In hospitality and service, the customer always comes first, and with the help of smart digital solutions like UCaaS, you can upgrade your customer support substantially. Let’s go over how UCaaS and telephony can benefit companies in the hospitality and service industry.
Common challenges in hospitality and service
Companies like Airbnb and Uber symbolise the dramatic shift to the sharing economy, where access is chosen before ownership. In this reimagined market, hospitality’s embrace of UCaaS is critical to delivering what guests expect. The goal of frictionless guest experiences is more important than ever.
As expectations rise, guests are often frustrated by:
- Lost reservations
- Missed wake-up calls and other fumbled guest requests
- Package tracking and delivery problems
- Not being able to get in touch with a contact person
What is UCaaS?
Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is a cloud-based service that unifies once disparate communication channels. The result is a holistic system of communications working at individual venues, and serving the needs of, for example, a hotel chain with dozens of locations in several countries.
UCaaS is the next step beyond traditional Unified Communications (UC). Earlier hardware-based UC improved services at hotels, conference facilities, restaurants etc. It did so in large part by integrating telephony, PBX, chat, mail and video calls. However, this was an expensive solution to maintain and manage. As UCaaS is a subscription-based service in the cloud, it makes it much easier to manage.
UCaaS in retail, banking and healthcare
UCaaS has already ushered in a change in sectors like retail, banking, healthcare. In retail venues, it enables faster transactions, robust features and expanded real-time services. In healthcare, it advances telemedicine and facilitates physician consultations.
How UCaaS help meet challenges in hospitality and service
UCaaS improves the guest and worker experiences in various ways, resulting in happier guests, a more fulfilled staff and better profits. Let’s take a closer look at how UCaaS in service and hospitality enhances the well-being of guests, simplifies operations, and enhances productivity.
1. Simplified deployment and operations
With UCaaS, traditional location-based telephony is a thing of the past, and a subscription-based service like UCaaS means less hardware spends. Cloud-based communication is easily integrated across all locations and departments and is fully scalable.
Guests can interact with you via phone, online, mobile apps and contact centers and enjoy speedy, accurate responses to their requests. You can also integrate diverse services, such as property management, front desk services, room billing and instant messaging. Members of the hospitality team also enjoy the benefits as they can help the customers better and themselves be less stressed.
If you offer bundled services, you can deliver them anywhere, at any time, via smartphone. Conference centers are also ideal candidates for UCaaS as it facilitates a rapid response to myriad requests from hundreds or even thousands of guests and attendees. It’s also possible to increase revenue via customised communication services like video conferencing and voice via WiFi.
Learn more: How to structure your budget when buying UCaaS
2. An improved customer experience
Hotels are overflooded with inquiries, requests and changing reservations, making modern communication key, as both customer satisfaction and productivity are at stake. Today’s guests interact with hotels via more channels than ever. A guest may book a room on their computer, then monitor the reservation on their phone. Guests may also reach out to your contact center for assistance. UCaaS provides a seamless guest experience over all channels.
Employees armed with mobile devices are more empowered to serve guests. It is possible to immediately act upon special requests. For example, workers can quickly relay emergency announcements to guests. Business travellers enjoy more seamless transitions between calls, contacts and concierge services. Every second saved enhances guest satisfaction. Time saved invariably adds to the hotel’s bottom line.
3. Productivity and the virtual front desk
Increased deployment of mobile devices parallels the increased implementation of UCaaS. For example, employees may check guests in on tablets. Increasingly, guests arrive at their room to find a mobile tablet waiting for them. Everyone benefits from the efficiency of digital connections that reduce phone conversations.
For many workers, impacting the lives of guests in meaningful ways is one of the most fulfilling aspects of the job. With UCaaS, it is possible to further empower employees to serve guests in memorable ways. Examples include instant messaging, video calls, and by integrating communications with for example CRM systems.
For hotels, employees and guests are not tethered to a physical place anymore, thanks to the possibility of the virtual front desk. No longer do guest communications only consist of phone calls and knocks on the door. Integrated digital communications benefit vacationers, business travellers and hotel employees alike. All parties find the new concept of the virtual front desk more freeing and productive.
4. UCaaS helps relieve IT pressures
In hospitality, disruptions to critical communications services often escalate to crisis levels. Cloud-based UCaaS is the antidote. Many enterprises that embrace UCaaS see a dramatic improvement in uptime. Gone are the days of IT workers putting in overtime as they tackle problems with in-house systems.
Cloud-based UCaaS is often a lot easier to manage and administer than old, costly on-premise systems. A cloud solution, on the other hand, allows you to automate certain tasks, scale your business, save time and be cost-effective!
5. Scalability across many locations
Multinational hoteliers stand to gain a great deal from a decisive transition to the cloud. Mergers and acquisitions have burdened hoteliers with outdated, incompatible communications infrastructures, but with a cloud-based UCaaS solution, it's easy to manage the administration for different locations in one place. Need to change the opening hours for a location or reorder the call queues in your PBX? No problem!
6. Accommodates heightened guest expectations
Hoteliers are mindful of an important reality about business travellers. Many are in touch with the latest developments in modern digital communications. Back at the office, many such guests already enjoy the productivity gains of UCaaS. When they travel, they expect the same convenience and productivity.
The trick is to deliver the information guests seek without delay or confusion. Integrate a streamlined communication system with an effective mobile app. Together, they constitute an ideal user-friendly interface. Make a reservation at the spa? Done. Order room service? Done. Complete an early checkout? Done. Overall, enjoy a seamless, frictionless experience? Done.
7. Personalised service
You want to create an experience where guests feel seen and important. UCaaS helps usher in a new era of truly individualised guest services. For instance, a repeat visitor with a history of going to the gym can get texts about fitness center hours.
Vacationing guests want to escape the regular workdays and traffic jams during their daily commute. They must get the sense that they’re not just part of the crowd. Business travellers covet individualisation for the sake of productivity, and international travellers grapple with a daunting array of challenges – jet lag is just one example.
If you fail to care for your guests, you risk alienation. Reviews online raise the stakes even higher. Profits and losses hinge on guest satisfaction. UCaaS brings coherence and efficiency to this high-stakes hospitality culture. It is important for hospitality professionals to embrace a modern communications infrastructure.
Why Telavox works so well for companies in the service industry
The team at Telavox has developed ways to deliver cloud-based efficiencies since 2002. Today, our world-class communications platforms operate in diverse industries. In fact, more than 350,000 users already enjoy the efficiency and accessibility of Telavox systems.
Telavox delivers UCaaS solutions that are well-suited for those in the hospitality industry, with the positive gains in productivity, guest satisfaction and security. Some of the more specific benefits Telavox can provide include:
- Efficient call management – the provided statistics allows you to get an overview of missed calls, answer ratio, and more. Through this information, you can provide better support and a more personalised service to your guests.
- Personal support – we always provide a Customer Success Manager that is dedicated specifically to you from the onboarding process and forward.
- Seamless integrations – our telephony solution is easy to integrate with CRM tools like Salesforce, or authenticate callers with BankID.
Conclusion: Benefits of UCaaS in hospitality and service
It is an undeniable fact that customers are reaching out on more platforms than before, and that their demands are much higher. For service-related industries you need to be where your customers are, and be able to provide them with the service they desire, tailored to their needs.
With UCaaS, it is easy to implement and is fully scalable according to your company's needs. It will be easier to strengthen the customer experience and respond to guests' requests when all your channels are in sync with each other and guests can easily reach you in the channel they prefer.
