Communication Summative: Customer Needs
The following sample essay on”Communication Summative: Customer Needs”: the key is to set realistic customer expectations, and not just meet them, but to exceed them in the most unexpected and helpful ways. Sir Richard Branson. Hotels are getting more mindful of the fact that the customers needs, expectancies and the reason they are staying at the hotel are key factors for the hotel to be more hospitable. According to Enz (2001), managers of hotels in America found that understanding the guests at the hotel is the second key aspect of running a successful business after Human Resource Management.
Guests feeling valued & appreciated and their stay at the hotel is either to or exceeds their expectations, will in turn lead to a fond and pleasant memory of the hotel being created for the guest. Following this, the customers intent to go back to the hotel for another stay is increased and also the chances of a positive Word of Mouth pertaining to the hotel being spread.
Guest experience is known the world over as the internal and subjective response guests have to any contact with a hotel or any of its outlets. Guest experience is created by the guests understanding of encounters with the staff or anything pertaining to the hotel, which means the experience of guests cannot be entirely regulated by the hotel. Instead of trying to create an experience from scratch, hotels should plan and organise the conditions and stimuli that assist guests to have the preferred experience. Guests have experiences anytime they touch any part of the product, service, brand or organization through numerous channels and at different points of time.
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4.9 (984)
“ Ok, let me say I’m extremely satisfy with the result while it was a last minute thing. I really enjoy the effort put in. ”
These moments of truth between the guest and the hotel are defined as touch points. The journey that a guest takes for completing a certain task (ex: searching for an ideal hotel at a particular location through various platforms, booking it, checking-in, etc.) is formed by a series of touch points.
Technology is changing at a really fast rate and with it the current markets are also changing at a rapid rate, but most importantly the guests wishes are varying on a daily basis. Buying behaviour is more multifaceted and the guest is optimally notified: guests obtain required information by themselves via many devices (ex: mobile phones, tablets, laptops, etc.). Hence, it only makes sense to vision the guest as the epicentre of any activity and to study how and on what channels they interact with the hotel. Hotels guests go through 5 stages of the customer journey (Appendix I) namely inspiration for travel; research; booking; on property and lastly post stay. Lemon and Verhoef (2016), also discussed that the customer journey is one that encompasses the customer experience with the hotel over time through multiple touch points.
The basis for every hotel booking is mainly the need to travel. A multitude of impulses aid in creating this inspiration through conversation with friends, advertisements on the television, etcetera, customers are repeatedly reminded about travel. A probable customer has the means to utilise various online and offline channels to provide this inspiration. On the off chance that a person has decided to travel to a particular destination, they then face the ultimate decision of choice of accommodation. The internet will be flooded with a multitude of offers pertaining to various hotels in that destination and the various rates that they offer. After a customer has decided on a few hotels as the frontrunners in the race to the final choice of accommodation, the next step is to evaluate reviews and feedback of said hotels through friends, Google, Facebook, OTAs (online travel agents), etcetera., for providing vital information that can aid the customer in deciding for or against a booking.
After all this is said and done, the customer takes the decision for or against the hotel. But this does not happen straight away. This can last for hours, days, weeks or even months. If this happens, it will happen via one of three channels, namely the hotel website, an OTA or through email/telephone. Either way, the booking experience must be as easy as possible. An impressive user experience and a responsive website, well-summarised content and a simple, intuitive and quick process flow. The most important aspect of this is transparent and user-friendly price communication. The most important stage of the customer journey for the hotel is the guests stay because this stage involves the decisions that a guest takes to maybe return back to the hotel or whether to recommend it to friends and family, which in turn could lead to increased sales for the hotel.
Other than the obvious aspects such as cleanliness of the rooms or exemplary service, this stage is crucial in ascertaining if positive or negative reviews are given by the guest. The handling of complaints is important and should be considered as a vital touchpoint in the customer journey. The objective of every hotel management group, or perhaps of every hotelier, is to ensure the guests loyalty to the hotel and maybe to the brand. It is obviously not possible to persuade everyone, but it is important to repeatedly motivate the customers to re-book, thank for them for their booking and most importantly remind them of their positive stay. The channels through which these can be done is first and foremost a newsletter and the brands respective loyalty schemes. Numerous sales, travel opportunities and ideas, offers and others of the like can be circulated by these channels.
Based on the above customer journey, the best way to enhance the guests experience is to have better communication with the guest. Right from the time a customer makes a booking till the end of their stay and beyond, there are numerous engagement points where a conversation can be started. Communication with the guests is a long process that begins even before the guest enters the hotel and continues long after the guest has checked out. Due to this, customer satisfaction and increased productivity lies within the communication abilities of the staff. A simple email before arrival, enquiring about personal preferences on arrival and regularly checking if guests are happy during their stay all play their part towards building a positive rapport between the guest and the hotel.
