Communication with your guests is important, but communication between members of your staff is equally necessary. In the daily hustle and bustle of hotel and restaurant management, it can be a challenge to keep everyone on the same page and apprised of what’s going on from hour to hour. Thankfully, Loop’s internal notes feature makes it easy for various team members to connect and resolve guest issues.
The feature is integrated directly into the Loop inbox for convenience of use. Below, we outline some tips and tools for getting the most out of the internal notes feature.
Use them to communicate with staff both on and off location
Internal notes serve various purposes. They can be used to inform staff of activities management is undertaking. Staff members can use them to brainstorm resolutions to problems, and they’re perfect for letting staff know when an issue has been resolved with a guest. More important, they can be used to document each step taken to resolve a guest’s concern, as well as the outcome.
They also offer insight for upper managers who oversee a number of locations and can’t always be on site. General or regional managers can use internal notes to assess performance at various locations and communicate with staff at specific ones to ensure everything is running smoothly.
They can help improve operations
When a guest leaves a comment about an experience they had, management and staff can discuss amongst themselves what caused the problem and how to avoid it in the future. If service wasn’t provided in a timely manner, for example, management can determine that more staff is needed to handle demand and alter schedules accordingly.
Track conversations with colour-coded text boxes
At the bottom of the chat window, the back-end user has two options: one button says “Reply All” and the other says “Reply Staff.” When the user hits “Reply Staff”, Loop sends a message to all staff members involved in the discussion without sending a message to the guest. While messages directed at guests appear in blue boxes, messages directed at staff appear in pink ones. This makes it simple to follow who is speaking to whom.
Keep internal notes on file
While the primary function of internal notes is to facilitate communication between staff members, they also serve an administrative purpose. Management can use them as references in yearly performance reviews to pinpoint where staff excelled and where they could use improvement. Additionally, they serve as a record that staff members followed procedure when handling guest concerns.
