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Intelligent Communications — the result of embedding communications applications inside mission-critical business processes to deliver competitive advantage — can fundamentally impact the effectiveness and profitability of individual firms, enabling them to create game-changing benefits in:
• The customer experience
• Process efficiency
• Business continuity
Those hospitality firms that adopt and leverage Intelligent Communications can improve profitability by both increasing revenue from current and potential customers and decreasing costs through more effective communications and business processes.
Key Challenges and Opportunities in Hospitality
While there are significant differences across the various segments of the hospitality industry, they all face a number of common challenges, including the following:
• Sustained revenue growth
• Global expansion
• Successful differentiation against increased competition
• Operational efficiency/Cost reduction
• Increased security and reliability
Historically, the hospitality industry has viewed communications as a utility, treating it as little more than a cost of doing business and an enabler for basic services that guests expect. However, for those firms that think strategically about today’s Intelligent Communications capabilities, there are new opportunities to create
innovative business models and establish competitive differentiation.
The Increasingly Strategic Value of Communications
Communications technology is critical to addressing globalization, competitiveness, and differentiation in the hospitality industry. Recent developments such as IP telephony, Web services, and service-oriented architectures (SOA) make communications more intelligent, enabling cost-effective and repeatable solutions where infrastructure is mixed and expenditures must be justified through measurable business returns.
With Intelligent Communications, companies can differentiate communications based on user, environment, or other requirements, delivering appropriate capabilities to both employees and guests with greatly differing needs. Using standards-based technologies, Intelligent Communications allows a diversity of devices and media to be managed cost-effectively within a uniform, coherent, centralized infrastructure. This enables Intelligent Communications to deliver increasingly beneficial value to the business.
Enabling Hospitality Success with Intelligent Communications
Intelligent Communications can transform the hospitality business and address key challenges faced by the hospitality industry:
1. Improved Guest Services
Hospitality firms can increase revenue by delivering more personalized guest services to increase customer loyalty. For instance, IP telephony and softphones allow upgrades and features to be added to in-room phones flexibly and inexpensively — e.g., automatically programming a preferred language or group dialing plan — making phones more user-friendly.
With information capture, management can track the location and status of critical staff throughout a facility, and adjust schedules and tasks accordingly. Captured information on how each guest uses hotel services can be utilized in subsequent visits, allowing personalized services to be cost-effective for a broader range of customers.
Based on past consumption, customized services and special promotions can be suggested to guests automatically, via room phone display, voicemail, or mobile device. Returning guests can even be given the option to check in using their wireless devices — for example, during the cab ride to the hotel, so the room key is ready and waiting at the front desk upon arrival.
In addition, Internet access over wireless or wired connections can be used to communicate with guests and deliver value-added services, such as room-to-room calling from a guest’s mobile phone.
2. Improved Sales Channels
Intelligent Communications holds tremendous potential to increase revenue and improve guest satisfaction by increasing the effectiveness of demand-generation programs, reservations, booking, and other customer-facing functions — without the need for complex IT integration across proprietary systems.
Contact centers play an increasingly important role in building customer relationships and driving direct revenue by integrating multiple methods of communication to provide the highest level of customer convenience. For example, organizations can make better use of the Web for sales and service by integrating this channel into their contact centers. They can also use voice portal capabilities to improve self-service systems.To facilitate cross-selling, contact center agents can have real-time access to key data such as room inventory, reservation records, and customer information. Separate contact centers can be virtually pooled to reduce hold times and ensure that qualified agents handle calls. Transactions begun on the Web or voice portal can be resumed by a live agent where the customer left off, and transferred to another expert along with a complete record of the customer reservation to date.
3. Improved Operational Efficiency
IP telephony can drastically reduce operational costs while simplifying the technology and expertise needed to leverage advanced capabilities. Multiple networks can be consolidated, moving guest communications onto a single converged network. Separate facilities can be virtually pooled so calls are spread evenly and fewer total employees are needed to respond to calls effectively. Integrated systems can also improve collection of billing data to make sure the information is available at checkout and eliminate errors.
Mobile capabilities provide better tracking of staff availability and more timely information. For instance, maintenance problems can be logged immediately and coordinated with job dispatch, scheduling, and alerting services. Mobile devices also support personalization of services by enabling immediate retrieval and update of guest preferences at the point of interaction.
In addition to reducing corporate communication costs, IP telephony reduces the cost of carrying guest calls. It also enables resources to be shared across multiple
locations at little incremental cost, allowing innovative applications (e.g., automatic room-service order transcription, maintenance ticket generation, intelligent routing, video conferencing) to be widely deployed.
4. Enhanced Operational Continuity
A reliable communications system is a critical element of any business continuity or emergency preparedness plan. Hospitality organizations require highly reliable systems so they can deliver services to guests without interruption, 24x7. Call centers must support dynamic load-balancing and redirection of calls in the event of an outage or failure. They must also handle everyday fluctuations in call volumes efficiently and effectively.
Phones are particularly vital to the timely mobilization of personnel and resources. Intelligent Communications enables calls to be routed to the most appropriate people, as well as to remote locations. IP telephony-based solutions, when deployed correctly, are designed to be inherently reliable and provide a secure platform for applications.
Intelligent Communications also enables a level of security that is critical to maintaining the security and privacy of guests and their associated data — making certain that information isn’t compromised, and enabling more efficient and secure guest identification and verification.
A Critical Component of Your Business Strategy
Intelligent Communications and recent technology developments are making innovative communications solutions not only affordable and repeatable, but also more effectively integrated directly into critical business processes. The possibilities for real, differentiating improvements in guest service, staff responsiveness, and operational efficiency — and a true competitive advantage — are nearly endless.
For more information about how a CTI/Avaya solution for the hospitality industry can benefit you,
contact us today at 1-888-477-4CTI.
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