A while back I came across Scott Zimmerman‘s ideas on “Engagement Communications” as a way to WOW customers, and wanted to followup on how this works in the hotel business.

You have defined “Engagement Communications” as the process of using technology to create a personal, human touch. Why is this important, and how does it work?

Engagement Communications is providing the hospitality industry with some effective new ways to foster guest satisfaction and evaluate service efficiency. Through mobile, voice mail, e-mail, SMS text messaging and social media, the industry can create a dialogue with guests that not only makes a connection, but inspires them to take actions that will directly improve their experience while also positively impacting the business’s bottom line.  These ongoing two-way dialogues with guests create a constant feedback loop that gives the industry deeper insights into their guests’ motivations and needs, and offers the opportunity to react in real time.

Cross platform communications seem to be increasingly important. How do you recommend hotels use this?

Today’s hotel market is becoming larger and more competitive. Effective marketing for guest acquisition and retention is crucial for the overall success of hospitality operations. As a result, resorts are integrating their reservation systems with automated customer Engagement Communications to broadcast promotions for a wide range of amenities and campaigns.  By allowing guests when they check in to sign up to receive SMS text, voice or email messages about perks such as happy hour discount notifications, show tickets or restaurant reservations, hotels are able to tailor the information and medium used to engage their guests in the ways they prefer, ultimately driving a better response to the campaign because of the personalized way in which it is received.

What is the end goal of Engagement Communications? Does it tie back to sales?

The end goal of Engagement Communications is to build better customer relationships.  The two­­-way dialogue created by Engagement Communications motivates customers to take actions that will directly improve their experience while also positively impacting the business’s bottom line.    Hotels that utilize Engagement Communications to pay attention to what their guests do, and listen to what they say, can deliver meaningful offers that improve guest satisfaction and create greater loyalty to their brand.   

How could this look within the context of a hotel?  Tell us a story of a hotel that has done this especially well: what was the step-by-step process, and what were the results?

TeleVox recently implemented an Engagement Communications pilot program for a Las Vegas hotel where 5,000 guests were notified via an automated voice mail of a special offer to receive a free room and concert ticket.  Guests could choose to be transferred to a call center to take advantage of the offer.  The calls were significantly cheaper than a direct mail campaign and offered immediate and measurable results – the hotel received eight additional reservations for an ROI of $9,600.

Specifically and continuing this example, the pilot showed that for every $1 the hotel spends on customer engagement technology, they receive a $20 return.  This means a typical month’s worth of calls can engender more than $500,000 in additional revenue to the hotel.

The end result for the guests was a positive purchase experience that leads to greater satisfaction with the hotel brand because the incentives offered were items the guests valued and were easy to redeem.   These components are key to facilitating the transition from “one-time” guests to more profitable patrons who consistently come back to re-engage with the hotel again and again.

Another factor in the success of the campaign is that the messages were delivered in a format the guests preferred – and in some cases even in different languages to meet the diverse needs of the guest populations.

Any more thoughts on this?

With more people than ever relying on mobile phones and digital technology to keep them connected 24/7, those hotels that do not leverage the benefits of technology to communicate with guests will certainly be left behind.

More than 96 percent of American consumers own a mobile phone and almost 50 percent of this population has a smart phone. Mobiles were used by 15 percent of consumers to make a purchase. Almost 25 percent of consumers use their mobiles to compare products and prices. Twenty-five percent of the respondents were interested in the idea of receiving information on specials and promotions on their mobile devices.

Additionally, statistics show that texting is currently the dominant form of mobile interaction.  Text messages can reach your audience virtually anywhere.  eMarketer projects that the growth of the global market for mobile messaging will reach nearly $12 billion in 2011, up from about $1.5 billion in 2006.

These trends present a huge opportunity for the hospitality industry to use communications technology to engage with their guests through all phases of their trip, from selecting a date to checking-in to after the trip in order to collect feedback.  If hotels are fortunate enough to have the permission of their guests to communicate with them via mobile devices while on vacation, they have a powerful resource for engagement and improving the bottom line.

Thanks, Scott!

Learn more about Scott’s work at TeleVox.

Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with TopGuest founder Geoff Lewis to discuss what’s new with TopGuest – the next-generation loyalty program for travel.

As mentioned in my EyeForTravel event recap post, Geoff said the problem with traditional loyalty programs is those who would pay get stuff for free.

