Sending a pre-arrival message is the first impression your hotel has with the customer. Whether you are reminding them of their booking date or offering your services ahead of time, the way you craft your pre-arrival message should intrigue your customer and set a positive tone for the rest of their stay.
In this tips and tools post, we break down the best practices for deploying a pre-arrival message using Loop Messenger™, so you can leave a lasting first impression.
Communicate Via The Customer’s Preferred Channel
Gone are the days where communicating with your customers is done solely through email. With the evolution of technology and platforms, there are a plethora of channels businesses can leverage to engage customers in a professional manner. Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, SMS, or others, customers often have communication preferences they respond to better than others.
In order to understand what channels your customers prefer, be sure to take note of what channels they reach out to you on, which channels they regularly use for conversation and what channels they’ve mentioned to you or your team in the past. Using this insight from your customers to send a pre-arrival message will show them you pay attention to their needs and are willing to cater to them.
With Loop Messenger™, the process is made that much simpler for your team members. From the platform, you can manage real-time communication from a variety of channels within the unified Loop Inbox™ – including SMS text, email, in-App messaging, Facebook, Twitter, and more. This means your team can send and respond to multiple channels all from one inbox, making sure your customers get an immediate response and no message are left behind.
Personalize Your Pre-Arrival Message
Personalizing pre-arrival messages is crucial to fostering a strong relationship with your customers. A personal touch can make a customer feel like more than just another number.It can give them a sense of identity and make the experience with your brand more comfortable. Especially in a highly automated world, personalization can make a customer feel that much closer to your hotel.
Tactics for personalization can be as simple as using the customer’s name in a message or suggesting a service they had enjoyed during a previous stay. With Loop Messenger™, you can customize your pre-arrival messages to suit their needs. Showing your customers that you pay attention to their details and care about making changes to better their experience will help you win customer loyalty and ultimately maximize revenue.
Send Your Message Strategically
When sending a pre-arrival message it is important to consider an appropriate timeline. Timing is critical to ensure you don’t frustrate your customer by either sending a message too late or sending it too early. For instance, if you send a message 2 weeks before the customer is supposed to stay at your hotel, it could get lost in their inbox closer to the arrival date. In addition, if you send them a message an hour before their arrival they might have already printed their documents and find the message useless.
When sending a message, consider where the customer is coming from and how much time they would need to find the message practical. Sending a message 1-2 days before their booked stay is usually best practice – giving them optimal time to review their booking and make any requests should they have any.
With Loop Messenger™ the process is made simpler. Team members can automate the sending of their messages, making for more efficient operations. In addition, you can pre-plan and cue your post-stay messages according to customer check-out time. It streamlines the process for team members by not making them wait and manually send a message before the customer arrives.
Sending a pre-arrival message can set the tone for the customers stay, so it’s important that you take the right steps to crafting a memorable one. By following these three tips, you’re well on your way to enhancing your customers experience one pre-arrival message at a time.
