Customer experience is critical for so many industries, but for the hospitality industry, where a satisfied guest directly connects to increased revenue, ignoring customer experience costs money. But how do you ensure that the feedback you are receiving from your guests is quickly and effectively put into action in your operations?
One of the key parts of gathering and acting on feedback is collecting feedback at the right touchpoints. We have some ideas on a suggested customer journey for the hospitality industry, but something essential to keep in mind is that you may need to adjust your customer journey touchpoints as you gather feedback. There may be parts of your operation that you realize you aren't receiving enough customer feedback about or are interested in improving. The most important part is acknowledging how key those touchpoints are and be ready to add or move touchpoints as needed.
If you are working in the hospitality industry, then you are probably used to managing multiple locations or locations that are quite large. This means that having a feedback system where you need to physically go to each touchpoint to update the questions isn't feasible or scalable. Make sure that your customer journey touchpoints can be managed remotely to keep your operation effective.
When adding spots to capture guest feedback, you should keep in mind that it should always be convenient for your guests. That means sending them a 5-page email survey a few days after they've already headed home probably isn't the way to go. Build it into their on-site and transactional experience, so it's seamless and convenient.
When collecting feedback, make sure that you are doing so in a way that puts guest safety first. Offering touchless feedback kiosks for collecting feedback is a great way to ensure proper hygiene. Allowing for optional anonymous data collection ensures guests feel secure in their choice for privacy.
When you identify a problem at a touchpoint based on quantitative feedback, understand the WHY behind it. A feedback kiosk that can collect quantitative and qualitative feedback from your customers at physical touchpoints enables you to understand the real reason behind the score.
If you want to provide a superior customer experience for your guests, you need to react promptly to negative issues. Having a customer experience platform with a built-in ability to trend issues and respond to customer interactions helps make sure everything is handled.
Whether you've been working on your customer experience journey for years or are just getting started, the key to customer experience in the hospitality industry is ensuring guest satisfaction is your top priority.
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