He suggested the next generation of loyalty schemes will involve someone’s physical location plus digital communities plus social networks.

He encouraged us to look at the online experience created by disruptive travel companies such as Jetsetter and AirBnB, which are engaging the social customer much faster. We can also learn from online gaming companies that use an engage (play) now, pay later approach.

During his presentation, Geoff mentioned TopGuest is tracking a number of metrics for their partner companies. Since I’m obsessed with measurement, that caught my attention – and after the event I caught up with Geoff to ask about the analytics his company is tracking. Right now it includes check-ins at the hotel’s own property; social influence metrics such as number of Facebook friends, volume of check-ins, and other social sharing. A portion of users can access data to augment guest profiles, such as birthday, gender, and Facebook likes.

The future of TopGuest?

“Our future vision has really crystallized over the past few days and is now more interesting than just ‘focused on Vegas.’

“Specifically, we are transitioning away from being primarily focused on geolocation check-ins, and our vision is to link all the relevant social activity by a given loyalty program member online with their membership number / guest profile in our partners’ existing databases.

“The objective is to provide a simple, automated mechanism for programs to respond to [and optionally, reward] all forms of digital loyalty by members, including geo check-ins, but also pulling in things like TripAdvisor reviews, TripIt plan sharing, Tweets, Facebook likes, etc.

“Furthermore, we will enable loyalty programs to do personalized marketing — at scale — around member milestones such as birthdays, anniversaries, upcoming events, etc that those members are sharing via their social accounts. We are creating the ‘social loyalty response’ category, and provide the loyalty industry with the first comprehensive measure for member online engagement.”

It seems Klout is receiving a lot of attention and buzz recently, and for good reason. If you’re not familiar with their concept yet, they provide a way to measure a person’s influence on the social web. The explanation from their website is probably best:

The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.

True Reach is the size of your engaged audience and is based on those of your followers and friends who actively listen and react to your messages. Amplification Score is the likelihood that your messages will generate actions (retweets, @messages, likes and comments) and is on a scale of 1 to 100. Network score indicates how influential your engage audience is and is also on a scale from 1 to 100. The Klout score is highly correlated to clicks, comments and retweets.

I’m not a celebrity….

…but apparently I’m a niche specialist:

I’ll take that.

How you should use influence scoring when providing service

The value of using influence scoring measurements such as Klout when managing a social media campaign is not to provide different quality levels of service. The consumer of today is clearly more empowered than ever before. Discriminating on how well you solve problems for people is short-sighted, if not downright stupid.

However, I believe it’s useful to provide different kinds of service in different situations.

For example: Influence scoring is useful in determining who in your organization should be involved in the response and followup action. Do you need to bring in the PR director or another department manager? Who needs to be involved to provide the best resolution for the consumer and your company?

I’d like to hear your thoughts in the comments below:

How are you using Klout? What role do you think influence scoring should play in social media service and online reputation management?

ReviewPro announces Klout integration

Today ReviewPro announced integration of Klout influence scores with their social media monitoring tool. [Tnooz story] I think any hotel looking to increase their online visibility should monitor as many (relevant) metrics as possible in planning big-picture strategy and also day-to-day actions. Klout scoring gives us one more reference point for these decisions.

How did Hotel Le Seven build their Facebook community so quickly? Today I got on the phone with Vice PresidentMartin Soler to learn about the strategy he used to attract nearly 12,000 fans through Facebook. Martin’s company, World Independent Hotel Promotion, works exclusively with independent hotels, with a focus on hotel openings. (Martin is also a talented HDR photographer.)

The Background Story (In Martin’s words)

Seven months before opening we started the campaign. It was an ambitious project – great to work on, because the hotel concept was very unusual. We built a strategy where we would be creating some mystery, and leaking ideas on what every suite would look like.

We were lucky because we had a test room to work with for imagery – the rest were just sketches. We started by talking about the owners, and the other projects they did – like Hotel Five. We talked about all the gadgets and special things there were.

We coordinated with our PR agency to make sure there was no communication with the press. We only wanted to talk directly with the consumer.

Josiah: What communications channels did you use?

Facebook Only

Facebook was our exclusive communications channel.

I haven’t found Twitter to be very reliable for promotions. I feel it’s a bit more of a flash in the pan.

And of course we made a website with very dramatic music and imagery of what guests could expect. Facebook pointed to the website, and the website was very high-production – lots of rich media.

