Living in the past
When it comes to eloquent and effective communication, nothing beats the face-to-face interaction. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has made that time and again, often repeated phrase, “Meet your customer where the customer is at’’, beat a hasty retreat.
With the emergence of COVID-19, businesses have had to move away from working side-by-side with clients. While some service industries including hotels and banks follow protective policies such as adjusting their workstation and guest contact desks (the front desk), using transparent shields or other barriers - staying in touch with customers on business objectives (e.g. sales visits) and other deliverables has become a huge challenge.
During these tough times, when we are forced to collaborate virtually, businesses should aim to close the gaps that can lead to the collapse of communications by using technology. Let’s face it digital communication has gone from ‘niche to necessary’. No question about it!
While, everyone in business will have to over-communicate by increasing the frequency of emails and calls to compensate for the COVID-19 imposed lapses in staying aligned with your clients, hotels can take advantage of the slow to near zero periods of business, to implement new technologies. Those of us, who have gone through this process prior to COVID-19, will recall that carrying out this exercise, when the hotel is busy and running at high occupancy – impacts on guests while causing heightened anxiety in staff.
The hotel industry is for long, hampered by the predominance of legacy systems which are hard to update and often incompatible. Unless hotels push to converge with newer technology, the danger of traditional applications decomposing into oblivion is likely to occur. Introducing new technology can either take the form of a complete overhaul or a gradual upgrade of the existing systems such as PMS, CRS, CRM, etc.
COVID-19 has reshaped the rules of engagement and the future has descended upon us faster than we anticipated. More importantly, whether we are ready or not, it has created a new playing field where past leaders may well be pushed aside to make room for new entrants.
As hotels migrate to new technology, and, the thrust here would predominantly be to align with the ‘no touch’ manner of conducting operations in customer contact areas, contactless technology such as mobile keys or keyless room entry would be a front runner. Coupled with increased use of guest messaging via SMS text and web based chat applications, hotels would have less staff at the front end, and yet be able to deliver efficient service whilst respecting social and safe distancing norms.
AI powered Chatbots can be very useful to answer those guest questions, which most of the time are the same, although framed differently. For example, “Can I have the WIFI password? “ “What is the WIFI password? “ Where can I get the WIFI password?” – All require one answer. A chatbox can easily be programmed to provide the answer immediately. Only when the chatbox is unable to provide an answer does the question get escalated to a live person. The other advantage is that when the chatbox is enabled to answer frequently asked questions (FQAs), it frees staff to attend to other tasks without being interrupted.
COVID-19 with all the mayhem it has caused has been the catalyst for hotels to embrace technology as a tool to meet the challenges it faces, and whether we like it or not, hospitality today, cannot survive, without technology. This is the moment where industry leaders can seize opportunities provided by technology in order to create – rather than be led by-the future.
Ilzaf Keefahs is a freelance writer who enjoys focusing on hospitality related matters that he is passionate about, and likes to share his views with hoteliers and customers alike. He delves into the heart of hospitality to figure out both customer service and consumer trends that impact the industry.
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