31 Mar 2022 The best phone systems for hotels
Keeping phone systems up to date has to be a priority for hotels. Investing in a reliable system can generate value, make work easier for your staff and improve customer service. To even receive a 3-star rating, a hotel needs to provide a handset in each room throughout their premise. You likely already have a fairly comprehensive phone system to meet this demand, but it may not be working in a way that’s right for you.
If you’re looking for a new hotel phone system, or to make the most of an existing one, there are some key areas you need to consider. Your focus should be on improving service for your guests in every area. This means reducing waiting times to reach your front-desk staff, providing a service tailored to each customer, and solving any issues faster. This will keep guests happy and coming back to your hotel time and time again. At One Connectivity we can provide some key services to help you achieve these goals.
How to reduce waiting times
We know that your front desk staff likely face a steady stream of calls every day. It’s only natural that some customers will have to wait in a queue for longer than you’d like. There are services that you can use to keep queue times down and make them a more pleasant experience.
We recommend using call analytics. This service is designed to provide key insights that will allow you to improve your customer service moving forward. It provides you with scheduled reports on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis. These track the KPIs that matter to you, from your busiest times of day to the average time spent in a queue. From here you can see pain points and where making adjustments to your service can help. This can include assigning more staff to the phones during busy hours, or providing extra call handling training.
How to work with greater flexibility
The option to work with greater flexibility when required is incredibly valuable for any business. If members of your team are working from home, or you’re dealing with an outage or any other situation, your service needs to remain consistent.
Switching your communications to the cloud makes this flexibility possible. Our cloud phone systems can come equipped with a service called unified communications. This is an app that allows you to use all the features of your phone system from a device of your choice. This includes video conferencing, messaging, and call management, which means you can work remotely whenever needed.
How to respond to customer requests quickly
Attentiveness and solving customer requests in good time are the mark of a great hotel. It’s also crucial that your staff can respond to any emergency situations quickly. Without the right communication service, it can be difficult to get hold of staff who are working on the move around your hotel. This is where our range of cordless handsets can be invaluable.
Cordless or DECT handsets offer all the features of a business phone system, condensed into a smaller device. Staff can take these phones with them on the go, and can be called exactly the same way you would any other extension. These devices work by connecting to your hotel’s WiFi through strategically placed access points. These stop your connection from dropping out during calls, even when you move between floors. These handsets allow you to better handle calls, wherever you are.
Provide a more personalised customer experience
Hotels can make more money by appealing to loyal customers rather than simply trying to get as many new people through the door as possible. Nurturing these long-term customer relationships can be done in many ways, but your communications play an integral role.
You likely already use a CRM service for managing customer records. Did you know that your phone system can integrate with your CRM to unlock a range of new features? You can use a well-known CRM like Salesforce or Hubspot, or a more industry specific service.
Once integrated, every time a customer calls your hotel, their relevant details will appear on screen. This allows you to greet them by name and address their exact needs quickly, even being able to offer them any relevant promotions. You’ll also be able to see any notes on them made by your colleagues, allowing you to answer their queries with more detail.
Which phone system is right for hotels?
All of these features are incredibly valuable to any hotel, no matter the size and scale of your operation. At One Connectivity, we recommend using a cloud phone system to access them. Cloud phone systems come with a range of advantages, such as the fact that they don’t require any equipment or servers to be hosted on-site.
They also work well for hotels that have fluctuating attendance throughout the year. As you only have to pay for the phone system licenses that you are actually using, you can scale your contract up and down as needed.
To find out more about our cloud phone systems or any of the features mentioned here, get in touch with One Connectivity at 0115 896 88 60.