No Press Releases

If people wanted to know anything about the hotel, they had to follow us through Facebook. No press releases went out, and we did not take any questions from the media.

What Caused Rapid Growth

We tried some contests through Facebook, but the results were not impressive as we thought. We tried sending offers to our fanbase from Hotel Five – since the design concepts were similar. If they liked the Five, they’ll love the Seven. So cross marketing was possible there.

So a lot was just telling people about it. Pushing traffic from the website. We also wrote some bloggers, telling them to check out the page since we were going to do something interesting.

It was a bit of a risk because not many hotels have filled their rooms through Facebook yet. But it worked for us!

After Opening

We’ve continued our strategy after opening, and made it clear to our colleagues that it was Facebook that attracted our fans initially. It helped us achieve 80% occupancy on the soft opening – and that was in low season.

The owner was amazed – he didn’t expect that at all.

So we had to remember that our Facebook fans helped us achieve this success. We give them an exclusive room rate – the fans-only rate is the best rate you’ll get – better than our own website or any distributor.

We also reward our Facebook community by notifying them of anything that’s going to happen before we tell anyone else. (Even before we post to our website).

Martin’s Top Five Facebook Tips

1. Treat your Facebook “Likers” like an artist treats their fans. That is, realize they make you important and therefore you need to make them important. Special treatments etc. when they arrive at the hotel is a minimum.

2. Keep your Facebook page as personal as you can. This is an information communication channel to friends. Try to involve them as much as you can.

3. Find out what people want to know about the hotel and give them more of that. It’s not about what you “think” is important; you may be totally off the mark. Listen to them and your page will be a success.

4. Use all the media of Facebook, write articles, post photo albums etc.

5. Treat every post like a “news story;” don’t give it all at once. Give it to them bit by bit and maximize the yield from your stories.

Thanks, Martin!

Samovar Tea Lounge is not only one of my favorite tea spots in San Francisco, it’s also a very social-savvy company. In this example, look how owner Jesse Jacobs responds to a negative review with a very thoughtful explanation.

First, the review:

….and Jesse’s reply:

A couple reasons why I like this:

1. It offers explanations why this may not be the typical experience…but it’s not an excuse
2. Jesse refers back to his company mission of “Creating Personal Human Connection”, which reinforces his commitment to delivering great experiences
3. He provides his personal email address for followup communication if needed

Thank you, Kara!

Most of you would agree it’s important to listen to your customers, and make changes based on their suggestions.

But do you have a list of customer ideas in action?

Starbucks does. Actually, they have two.

It’s the result of creating MyStarbucksIdea.com (which you should spend some time exploring).

This would be so easy to add to your website. Why haven’t you done it yet?

Savvy organizations are building a powerful presence for themselves on the web by publishing useful information. This content can take many forms – from articles, to Twitter updates, to videos on YouTube. But it’s all created for one purpose: to help their customers and guests.

This is what I call the concierge approach to content marketing: the practice of publishing material to answer questions before they even come up. And I’ve created a special report PDF to introduce you to the process:

[Click here to download The Concierge Approach to Content Marketing PDF]

In the guide, you’ll find:

• Definition of The Concierge Approach to Content Marketing
• Who should create all the material
• How to get help with this if you don’t have any time
• How to get your guests and customers involved in the content production process
• The best types of content to publish
• The best formats for sharing this information
• Making sure your content gets read and used
• A real-world case study on content marketing
• Summary list of content marketing tips

[Click here to download The Concierge Approach to Content Marketing PDF]

In our world of social media and online word of mouth, how you treat your customers becomes all the more important. That was the topic of my conversation today with William Brown, who recently published this good article: “Delighting customers in a social media era.”

Listen to this conversation here:

[Prefer to listen on the go? Right-click here to download the mp3 recording]

For those of you who prefer to read our conversation, here are the highlights:

[00:50] Josiah: Today I wanted to talk about a report that you had shared a few days ago, titled “Delighting Your Customers in a Social Media Era”. What’s going on in the hotel industry that makes this so important right now?

William: Social media has just exploded in the last five to ten years, from discussion boards and bulletin boards to social networks that provide real-time connectivity for people regardless of location and industry, and it’s really changing the nature of the conversation between the service provider and its customer. There’s a network effect going on that magnifies the potential awareness of that conversation, and by extension, its brand-reinforcing activities or its brand detracting activities. That’s really never been seen before.

