Impressing your guests with a personalized customer experience is a great method for driving repeat business and building loyal customers. Digital technologies can be used to create convenient customer service and personalized customer experiences. They automate processes, reduce unnecessary wait times and create a seamless experience in the customer journey. Below, we take a look at the technologies that are revolutionizing the guest experience in the hotel industry.
1. Mobile payment systems
Imagine losing your wallet while traveling and being unable to book a hotel or check in to your room because you don't have your credit card on you. Inconvenient, right? Most customers think the same. That's why many prefer new payment methods that will save them the hassle of fishing out their card every time they make a purchase.
Mobile payment is the biggest new payment trend gaining traction in retail and services industries, with the volume of transactions expected to increase to $503 billion by 2020. Its growth is most apparent across the Asia Pacific region, as platforms like Wechat Pay enable customers to make transactions without the use of a bank card. By 2022, it is possible that entirely cashless societies may even form as a result of market demand and regulatory pushes.
Cryptocurrency is another growing trend in the hospitality industry. Certain hotels have adopted this method of payment, hoping to draw interest from customers looking for alternative payment options. With hotels investing more in payment infrastructure, Bitcoin payment may hold a future in becoming a secure, fast and reliable payment method. However, with these advances, cryptocurrency also poses certain challenges for lawmakers to widely accepting and legitimizing this type of currency. The volatile fluctuations in the value of a Bitcoin also make it challenging for businesses to accommodate cryptocurrency as a mainstream payment option.
2. Personalized check-in
Personalization is critical when it comes to nailing customer experience. This trend is all about identifying each customer's preferences and circumstances to inform your interactions.
When it comes to making a great first impression in this area, look at personalizing your check-in systems if you want to impress your customers from the point of their first real-life interaction with you. Remember that personalization in this context doesn’t necessarily mean having a human check-in every guest! Many guests, especially business travelers, may prefer an automated contactless check-in to save time and get straight to their room.
With the proliferation of data, you can offer various types of check-ins based on guests' preferences. Your guests can choose from self-check-in kiosks, traditional check-in with a staff member, or mobile check-in. Relevant customer data from previous check-ins can be used to customize their place of stay depending on their preferences like food, amenities, and more.
Needless to say, tech companies are quickly jumping on the personalization bandwagon in new ways. Google recently piloted its voice-powered translation services in hotel front desks to cater for overseas customers. By saying the familiar trigger phrase “Hey Google”, this interpreter mode enables each person’s responses to be automatically translated into the other’s language, to further personalize the guest experience.
3. Real-time customer feedback tools
In this era, the voice of your customer is something that can make or break your business. It is extremely important for businesses to collect real-time customer feedback and respond in the moment to leave a lasting impression on guests.
Thanks to new technologies, post-stay guest satisfaction surveys may become a thing of the past. Hotels are now looking at capturing customer feedback in real-time, while the guest is on property. This helps the front line team address problems promptly, so that visitors are more likely to leave satisfied and subsequently write positive post-stay reviews online. In addition, real-time customer feedback helps employees gain deeper fulfilment from the value of their actions by giving them the ability to close the loop with guests.
If you are considering implementing a real-time customer feedback tool, make sure it is unobtrusive to guests and integrated into your hotel systems. The best way to do this is to make it part of an omnichannel customer feedback strategy so your guests will have a consistent guest experience with your business through any of the various ways they choose to connect with you. For best practices on how to create an omnichannel feedback channel for your business, check out our blog post on Capturing Real-Time Guest Feedback and Service Recovery.
Local Measure gives hotels and hospitality businesses the tools and data to create personalized guest experiences that increase guest satisfaction and drive loyalty. Learn more here.
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