The Remarkable Customer Experience Recovery System and Digital Transformation
In the hotel industry, we have traditionally emphasized customer service and customer service recovery.
Customer service is the assistance and advice provided to a customer for a hotel's product or service as needed.
And customer service recovery have represented the ability of a hotel to solve a dissatisfied customer's problem through good customer service.
The principles of customer service and customer service recovery have been built around data from surveys, customer forums, inspections, audits, dedicated customer research, reviews, and reputation management tools.
And the results from this data have shaped everything from hotel employee bonuses and executive compensation to strategic investment decisions.
But today we live in a new world with new unique customer demands that require hotels to think outside their traditional box.
Today hotels have the opportunity to discover a wealth of new data from predictable insight in real time.
Hotels can now interact with the customer at any point in their journey, which gives them the opportunity to discover any customer experience issue or opportunity long before the customer was aware of that was going make a dedicated hotel booking.
Let’s jump into it and start transforming the customer experience with your hotel.
The Remarkable Customer Experience Recovery System and Digital Transformation
According to Mckinsey, a customer experience digital transformation can increase the revenue of a brand by 20 to 50%.
The best-in-class brands today are meeting customer expectations at a new level as a result of new innovative systems that embrace the digital customer experience.
Today, hotels can regularly, lawfully, and seamlessly collect smartphone and interaction data from across their customer and operational systems, yielding deep insights about their customers.
Where do you start creating a Remarkable Customer Experience System?
1. Start with understanding the Customer Experience Journey
One of the most critical aspects of the Customer Experience Journey is to start listen and collaborate with your hotels employees.
The only way to create a remarkable customer experience system that understands the journey is to build relationships and make friends first!
Start co-creating your hotel’s digital transformation process with employees is an essential success factor. Brands that don't include employees in the process either fail or have a low success rate.
Include your employees who will take care of the customers, and help your hotel identify the best ways to work with your customers.
2. Decide on your Experience Vision
Now when you have got your hotel employees onboard it is time to reimagine hospitality by creating a unique Experience Vision of perfection centered on the customers.
NOTE:
It is NOT about being perfect, it is about to IMAGINE perfection centered on the customer.
Together with your hotel employees decide what you want your hotel's experience vision to look like. And then start mapping down the experience journey exactly like you want your hotel to serve your customers.
Don’t stop before you have an experience vision map so detailed where you feel you can reach it and touch it. At this point you will know exactly what perfections looks like and what your goals are.
Then collaborate with your employees to help look at the reality to identify roadblocks and bumps.
3. Discover and understand what the Customer wants
At this point you have an experience vision map that defines how perfections looks like from your hotels point of view.
Time to alter your hotels experiences vision by discovering the customers’ vision of what they want.
Today customers want hotels to create an experience with them, not just for them.
Now you have to start creating a customer experience vision map. Utilize your employee to gather data and insight with your customers.
When you have enough data and insight from your customers then start to align the two experience vision maps. Pay attention to what the customers want and where your hotel can meet and exceed their expectations. What the customers want only has meaning within the context of your hotel experience vision.
If the customers experience vision is too far outside your hotels experience vision it is ok to tell them to go somewhere else. But make sure you to include in your hotels experience vision references for the customers where they can find an experience that might be a better fit for their vision.
Trying to deliver everything to everybody will make any experience vision fail.
4. Plus One Percent
You will at this point have an Experience vision map that takes into account your hotel, employees, and customers' data and insight.
One of the most important principles of the experience vision system is to start consistently meeting expectations first!!
If your hotels don’t get it right in the first place you will never be able to exceed expectations. Let say your hotel meet expectation one time, fall short another time, and then exceed now and then, from the customer's perspective, your hotel is inconsistent. The result is that customers will leave indicating their experience was ‘fine’, or say nothing at all only to leave discouraging reviews for your hotel. At this point it is very likely they will never return to your hotel again.
Digital transformation and customer experience represents a journey that require systems and training that implements the systems into the soul of the hotel.
