Question

Exercise 1-4. Information Age [LO 4]

The Wellington Hotel is a posh hotel in Manhattan that uses a customer relationship management (CRM) system to track customer preferences and purchases.

Provide two examples of specific information the CRM system might capture and how the hotel could use the information to enhance revenue and/or the customer experience.

Answer 1

CRM's biggest benefit is consolidating information about the customer, either through direct input or through data integration with other applications. For example, the marketing team may make contact with the customer first through a mini-site focused on a particular product. The customer may have found this mini-site through a search engine marketing ad, and wanted to get more information, which prompted the customer to email. The marketing software can note this chain of events and start creating a file on the customer.
Later on, the customer may contact sales directly through your company's Twitter account. This customer is getting closer to making their final purchase decision, and the channels they use help build their CRM profile further. They complete the purchase without any further touch points but run into issues after the sale. Now it's time to look at how CRM helps with post-sales support.

Post-sales support is where many companies drop the ball, even though 89 percent of consumers choose to switch companies after dealing with a poor customer service experience, according to RightNow Technologies. Customer retention is a key to company growth, as it takes significantly fewer resources to keep an existing customer happy than bring in new leads.

CRM solutions help the post-sale support in a few ways. The first benefit is having all customer information in one place. Support staff don't have to switch from software to software to figure out when the customer contacted sales, support or marketing. Customer preferences are also tracked through CRM, allowing marketing to pull this information for upsell and cross-sell customization. Consistent quality customer service helps promote customer loyalty while delivering personalized marketing messages increases the chance of a repeat buy.

CRM solutions have many features useful for tracking a customer's journey and helping you determine the effectiveness of sales, marketing and support. The customer's journey ranges far and wide across many channels even before reaching you. Gathering information on how they got to you provides the data you need to improve their personal experience and the overall quality of your marketing, sales and customer support teams.

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9 ways in which CRM solutions enable hotels to offer top-notch customer experiences and gain a strong competitive advantage

I Central repository
CRM systems allow systematic collection and categorisation of fragmented customer information, as a result of which, rich customer information repositories are created. Further, as CRM systems enable relevant customer segmentation, databases for potential customers can also be effectively managed.

Example: Help Desk staff can view bookings for a single guest across hotel locations and ensure their preferences are known to other employees.

II Consolidated customer view
A productive CRM solution assists in capturing each customer interaction, transaction and experience with all the relevant, necessary, big and small details. Real-time customer information from multiple systems across geographies can be collated on a single window. This huge store of customer information can be viewed and updated from time to time by effectively integrating with external systems.

Constant updates ensure that the systems contain upgraded and real-time information at any given point in time. Effective CRM software is characterised by pliable interfaces that help hotels collate unorganised and diffused business and customer data stemming from varied sources. As a result, analysis of scattered data based on a host of varying parameters is made possible.

Apart from this, a holistic customer view furnishes hotels with better and more opportunities to up-sell, cross-sell and build overall rapport.

III Customer information scrutiny
In the hotel industry, massive volumes of customer information are churned out on an everyday basis. Even though the collection, storage and management of such information in a central repository is very important, real value is actually generated when such information is correctly analysed to obtain an in-depth understanding about the factors that drive customers’ purchase and accommodation decisions. Structured data analysis translates to fruitful, profitable relationships. Elevating conversion rates and turning one time guests into customers for life is also what CRM systems successfully manage to promote. Further, making comparisons between the behavioural patterns of 'transactional' and 'potential' customers, and those customers who leave, aids hotels in formulating or redesigning sustainable loyalty strategies.

IV The right focus
The most valuable customer interactions are brought to light by CRM solutions and this information can then be replicated towards potential customers that hotels wish to either target, retain, or both. Constantly evaluating and relevantly applying gainful experiences is also enabled by CRM systems.

In effect, hotels can reinvigorate those areas which adversely affect profits, and sharpen focus and attention on the most rewarding ones.

V Combating competition
Superlative, consistent service quality levels along with innovation is what will keep the hotel industry going and help battle competition with ease. To keep customers engaged, it is vital for hotels to offer a plethora of choices that provide greater value along with highest levels of customer satisfaction.

VI Raising efficiencies, keeping customers updated
CRM systems are known for their immediate benefits of bringing about automation and eliminating non-core tasks. Automation further helps in faster, better, and wiser sales, marketing, promotion and advertising decisions and actions. CRM systems enable the creation of mail blasters, text message campaigns etc., through which, customers can be updated about happenings, events, special offers and packages. Reviews and feedback can also be invited.

VII Leveraging social platforms to promote brand presence
Hotels’ sales and marketing teams can leverage social CRM solutions to create mobile, web and social media campaigns, which in turn can be continually bettered and upgraded with ongoing, useful customer feedback. Monitoring customer activities and analysing customer feedback/reviews about the company and brand on various social networks is made possible by social CRM. It also ensures that hotels are well equipped to enhance customer experiences by always paying close attention to customers and resolving their queries and/or grievances at the earliest. Prompt follow up of new leads is also enabled thanks to social CRM. As a consequence, conversion rates are elevated and brand advocacy is boosted as well.

VIII Formulating futuristic strategies
CRM software collates responses, reviews and overall feedback that customers publish online about their collective hotel experiences. These details are sliced-and-diced, following which reports are generated and real time dashboards are created. Ongoing customer activity information is displayed in real time on these dashboards. These actionable insights can be used to enhance future products, services, packages, offers and overall communication. Future marketing strategies can be optimised, post which, new and better campaigns can be designed and consequently published on select media platforms.

IX Fostering loyalty
CRM solutions strengthen customer information handling in the right manner, and also facilitate customer-company interactions at multiple levels, touching all important contact points. A high degree of personalisation is introduced in customer interactions, thereby empowering hotels to achieve success in customer retention and loyalty.

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Munchery.

Munchery is a small business that provides a delicious alternative to standard food delivery. High-quality meals created by talented chefs are delivered directly to a customer’s home, office, or any other location.

By supplying customers with food that was ready to eat, whenever and wherever a customer was in the mood, Munchery soon discovered that managing their growing number of repeat customers while also catering to new ones was becoming overwhelming. A CRM solution that involved an integrated proprietary app used by their drivers made it possible for last minute order changes to be implemented at a moment’s notice, resulting in happier customers and better returns. As CTO and Co­founder of Munchery, Conrad Chu, explains, “Our goal is to go above and beyond, so that ultimately we can turn someone from a frustrated customer into an evangelist.” Additionally, Munchery uses CRM to monitor performance, measure customer satisfaction. track the ordering process, and share feedback with their chefs.

As with the above examples, CRM has helped businesses around the globe enhance their customer relationships, perfect their own internal processes, optimize communication and collaboration, and improve lead conversion rates by by up to 300%.

Bespoke Collection.

Bespoke is a smaller organization that offers fine wines, top-tier memberships, and elegant art experiences. They’ve been able to attract the right clients by building deeply involved relationships via their loyalty programs and memberships, and by understanding their customers’ behavior—specifically, those associated with buying-habits.

As the Bespoke Collection’s consumer base grew, managing customer data became a real challenge. By embracing CRM solutions, they were able to continue to show their customers the kind of personal attention that had defined their organization from the beginning. In the words of company president Paul Leary, “When someone makes a purchase with us, the next morning at ten o’clock, they get an automated, personalized email... By placing emphasis on relationship­-based sales instead of transaction based, we’re able to increase customer retention and satisfaction, referrals, and order value.” Bespoke identified the right CRM tools it needed to make this kind of direct customer connection happen.