When a guest arrives at the hotel, it is vital to be prepared. Knowing their needs and expectations in advance can make a world of difference to their experience with the hotel and can also help the hotel to stand apart from its competition. For example, many young parents will certainly appreciate services such as a baby crib and babysitting services. If that family arrives at the hotel at maybe 10pm at night with a screaming infant, the last thing they would want is to wait for a long time for the staff to set up the crib in their room. If their needs are checked and taken care of in advance, such situations can be avoided. Another example, many business travellers who stay at different hotels the world over, spend most of their time networking or rushing off to their meetings in haste. Acquiring some important pre-arrival information, hotels can find ways to ensure that these guests stay at the hotel is much more relaxed.
This might include arranging transport to their meetings, making a reservation at restaurants close to their meetings or even recommending work-friendly caf?s in the immediate area. Sending out pre-arrival emails or questionnaires to the guests, a lot of crucial information can be obtained pertaining to the guests preferences and their stay can be made that much more memorable. Hotels can use these to pre-empt, rather than hastily react to their guests changing needs. All guests have their reasons for booking a room at a hotel, it could be a vacation, wedding anniversary, reunion, etc. Again, pre-arrival questionnaires can be utilised to ascertain the reason the guest is staying at the hotel and interpret how to provide service most suited to the guests needs. For example, if a guest is celebrating his/her birthday, they could be wished on arrival and asked if anything else is needed to make their stay all the more enjoyable.
Their room could be decorated before arrival and a complimentary bottle of champagne be served during their meal. Big or small, theses unexpected gestures can make a massive difference as to the image of the hotel being created in the guests mind. The easiest thing to do as a hotelier is to believe that all the guests are having a good time at the hotel during their stay. But most of the times, a guests true experience will not be realised until their review on TripAdvisor is read. This could lead to a missed chance to turn a contented guest into one that cannot stop praising the hotel. Regularly checking on guests and making sure that their experience is a great one is an easy way to maintain your reputation and improve service.
It also shows that the hotel is devoted to providing the best possible experience for their guests and that they actively seek for opportunities to help their guest in any way possible. A couple of well-timed queries can help hotels in obtaining vital feedback pertaining to certain amenities or a sense of overall satisfaction levels. This might involve phoning them after they have settled in their room to ensure that everything is up to expectation, asking if they enjoyed a spa treatment at the hotel, a day out in town, etc. All these include key engagement points to communicate with the guests in a non-intrusive way. Communicating with guests before arrival, during their stay and even after they have left the hotel, can guarantee a positive experience for the guest.
Most people talk about creating a memorable first impression, but creating a memorable last impression is often overlooked. A psychological heuristic known as the peak-end rule depicts as to how people make judgements based on the peak or end of an event or activity. This means that if a guests experience at the hotel was positive 99 percent of the time but the remaining 1 percent was negative, that 1 percent will contribute to most of their perceived experience at the hotel. Possibly, a hotel can nullify all the hard work done to ensure that the guests experience at the hotel was a memorable one just by turning the checkout procedure into a hasty and impersonal one. In contrast to this, making sure that guests leave the hotel with a smile can have a strangely positive impact.
Easy things such as acknowledging a guest by his/her name, offering to call a cab to the airport are often forgotten at busy front desks during checkout. For that extra mile, the hotel can double-check the guests flight information, give information pertaining to possible traffic delays or adverse weather conditions that might affect their journey, etc. The experience of the guest during checkout is also very important in relation to the initial impression made by the hotel. Instead of considering the checkout procedure as another monetary exchange, consider it as a vital chance to leave the guest with a memorable last impression.
The hospitality industry today is heavily dependent on technology, and sees it as a one-stop solution to improve guest experience overall. It should not be given the impetus that it is being currently given in the industry, but should be seen as a way to complement and not substitute good old-fashioned communication. Sending pre-arrival emails is a sure shot way to start building rapport with the guest and know preferences before-hand. After the guest arrives and has checked-in, questions asked at certain times is a simple way to ensure that they are content along with making them feel valued and discover new ways to enhance their experience if required. During and soon after checkout, it is crucial to keep in mind to maintain rapport with all the guests.
Contacting them via emails to thank them for their stay and ensuring if their needs were met, will make sure the guest feels valued even after the stay is over and might start feeling to go back to the hotel for another visit soon. While sending these emails, it is important to note that the email should not sound like a formal, corporate email, but one of a more friendly, conversational nature. Therefore, communication amongst guests and the hotel plays a crucial role in determining the outcomes of the guests overall experience with the hotel. Communicating with guests helps the staff to appreciate them more, due to which the guest needs are predicted in advance and tended to before even the guest asks, hence guests will feel more valued and the overall guest experience is taken to the next level. Thus, it can be concluded that good communication techniques followed by all departments in the hotel at each and every stage of the customer journey, can ensure the experience of the guest to be a memorable and unique one.
Communication Summative: Customer Needs. (2019, Nov 20). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/communication-summative-customer-needs/