It is important to create systems that allow for flexibility and differentiations. In the past with customer service recovery many hotels follow certain rules and steps to assure customer satisfactions. But today we want to move away from intimidating processes that in some ways creates robots.
This is about having a flexible system in place that ensures consistency. The system itself assures that your hotel delivers a minimum standard of performance consistently.
Once you have consistency going then ongoing transformations becomes equally import. Plus one percent will keep you moving ahead and focus beyond your hotel's new innovative and flexible experience vision.
The key is to focus on one percent improve a week, every other week, every month or every other month. Whatever rocks your boat! Things will improve if you keep improve your experience vision one percent at the time.
With a focus on plus one percent your hotel are not blindly setting course that don’t have control over. It allows you to add the magic ingredient that guarantees experience vision transformation improvements rather than just a change.
5. A community of Raving fans
How will this system help the customer experience recovery for hotels?
We have now put in place a system where we are working with employees and customers to get a better understanding of their needs.
This is a system that will not let us blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for any behavior. It is a system that allows us to take proactive actions in collaboration with employees, customers, and the local community.
It is a system that creates raving fans that will take your hotel to new unexplored markets.
One of the key principles of raving fans today is to see beyond your employees and customers. The key is to build a passionate community of like-minded people.
Implement your local community into your hotel's experience vision. Let’s say there is an incident at your hotel's pool or restaurant that require you to close either one.
No matter how great our system is concerns will still happen. The key is to implement immediate alternative responses into your hotel's experience vision.
Creating a community of raving fans is essential for your hotel's customer experience recovery. When we focus on learning and help to learn we all can help each other.
6. Combine your Hotels Experience vision with technology
Google are putting in place an eco-system to that will take your hotels experience vision to a new galaxy.
Digital transformation happens when people and technology work in harmony. And this system takes advantage of both people and technology to ensure a flourishing experience vision for your hotel.
Google Analytics 4 is helping hotels to better understand customer preferences and create better experiences for them. It has machine learning at its core to automatically surface helpful insights and gives you a complete understanding of your hotel customers across devices and platforms.
Google Analytics 4 will alert your hotel when there are significant trends related to your data. This is a given experience that offers seeing rising demands cause of new customer demands.
It will also help your hotel with anticipating future actions your customers may take. You’ll also get a better understanding of your customers across their entire lifecycle, from acquisition to conversion and retention.
Google helps hotels making the digital transformation process more streamlined, which will prepare you for what’s coming next. This will help hotels respond to rising consumer expectations, regulatory developments, and changing technology standards for user privacy.
7. Reward your Raving Fans
Your hotel's raving fans include your employees, customers, non-customers, local community, vendors, partners, and brand advocates.
As part of your hotels new experience vision you have created a community that will all play a key role in your customer experience recovery system.
You are no longer just a hotel that serves heads on the bed. Your hotel is now part of the community campground.
To reward your hotel's raving fans start becoming a selfless givers. When you start working with employees, customers, and the local community you learn that giving is a creative art.
The creative art of giving consists of 80% selfless giving, and the remaining 20% is letting other people do nice things for you.
All the giving in the world won’t bring success, and won’t create the results you want unless you also make yourself willing and able to receive in like measure. Because if you don’t let yourself receive, you’re refusing the gifts of others – and you shut down the flow.
You will now have a remarkable Customer Experience Recovery system that will earn your hotel more direct bookings without competing with the OTA, and help increase your revenue by 20 to 50%.
Digital Transformation Framework Partnership for Hotels
Hotels today have to invest in people and technology in a context that adds value to everyone involved.
Don’t continue to neglect or take the people's transformation for granted. Technology is a digital tool that will help your hotel when implemented in collaboration with your employees.
Partner with your employees and they will help with retaining and hiring people.
I also invite you to work with me as your hotel partner to help implement a new innovative digital transformation framework that opens the digital gateways to more direct bookings without competing with the OTA.
Shoot me an email at: [email protected]
Are Morch is a digital transformation coach helping hotels open their digital front door, reimagine their processes and culture, and transform experiences in a fast-paced world!
Are Morch
Digital Transformation Coach
Are Morch, Digital Transformation Coach
