Why do hotels use so few channels?
According to our survey, 78% of hotels do not have any other channels for guests to reach them aside from phone calls and emails. Furthermore, 67% of them could not consistently answer their phone in less than 45 seconds and emails in less than 90 minutes. Guests will not wait.
Travellers' needs and expectations today are vastly different from what they were even 15 years ago. The world is so seamlessly connected, and everything can be done with a few taps on a phone; of course, people come to expect the same from hotels. How can we achieve this?
Many hotels take pride in their level of service being highly personal. This means essentially that a highly automated channel of communication might not be viable. However, this only means that the technology is not quite there yet. We have seen great strides in the world of AI chatbots becoming more and more human-like. Still, there are easier - and more affordable - ways to introduce new channels that guests seem to prefer.
Your hotel's website needs a live chat
When consumers are asked about their preferred ways of communication with service providers in any industry, a live online chat is the consistent winner. Let's face it: people do not really enjoy phone conversations and email is seen as quite slow and outdated.
Furthermore, one could say that even the age of websites is over in a sense; with a live chat and a professional helping you, you do not necessarily need to click on any links or search for anything for yourself. You can simply ask the questions you need an answer to.
When looking for and booking a hotel room, a potential guest visits 51 pages on average. That is quite a lot. One could argue that a chat service that does all the information gathering for guests is a serious competitional advantage.
This is where a chatbot comes in handy. In our experience the questions asked by guests are roughly 70% the same across the board. Even a basic chatbot can easily be programmed to answer over half of all the questions. Remember in the beginning when we said that hotels struggle to even answer the phone consistently? A chatbot answers instantly.
NOT a call center
Outsourcing of chat services has often failed. Why is that?
One reason might be that the information that these 'call centers' have about their client is insufficient. The cooperation has not been what it should have been, which leads to customers feeling like the chat is useless or slow. A chat service does not really serve its purpose if the most common answer is "I don't know, contact the hotel." This is quite common when hotels - or any other organizations - want to get rid of the tedious aspects of customer care. However, great customer care comes from the little things - such as inquiries about the parking situation- answered instantly.
A chat service like no other
That is where our specially trained Guest Care Specialists step in. We build an extensive database about everything there is to know about our client. Information is added whenever we encounter new questions and information. The same applies to our bot which can handle more and more conversations on its own every single day.
Furthermore, what chat services rarely do is increase your sales. Chats mostly work as troubleshooting services today. What we do is more about pushing your service at every touchpoint. Customer asks about wine to their room, we offer snacks to go with them.
This is what we want to emphasize: we can ease the strain on your staff by handling most of your guest care but in a productive way. We are not a call center.