guests come in so sporadically, it can be next to impossible for them to leave their station. With a CEM, if any issue comes to light or a guest is voicing concerns about a certain aspect of their stay, the concierge can make a note and tag the adjacent teams in the platform so the appropriate person can be notified and the problem can be resolved in a fast and efficient manner.
With a CEM, you foster stronger communication between your team members and encourage collaboration. In addition, with the ability to privately add notes to each guest conversation as well as auto-escalate to specific people and departments, the concierge can inform other teams of issues that occur without leaving their designated work zone. This ensures all guests are tended to and the correct team member is on the task at hand.
Conclusion.
Your concierge team plays a pivotal role in your hotel’s success. Being one of the main resources the guest interacts with, it’s important to manage their level of efficiency and enthusiasm. With a CEM, you don’t only ease their workload but help them complete their tasks with greater efficiency. Benefits, like making more tailored suggestions, fostering collaboration with other teams, improving the messaging experience, and driving more on-site engagement, are some of the many ways a CEM can propel your hotel and more specifically, your concierge team.
