How to Use Guest Messaging to Improve the Digital Experience?
What is Digital Experience?
Liferay defines a digital experience as the interaction between an individual (customer, partner, or employee) and an organisation through the use of digital technologies.
To manage the digital guest experience, companies need to make sure the interaction with customers at every touchpoint is seamless.
According to Forbes today's world, customers have high expectations for seamless, efficient, and consistent experiences across multiple channels. Therefore, forward-thinking companies are adopting Digital Experience Management strategies to align their digital interactions with these customer demands.
Why does Digital Experience Management matter?
In today’s highly crowded market, it’s becoming more and more difficult for brands to differentiate themselves from competitors. Qualtrics says 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. 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, Forbes experts believe that Customer Experience (CX) will be even more important than price or product quality in differentiating one brand from another.
Yes, welcome to the Experience Economy!
According to an article in Harvard Business Review, as services become more standardised and similar to each other, experiences have become the new frontier in terms of creating value for customers. Companies that want to stay ahead of the competition, regardless of whether they target consumers or businesses, will need to focus on creating and delivering exceptional experiences as a way to differentiate themselves and gain a competitive edge.
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 revolutionised greatly, together with the latest development of our society and technology. That leads to where we are today, Digital Experience Management.
Forbes suggests considering the various touchpoints your company has with customers and evaluating how you currently manage and track those interactions. If you rely on a manual process like a master spreadsheet to keep track of customer information and their stage in the sales pipeline, it may not be scalable as your customer base grows. That's where a digital experience management platform can offer assistance, providing a more efficient and scalable solution to organise and track customer interactions and data.
Read this article on how you should know to design the guest experience of the future.
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 according to Statista. Among them, nearly 90% use at least one messaging app (99 firms), and 36% of consumers use at least two messenger apps mentioned in 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 into play. Guest Messaging helps align all channels and manage inquiries on one platform. More importantly, Guest Messaging can greatly increase guest engagement, as proven by surveys.
Baze says that “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.”
2. For a smoother digital experience – take advantage of “mobiles”!
Within digital, Forrester says mobile is a popular topic of today’s digital experience. The usage of mobile and tablet internet exceeded desktop use in 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 personalised 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 personalised 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.
Download this guide to learn how to personalise the guest journey.
This article was originally posted in December 2020 and updated in August 2023
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