How satisfied are your guests and customers? What impact does it create on your company’s profits? How do you measure it?
Guesswork and hunches won’t help you understand customer satisfaction levels. You need valid data and evidence to constantly measure and monitor customer satisfaction. You need a customer satisfaction system to help you study customer satisfaction levels and plan changes and realignments to provide the best experience and service in the competitive marketplace.
What is the need to measure customer / guest satisfaction?
Profitability in hotels is directly related to customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction. The whole concept of customer satisfaction comes down to one thing: if your customers are happy, they tend to be loyal, which helps you retain them. And if they are loyal and regular, they not only visit the hotel and its other branches more, but also refer other customers.
Research has shown that hotels lose business opportunities and competitive advantages due to dissatisfied customers. A good guest / guest feedback system can help you continually measure customer satisfaction and identify gaps and areas for improvement.
This need is documented in well-established research from Bain & Company that is applicable in all customer-based businesses and organizations where a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 1%. 95%. The same study found that it costs six to seven times more to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one (Source: Bain & Company study in Harvard Business Review, 2001).
In today’s world, it is known that a bad customer / guest experience can outweigh a lot more than a good experience and excellent service. That bad experience can easily be shared and passed on to thousands of potential and existing customers, magnifying its effect and causing a disastrous impact. The availability of online communities and review practices amplifies this effect. So if your hotel is not offering the best services and experience and is generating dissatisfied customers, it is likely that they will soon become widely known and influence future bookings.
It is imperative that these gaps are quickly identified and action taken. Hotel customer satisfaction and experience should be regularly monitored and analyzed to provide hotel management with factual data to improvise and provide better and classy service at all times.
How can a guest / customer satisfaction system add value to your hotel?
A good hotel feedback system can be critical for a hotel to use the measurement of customer satisfaction and guest satisfaction as a key tool to evaluate and promote the performance of its operational teams and people. Customer satisfaction reports can also be a good way to promote and publicize the special care a hotel has for its guests and clients.
Hotels are becoming more responsive to the sentiments of their guests and customers, and this sensitivity is being used constructively to encourage better performance by operating divisions and people in the hotel. This is also a means of building better brand loyalty through publishing induces customer satisfaction.
How will the guest / customer feedback system help distinguish the feedback provided?
A good hotel feedback system should be able to capture the exact feelings the guest has about the experience they have had with the hotel and ideally this should be right after check-out or use of the facilities. For example, if your hotel restaurant reviews are taken right after your meal, they are likely to be more accurate than if they are taken a couple of weeks later.
A good hotel feedback system should be able to analyze the feedback that the guest provides and translate it into smart, comprehensive reports that provide hotel management with a summary of the overall guest satisfaction it generates. Reports should be able to be broken down to show individual areas of satisfaction and performance and further show people among hotel staff that they can be encouraged to do their best for the satisfaction of their guests.
Personally, I am in favor of using the reports that a good hotel feedback system can generate for the evaluation and reward of the performance of the employees in the hotel. I have seen this work very well in some leading hotels and when intensive it results in an applied increase in staff morale and shows higher levels of performance and guest satisfaction.
Therefore, a good hotel review system can be more than just a measure of customer satisfaction. It can be an integral component of a hotel’s human resource policy and operations. It can also be an effective component in a hotel’s brand management and marketing program.
