Avid travelers know firsthand how stressful the planning process can be and how the right accommodation can make or break a dream trip, especially given recent times.
As such, empathy is a trait today’s customers strongly value, with 71% of consumers recently stating that businesses showing empathy during the pandemic have earned their loyalty.
Companies who strive to simplify the vacation booking process must take a closer look at their guest relations teams to accommodate an increased need for empathy and a personal approach to each traveler’s specific needs.
While continuing to navigate the pandemic, companies can leverage innovative technologies to stay flexible and offer the best, streamlined experience to travelers during this turbulent and everchanging landscape. It’s also important to remember the human touch as companies work to provide peace of mind and a positive experience for their guests.
There are a few key ways that empathy can help companies better understand their travel guests, including the following...
Open communication
Communicating openly and transparently with guests is the best path to building trust.
Guest relations teams should be committed to providing the most enjoyable, personalized experience possible - if travelers feel well looked after during their stays, they are more likely to become lifelong customers.
Offering this level of service on a global magnitude is challenging in terms of scalability, which is why it’s valuable to partner with technologies such as Ultimate.ai.
Among other functions, this tool can help communicate with guests in their native language to better understand their questions and help them find the answers they’re looking for. By utilizing Ultimate.ai last year, vacation rental marketplace HomeToGo’s guest relations team helped travelers from 120+ countries and in seven different languages.
Having this global adaptability is key to building relationships. Additional tools like Salesforce can help organize and deliver on a robust communications strategy. There is still uncertainty and constant changes with travel given the pandemic and booking safe, comfortable accommodations should not add to the stress of planning a vacation.
Salesforce allows for efficient communication with guests from the start of the planning process and, by helping to stay close to questions and messages, provides guests with peace of mind so they can focus their attention on other aspects of travel. Using features like quick text, companies can leverage predefined messages as a base that can then be modified to cater to each guest’s individual needs.
Their innovative technology can also help companies quickly review and organize the conditions of properties that meet specific guest requirements and aids with proactively displaying property policy information, including cancellation or modification policies.
These personal touches and proactive communications in the travel industry can make guests feel listened to, appreciated and secure in their bookings.
Prioritizing empathy cross-functionality
Successful companies are made of amazing teams that continually work together and support each other. The best guest relations departments collaborate cross-functionally to surface key learnings from speaking with customers and aid in the development of new processes and tools that further streamline the guest experience.
Collecting and reviewing feedback from guests can help companies gain insight into how to improve their processes across several departments. Using tools like zenloop, teams can tag the common root causes of tickets to track and identify frequent pain points from customers, which can then be shared with internal teams for improvements across the entire consumer touchpoint cycle. These insights are especially helpful for marketing, product, technology, and user experience (UX) design teams.
For example, uncertainty regarding travel restrictions due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 led to an increase in customer requests for vacation rentals offering flexible cancellation policies. This information should be shared with product and technology teams to assist in the development of search filters during the planning process.
Embrace new technologies and automation
The goals of every guest relations team are to build relationships, provide the best possible experience to customers and ultimately deliver on your brand’s promise.
In recent times, guest relations teams are seeing an unprecedented increase in communications as asynchronous messaging becomes the norm - guests can reach out from anywhere, at any time and from any device. This is when automation tools are especially relevant to help quickly answer common questions, allowing agents more time to focus on the complex issues that require 1:1 attention.
Artificial intelligence can be leveraged in chatbots, with many programmed to answer basic questions without the need for agent intervention. This allows more time for agents to focus on intricate conversations.
How guest relations teams find success will inevitably vary based on industry. In the travel market, and more specifically the vacation rental ecosystem, when guests choose alternative accommodation over other options, they are choosing to stay in someone’s home.
By nature, this is a personal and authentic experience that often leads to home owners and travelers directly communicating via apps or personal channels. These connections are something that companies should embrace as it further improves the customer experience, as travelers are able to connect with their hosts to garner recommendations on the best restaurants, activities and hidden gem spots in their destinations.
This is another personal touch that makes guests feel secure about their bookings. As we learn and adjust our strategies as an industry, we must remember to always treat each customer and each other with empathy and respect.
We are all here for one reason: to provide our guests with the best possible experiences and help them travel safely.