The primary goal of any hotelier is to provide your guests with the best possible experience — your success depends on it. In recent years, the increasing prevalence and accessibility of technology have become one of the biggest factors that guests look for in a hotel.
A VoIP system, along with integration into the rest of your hotel systems, is an easy but significant step you can take to bring your hotel’s technology up to speed and offer the best possible guest experience. Here’s how.
Remote Check-in and Checkout
Checking into a hotel, especially when it’s late at night and you’ve been traveling, is a tedious task. It often involves waiting in line, confirming the information you’ve already provided, and a level of interaction that many guests would prefer to avoid.
With VoIP integration, you can set up contactless check-in so guests can simply walk through the door, grab their key by scanning a QR code or entering their confirmation number at a kiosk, and head straight to their room. Your guests will enjoy the efficiency of check-in and you won’t need to dedicate nearly as much staff time to the front desk.
Easy Access to Customer Details
When a customer calls on a traditional phone line, you might be able to see the number they’re calling from, but not much more. When the same guest calls on a VoIP line that’s connected to your customer database and booking info, you can design your front desk computer or tablet to bring up a wealth of relevant information about that guest — whether they’ve stayed with you before, which room they booked, whether they have specific room needs, what language they speak, and so on — before you even pick up the phone.
This level of personal information will allow you to provide each and every guest with a personalized experience, helping them to enjoy their stay and encouraging them to leave positive reviews when they leave.
Create a Resource Center
Inevitably, you’ll receive calls from guests who are dissatisfied with their experience and would like service to rectify the situation. If you have a VoIP phone system, you can integrate it with a service software like Helpdesk and automatically transcribe and search calls to find out what your customers’ most common complaints are.
Armed with such detailed information, you can make the necessary changes to your hotel or create a resource center that answers frequently asked questions by guests. The more useful information you can provide your guests to minimize service calls, the better.
In-Person Interaction
While technology may solve several of your guest’s issues, many still prefer to have a face-to-face conversation with a helpful, knowledgeable member of your hotel staff. A VoIP system will take the burden of menial, repetitive tasks like scheduling wake-up calls and answering basic questions off of your staff’s shoulders so they can dedicate more time to your guests.
In addition, a VoIP system allows your staff to be more mobile. By forwarding the front desk phone to a tablet with a Bluetooth headset, you can enable your staff to roam around the hotel attending to your guests without missing a single call.
Room Status Updates
There’s nothing worse than checking into a hotel and being told your room isn’t ready yet. And if you’re a hotel owner, you hate to think about how much time is wasted by your maintenance and housekeeping staff walking the length of every hallway, knocking on doors to see if they’re occupied.
With VoIP systems integrated into your hotel, these annoyances can become a thing of the past. With room status updates, you’ll be able to tell at a glance from the front desk which rooms have been cleaned, which have been recently vacated, and which need attention from your maintenance crew.
You can even allow guests to set their room to “do not disturb” mode with a simple text or phone call, informing your staff that the room should be left alone without the need for a door tag.
Paperless Communication
Most guests don’t want paper bills anymore. They’d prefer emailed communications for room bookings, receipts, and final itemized bills. Hotels also use an enormous amount of paper on faxing, which can be all but eliminated with internet-based faxing over a VoIP network. A VoIP system will not only allow you to generate bills and receipts automatically and email them directly to your guests, but it will allow you to save costs (and the environment) by cutting down on paper use.
