Zingle, a mobile messaging startup, was chosen this week as Hyatt’s global preferred guest messaging service. That's a coup for the San Diego-based startup, which has invented what it calls the first-ever text messaging service for hotel concierges.
As with other messaging services, Zingle's aim is to speed up customer interaction between concierge staff and a hotel's guests. Unlike some others, it is strictly a business-to-business service.
The iconic example is that guests can now text the front desk from their phone, instead of have to speak to a human, to ask for more towels, room service, or other services and amenities.
It gathers together all of the messaging channels (SMS, Facebook Messenger, email, etc.) in one dashboard.
Here's a one-minute video pitch from VP product and marketing, Erik Suhonen:
A brief Q&A with founder and CEO Ford Blakely:
What problem does your business solve?
- Nobody wants to make phone calls anymore and especially not those that can be handled faster thru mobile messaging.
- Businesses need to talk to their mobile customers but don’t have an enterprise-grade solution that aggregates and supports the new wave of instant communication platforms.
Number of full-time employees?
20
Funding arrangements?
Angel funded to date
Revenue model?
SaaS (software as a service) revenue model
Why do you think the pain point you’re solving is painful enough that customers are willing to pay for your solution?
Nobody wants to make phone calls anymore.
Businesses don’t have an enterprise grade messaging platform. Today, a lot of business personnel are using their personal cell phones to communicate with customers. That’s not practicable for a business owners and doesn’t provide the built in oversight capabilities important to manage customer communication.
External validation?
a. 1,000+ customers (excluding Hyatt agreement)
b. Global messaging agreement with Hyatt
c. Facebook Messenger is a partner
Tnooz view:
Zingle has gained traction partly by providing messaging automations and data analytics on its platform and by not requiring consumers to download an app. But it faces competition from other service providers with overlapping services (Checkmate, Revinate, Guestdriven) and hotel operations platforms like Alice, which interact deeply with a hotel's computer systems.
The Hyatt deal puts the startup in a brighter spotlight.