July 27, 2021

Why messaging is the gateway to great customer experiences

Today guests expect more than just a room. They expect an experience. An experience that is seamless across the entire guest journey.

By Tristan Gadsby, Co-Founder and CEO, Alliants

Introduction

Today guests expect more than just a room. They expect an experience. An experience that is seamless across the entire guest journey.

In this white paper, we explore how the exponential rise in the use of messaging gives hoteliers the opportunity to deliver on the long-sought-after “seamless experience”. Not only can it help deliver a better guest experience, messaging is also a key enabler in driving ancillary revenues.

The elusive “Seamless Experience”

The boardrooms of many hotels have heard the words “our guests want a seamless experience” and many hotel executives have wrestled with how to deliver it, particularly in a world where hotels are burdened with siloed and legacy technologies across the guest journey.

There have been many strategies employed to try and achieve this. Many luxury hotels have attempted to achieve this by increasing the staff to guest ratio, developing sophisticated policies and procedures, investing in expensive training programmes but they still fail to deliver across the entire guest journey where many elements are not in their direct control.

The heart of the issue is in the disparate systems that exist across the customer journey that are rarely integrated, have varied user interfaces, and hold differing profiles and preferences.

Why does a ‘Seamless Experience’ matter?

From a guest’s perspective, it’s the overall experience that counts which is the culmination of every touchpoint, either digitally or in person. A McKinsey study⁴ on customer experience identified that customers of hotels that get the overall journey right may be 61 percent more willing to recommend than customers of hotels that merely focus on individual touchpoints. With a lot at stake, it is critically important for hotels to work out how to deliver the overall experience across both physical and digital interactions with the guests.

Is a mobile app the answer?

With the advent of smartphones, many hotels launched Apps with the aim of better supporting their guests and delivering a more seamless digital experience. However, only a small proportion of guests are willing to download Apps, particularly for a single stay (typically 20% of guests although this has risen to nearly 50% during the pandemic). This makes it very difficult to deliver a consistent experience for the majority of guests.

The answer is already in the palm of your hand!

Guests may not download an app for their stay, but the vast majority have one or more messaging apps already on their device. Facebook recently passed the 2.8 billion monthly active user⁵ mark, with 1.8 billion visiting on a daily basis, WhatsApp reached the 2 billion mark and WeChat reached 1 billion⁶.

Today, making phone calls does not even make the top 10 uses of smartphones, and increasingly messaging is the preferred method of communication between customers and businesses.

But why is that? And what opportunities does it present hotels? There are many advantages to messaging-based communications with businesses. These include:

Familiarity and simplicity of the interface
Always available, no queues
Ability to multitask
No repetition with conversation history
Support for Rich Content
In their language with translations

For hotels, there are also additional advantages:

Improved customer satisfaction with messaging which consistently rates higher than other channels
Increased customer engagement with reduced drop-out rates
Allows agents to work effectively in teams, removing bottlenecks
Reduce cost per resolution with high contact concurrency and resolution rates

Messaging as the gateway

With guests expecting their interactions to be personalised, unique, and in real-time, messaging acts like the glue, allowing all the elements of the experience to be seamlessly delivered to the customer across the entire journey. However, truly delivering a guest-centric experience is much more than supporting numerous messaging channels.

Behind the scenes, hoteliers need the tools to help them better understand the guests’ needs and aspirations. These solutions need to be:

Easy first step

Messaging is an easy first step to transforming the guest experience. With best-practice processes and templates embedded, implementations for a single property can take a matter of hours, configuring the product and training staff. Beyond the implementation of messaging, there are a number of integrations available that help to drive efficiency within the operation, these include:

Mobile App to enable contactless operations and mobile keys
Property Management System to capture guest reservations and room status
Service Order Systems to streamline staff operations
Table Management and Point of Sale Systems to capture table bookings and spend
Activity Booking Systems to capture ancillary bookings and spend

With a few key integrations, messaging can quickly deliver the ‘seamless experience’ in a very efficient way.

Curating the perfect stay

Alliants worked side by side with a leading luxury chain on their journey to being ranked the number one for their digital experience by Gartner. The digital guest experience was reimagined and delivered an integrated property and brand platform encompassing Chat, Mobile, Tablet, In-Room Dining, Concierge, and Residential with significant benefits:

Increased satisfaction:

8% increase in Guest Satisfaction

Improved engagement with:

30% increase in session times
13 million messages in 75+ languages across 10 platforms
3 x monthly active mobile app users
Grew mix of direct bookings faster than any other channel including OTAs

Drove ancillary spend resulting in:

90% increase in spend for users of chat
15% increase in average order value for in-room dining

Conclusion

Developing relationships is the heart of hospitality and technology will never replace the fundamentals, however, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought forward the need for contactless technologies. By using technology to unlock the ability to form greater relationships via conversation with the guest, hotels will grasp key benefits such as:

Driving revenues through both retention and ancillary spend
Increase guest satisfaction and build loyalty to the brand
Gain a deeper understanding of guests needs and optimise service to them
Give staff the tools to deliver better personal service by empowering them via information and communication

Messaging is the ‘glue’ that brings together the guest experience and unlocks these benefits. The sector has often shunned technology to interact with the guest as they feel it detracts from a personal service, however with the guest having their mobile phone as the fulcrum of their daily conversations, it's high time that hotels embraced this to evolve how service is delivered.

About Alliants

Alliants has helped some of the world’s most respected luxury hotel, travel, and retail brands deliver exceptional customer experiences. Founded in 2009, we have built industry-changing technology solutions, including award-winning mobile apps and chat applications that transform the digital guest experience. Millions of users around the globe use our technology as guests of the world’s most luxurious hotels and brands.

Follow Alliants on LinkedIn