[3:56] Josiah: How can a hotel delight their customers? What goes into creating a great guest experience?

William: I think there are many who would argue that it begins long before the actual guest experience, in that traditional sense. I think a strategy has to look at every aspect of that journey, from the customer getting the idea to want to visit your location, to isolating your property as a place to stay and then actually forming and re-enforcing positive pre-check-in thoughts that you reinforce once they arrive.

[07:04] Josiah: Is this whole concept of delighting customers more of a management issue than a marketing topic?

William: Marketing is full of platitudes that we ascribe to our own brand. We talk about ourselves as a premier experience or the best in our vertical, the best in our location, whatever it is. But the actual experience is what the customer, the guest, the consumer is going to remember and our ability to shape that experience is a function in management at the property level.

[08:30] Josiah: Should more people be getting involved in social media at the property level beyond just marketing? Should we be bringing on the general manager, should the concierge be sending Twitter updates and what-not?

William: I think about what the Four Seasons hotel brand does now with it’s properties. It appears that every single property has a Twitter presence right now at a unique property level.

The Four Seasons property in Vale talks about the art festival going on over Labor Day, as an example. And it talks about it in a very fun, very engaging, very welcoming kind of language, inviting the follower to engage with them further and maybe start to plant the seed that if not this year, maybe next year, that might be an interesting location for a late summer getaway.

Five or Six years ago, we didn’t have the kind of mechanisms to enable cost effective and customer-engaging ways of communicating that really cant permeate like social media can right now. It’s something that needs to be tested and explored, and feedback is a gift.

I think [social media] may open up all sorts of new opportunities to really deepen the relationship with an existing customer and then to influence people that they can influence. That’s the value of this whole idea of the Ultimate Question and this notion of the Net Promoter Score ideology. To identify true brand advocates. People who are so happy and satisfied that they become de-facto brand ambassadors.

[13:11] Josiah: Do you think the rule of marketing has changed it all? Is it more relationship building? The types of messages that we’re pushing out, do they have to change a little bit in content? Do we want to encourage conversation between our guests?

William: The potential upside is to look at [social media] as a series of conversations or one on-going conversation. Like, if there’s a new chef or a period of construction has ended and something is new and available at the property level, this is something that would resonate with long-time frequent guests of the property and it’s something that may capture the attention of the individual that has never stayed at the property before.

[15:50] Josiah: For a single, independent property, the concept of one to one conversations is reasonable and it usually can be carried out fairly easily. With some of the larger brands or hotel groups… how can we create platforms that enable conversations without interacting one on one with every single person who mentions our brand?

[16:43] William: At the larger level, you have to find more things of common interest. I think one of those unifying concepts would be a loyalty program. This is something that travelers are absolutely impassioned about.

There are also opportunities that may be counter to the gut intuition of a brand manager, but these are conversations that will occur regardless of all participation. An example of that could be a negative experience with the brand. These negative situations are opportunities for the brand to demonstrate several things. We can demonstrate that we care, that we’re listening, and that we’re doing everything that we can in the public form and in private with the individual to try to resolve the underlying issues that were involved with their negative experience.

Companies with multiple properties should not be afraid to open up their communities to encourage this type of feedback. I’ve seen types of communities that are “open” but not really open, where they seek to positively reinforce the brand at every single possible opportunity by, in effect, censoring content that gets posted by travelers and not realistically viewing the nature of these channels. And what happens in that case is that the disaffected customer doesn’t view this channel as credible and that extends to the brand itself, and they will find another channel.

The lesson there is that in these social media channels, we are just one participant in the conversation. We are no longer in control of the conversation. The guest, the customer, the prospect, they’re all equal participants in the dialogue and we have to encourage honest and forthright communication, and we need to respond as honestly as we possibly can.

[22:19] Josiah: Can you define the Ultimate Question and the Net Promoter Score and and talk a little bit about why these are so important?

William: An individual with the Bain Consultancy, Fred Reichheld, who was a senior managing director at Bain, had written an article for the Harvard Business Review in 2003 which really kind of framed the idea of boiling down complex customer satisfaction surveys into one simple question. And that is to ask a customer, in effect, on a score of 0-10, how likely would you be to recommend our company or our brand to someone else?

