How to Use Guest Messaging to Improve the Digital Experience?
What is Digital Experience?
A Digital Experience is how a user (customer, partner or employee) interacts with an organization via digital technologies (Liferay).
To manage the digital experience, companies need to make sure the interaction with customers at every touchpoint is seamless.
Nowadays, customers are demanding smoother, easier, faster omnichannel experiences, and the smartest companies are already moving toward Digital Experience Management to align their digital experiences (Forbes).
Why does Digital Experience Management matter?
In today’s highly crowded market, it’s becoming more and more difficult for brands to differentiate themselves among competitors. More than 65% of customers said that their experience on the website or app is a “very important” factor in their willingness to recommend a brand (Qualtrics). In particular, the hospitality industry provides a similar product – accommodation. To excel other competitors, hoteliers have to create a unique “experience” for guests. Experience has become the determining factor when guests choose a hotel brand and become loyal to the brand.
In fact, experts believe that Customer Experience (CX) will be even more important than price or product quality in differentiating one brand from another(Forbes).
Yes, welcome to the Experience Economy!
“As services, like goods before them, increasingly become commoditized, experiences have emerged as the next step in what we call the progression of economic value. Leading-edge companies—whether they sell to consumers or businesses—will find that the next competitive battleground lies in staging experiences.”
Harvard Business Review
Manage the digital experience
However, it has been more than twenty years since economists brought up the concept of the experience economy. Experience has evolved and revolutionized greatly, together with the latest development of our society and technology. That leads to where we are today, Digital Experience Management.
“Think about all the ways your company interacts with customers. How do you keep track of who you’ve reached and when? Do you have a master spreadsheet with names, contact information and where they are in the sales pipeline? Is it really a scalable process? This is why turning to a digital experience management platform can help.”
Forbes
Use Guest Messaging to improve your guest’s digital experience
People are increasingly using multiple channels to connect with each other. Check your phone, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS… You will find more than one messaging app.
There are 2.52 billion mobile phone users who use messaging apps to communicate globally (Statista, 2019). Among them, nearly 90% use at least one messaging app (99firms), and 36% of consumers use at least two messenger apps (The Wall Street Journal).
Messaging has become an important component of hotel-guest interaction during the guest journey. For hotels, the ability to coordinate and manage communication channels, and to improve the guest experience via messaging has become an important competitive advantage.
1. For more efficient operations – Integrate multiple channels into one platform
As customers are using multiple messaging channels, hotels should also communicate with them through these channels. But too many channels can be difficult to handle at once, along with the high risk of fragmenting digital experiences.
That’s where a Guest Messaging platform comes in to play. Guest Messaging helps align all channels and manage inquiries on one platform. More importantly, Guest Messaging can greatly increase guest engagement, proven by surveys.
“When customers received outreach in two or more channels, their levels of engagement were 166% higher than the single-channel rate and 642% higher than for customers who received no messages.”
Baze
2. For smoother digital experience – take advantage of “mobiles”!
Within digital, mobile is a popular topic of today’s digital experience. The usage of mobile and tablet internet exceeded desktop use in 2016 (Forrester, 2016). 82% of consumers turn to mobile to help make a product decision. Consumers also rely more on digital channels for support and service.
A Guest Messaging platform makes it possible for hotels to communicate with guests from the website to the mobile app, in front of the computer and more importantly, on-the-go. Guests can choose a preferred channel to continue the conversation, and hotels are ready for service 24/7.
3. For overall guest experience – Fulfil guest needs with personalized offers
The Guest Messaging platform connects with the hotel PMS (Property Management System) and extracts detailed guest information. You can create guest segments by using filters and proactively reach out to segmented guests with a personalized message. This allows hotels to anticipate guest needs based on a specific segment and fulfill the needs even before guests think of them. As a result, guests appreciate the delight and memorable experience that is created for them.
We are all living in the digital era now, thus we need to take a closer look at the digital experience of our customers. Guest Messaging is a tool designed to help hotels manage guest communication and enhance the guest digital experience.