According to a recent research study by Salesforce.com, “Sixty-four percent of consumers expect companies to respond and interact with them in real time.”
In the special report, “State of the Connected Customer 2016”, Salesforce.com surveyed over 7,000 consumers and asked them about their customer experience expectations.
There are two over-arching themes headed on a collision course in the domain of customer experience:
– I want help now. (no, like right now)
– I want to be treated individually. (all the time, every time)
To some degree, hotels have been able to successfully support these two emerging customer expectations. Consumers today however, are taking these desires to the next level fast.
For example:
– Hotels may be ready to expertly service guest requests from 7am to 9pm, but what about 3am?
– Hotels may be able to recognize your guests at the front desk and concierge, but fall short in engineering or valet.
Hoteliers have always been in the lead when it comes to customer service compared to other industries, but now the stakes are being increased.
What technologies and services are emerging to help address the impending challenge ahead?
The answer just might be: Chat Bots (like my friend Penny here…)
PennyApp.io is a chat bot app in the financial services industry. Watch her go to work!
Penny is ‘individualistically suggestive’. She is also friendly, and shows a very keen sense of humor with her propensity to use GIFs and emojis. 😉
Ultimately, she uses data to derive insights that she knows will be useful to her users. The 2-way engagement helps make Penny smarter and the result is: quick, conversational and highly useful interactions. (oh, and she is ALWAYS available)
Are Artificially Intelligent Chat Bots next on the technology horizon for Hoteliers and their Guests?
Only time will tell.
In the meantime, our Amadeus Service Optimization team continues to drive innovation and give due respect to the evolving expectations in customer experience.
Partnering with Zingle, our Service Optimization products are providing both freedom and convenience to hotel guests by opening a direct line of communication to the hotel using the guest’s preferred methods of communication.
By combining Zingle’s ability to consolidate communication channels such as ‘SMS’, ‘Facebook Messenger’, and ‘WeChat’, with HotSOS’s mature business process automation tools, Amadeus-Hospitality is positioning itself to ride the wave into the rising culture of immediacy!
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