And it really sought to demystify the area of customer satisfaction science because it had become such a beast onto itself. It had taken on so many different permutations and there were so many theories and methodologies for inferring the mind of the customer without basically getting at the root to what we’re all striving for as commercial businesses and that’s to grow our business and more fundamentally, to keep customers that we’ve fought hard to win, usually at great costs.

The idea of the Net Promoter is to gauge, with a visitor or guest, that if they have a good experience, will they be likely to recommend the experience to someone else? And conversely, if they were dissatisfied with the experience, how likely will they be to become a detractor on behalf of our brand?

[26:37] Josiah: Referrals dramatically increase in importance, so asking this question, tracking your progress against the Net Promoter Score, becomes all the more important over the last few years.

William: Absolutely. The important proposed benefits of the method really derive from simplifying and communicating the idea of creating more promoters and fewer detractors.

So, on a 0-10 scale, you consider your 9s and 10s to be promoters. If a customer being asked this question comes back with a 7 or 8, we may consider that a moral victory but in the field of Net Promoter methodology, you have an individual who’s generally satisfied with their experience. They’re not so satisfied as to very likely remember it a few days after checkout.

The goal of Net Promoter is to isolate the behaviors throughout every point in the guest booking value chain, if you will, from the time that the guest engages with marketing, to the time they make the reservation, to the time they’re at the check-in desk, to the house keeping, to the amenities, to checkout.

The science of the Net Promoter score card has begun to evolve since 2003 to a rich little cottage industry of breaking down every aspect of the guest experience and isolating where the opportunity to drive that 7-8 experience to a true Net Promoter likelihood behavior at a 9-10 level. You start to form actionable steps that can help your brand to begin to really move towards true transformation that drives topline and bottomline growth, especially in a very competitive environment.

The full transcript will be available shortly to Insider’s Circle members.

We’re nearing the end of the summer season here in the Northern Hemisphere, and for some of our hotels & resorts, that means the end of busy season is approaching.

What are the most important steps for you to take at this time? Or really, after any time you have a busy stretch?

Survey your customers

Try asking The Ultimate Question; it’s so powerful: “Would you recommend us to your friends?”

Forget the 25-question survey; you can gather additional information elsewhere. If a guest will refer their friends to you, you know you’ve succeeded in delivering an excellent experience.

In conversations, try to find out why they stayed at your property. Why did they choose you over your competitors? Identify common elements, and see how you could build future communications around these issues.

Collect public feedback

Gather people’s thoughts from review sites, feedback forms, and elsewhere. Multimedia content is best. Then publish the most accurate and compelling feedback everywhere online.

The goal here is to communicate your value and your difference through the words of others. Let them tell your story.

Gather guest-published content

Search photo and video sharing sites like Flickr and Youtube. Try a few blog searches. Look for material people have published without your knowledge.

Then highlight the best pieces of content.

This is Guestsourcing. Promoting the stories that others are telling about you, and connecting your past guests with potential future ones.

Take another look at your website analytics

Compare them over the same period last year. What trends do you notice?

With my hotels, I’m noticing increased mobile and video use. But every situation is different. You need to look at your numbers and see what’s changing.

Big, industry-wide changes matter less than how your guests’ digital usage changes. You need to watch what they’re doing before you can provide new, channel-specific content.

Identify your most profitable customers

This should really be something done on an ongoing basis. But now is a good time to confirm what type of guests and reservations brought you the most profits.

Then, you can work to maximize these types of bookings in the future.

Remember, the #1 function of marketing is not attracting new customers, but retaining your existing profitable ones.

Send something nice to your best guests

It doesn’t have to be expensive, just a gesture of your appreciation.

Some managers send out a letter with a discount. Inns by the Sea sends a monogrammed bathrobe. There’s a million possibilities – decide what works best for your situation.

Brainstorm with your concierge

“What were the most common questions you were asked by guests?”

Identify the top 10, 20, or 50…and then create a series of blog posts or articles answering these. (This is the proactive concierge approach to marketing that works so well online.)

Develop a system for staying in touch

Avoid having your guests forget about you by planning a way to provide followup communication.

Maybe this is an email newsletter, maybe it’s a Facebook page. The channel isn’t as important as the concept. Provide some way to stay in the minds of your core customer base.

Continue to provide interesting, valuable content – and they’ll remember you for next time.

—

Important: To help you implement this, we’re running a two-week special promotion on our Insider’s Circle. See all the stuff I’m giving away in our Back to School Sale.