We all know that positive customer experiences ranging from interactions with your website, booking systems, call centre staff and employees, can turn your guests into brand advocates and champions.

Happy customers spreading the word both off and online will bring in more potential customers and revenue. A classic ‘win-win’!

The reverse unfortunately, will also hold true. Calls dropping out, poor voice quality, being put on hold or dealing with harried staff, could result in a lost booking or even a negative online review.

Unified communications offers the hospitality sector a solution that encompasses both maximising a positive customer experience and improving the morale and productivity of staff, both of which are crucial for business success.

What are the key areas in which unified communications can boost the customer experience (CX) and create a positive and productive working culture for employees?

Cloud Voice Communications

Voice communications plays a strategic and important part of hospitality communications, with high volumes of calls flowing into businesses every day. Cloud VoIP phone systems offer a raft of functions well beyond what a traditional phone system is capable of.

Expectations for real-time and on-demand services have increased with connected consumers. Cloud-based communication systems are fit to meet these needs and give hospitality businesses that all-important competitive advantage.

  • Intelligent call routing: allows businesses to manage times of high call volumes and thereby reduce wait time. Calls can be routed to available staff or to a different locale. Auto attendant capabilities allow callers to be connected quickly and efficiently.
  • Flexibility and Scalabilty: Cloud-hosted phone systems are simple to scale in both directions. Adding and removing subscriptions as required mean that businesses can expand and contract as needed and only pay for the resources being used at any particular time. No more wasted hardware and investments.
  • Reliability: A well designed hosted PBX solution will include multi-carrier redundancy, ensuring the hosting environment is secure and reliable. Hospitality businesses can stay connected, with excellent call quality.

Powerful and Actionable Data Insights

Business owners and managers need quality and real-time actionable data and insights into their business operations. This data allows hospitality businesses to stay competitive and improve their market position.

Data insights allow businesses to:

  • Identify trends in customer satisfaction
  • Isolate staff performance issues and be able to address them promptly
  • Identify and recognise high performing staff to boost morale
  • Identify the need for additional coaching, assistance and resources
  • Analyse how customers are interacting with a business

Research done by the Aberdeen Group showed that for top cloud users, 76% of business critical information was delivered on time, in contrast with just 47% in those using a more standard / legacy system.

Contact Centre as a Service – CCaaS

A cloud contact centre is an increasingly smart choice for hospitality businesses. It is without a doubt a far more cost-effective option with no capital investments. There is no physical infrastructure changes during upscaling and downscaling, which comes in very useful for seasonal or known times of spikes in business volume.

Real-time monitoring and reporting allows businesses to monitor real-time data such as current customer interactions, queue information and agent statistics.

CCaaS offers additional features like advanced real-time quality monitoring of agents, recording interactions including screen capture and call recording. Skills based routing is another feature allowing incoming calls to be routed to the most appropriate staff member.

Omnichannel Communications

Our highly connected world allows consumers to interact with businesses in a variety of ways. Restaurants and hotels can differentiate themselves when they offer a way to connect beyond just phone and email.

Increased channels provide additional opportunities. Businesses now need to support a growing list of digital channels, including social media, mobile messaging platforms, mobile apps, web collaboration and more.

A cloud contact centre solution offers this functionality, supplying a richer and more personalised customer experience, a critical success factor in hospitality.

Want to serve up a first-class experience for your guests and customers?

Arrow is one of Australia’s largest privately owned telecommunications companies. Our IT solutions, communication tools and technologies are scalable and future-proof. Call our locally based, friendly team to find out how we can deliver the best cloud communications solution for your hospitality business.