Build a Cohesive Customer Experience Using the Tools You Already Have
A brand’s introduction to its audience goes beyond any single ad or campaign. It’s a holistic journey that encompasses every touchpoint of the customer experience (CX). Especially in sectors such as hospitality, where every guest is unique, the key to great CX lies in achieving scalable personalization.
The secret? Harnessing the power of your existing data and tools to unify your advertising and marketing strategy.
Don't worry. We won’t tell you to add another tool to your tech stack. By unifying your advertising and marketing efforts, you can do much more with what you already have.
The Ever-Changing Landscape of Hospitality Engagement
The hospitality industry is currently undergoing a pivot from static, demographic-driven campaigns to more dynamic, behavior-driven communication.
This dovetails neatly with the ethos of the hospitality industry. Whether you run a five-star restaurant or a chain of highly rated hotels, you aim to offer tailored experiences based on real-time guest feedback.
If the physical world of hospitality thrives on delivering exceptional customer experiences, shouldn’t the way we present ourselves digitally do the same?
Figuring out the logistics of orchestrating customer experiences can be challenging—particularly for the nearly 60 percent of organizations that may not be prioritizing innovative content creation or streamlined management, according to a recent IDC Spotlight paper.
This is especially true if you’re interested in targeting based on travelers’ mindsets. Travel is, by nature, temporal. When booking travel in advance, customers make quick decisions based on available deals. While en route, people change plans and preferences by the minute. Those aiming to capture a traveler’s attention must be prepared to watch their prospective customers closely and enable their creativity to change along with the data.
You also need to address the fragmentation of the travel booking experience itself. Your potential guests have myriad providers, amenities, and offers to choose from. Possible customers will often directly pull up competing restaurants and resorts in different browser tabs to compare, making a snap decision based on a number, a headline, or an image. Attracting attention (and earning loyalty) is more challenging than ever.
How are forward-thinking hospitality providers going to address these challenges? By putting the customer first, using innovative tech solutions, and leveraging the data and systems they already have.
Modern Solutions for Modern Brands: A Holistic, Automated Approach
As your brand rises to meet today’s challenges, here are some things to consider.
Break down your silos.
Advertising, marketing, and customer loyalty are often treated as distinct entities. Instead, you need omnichannel personalization, or tailored, consistent CX across every digital touchpoint.
To accomplish this consistency, your teams need a way to work together seamlessly. The goal isn't merely collaboration but a deep-seated integration where diverse teams work in tandem, using the same data, toward the same aim: an improved, unified customer experience.
This is good news. You don’t need to focus on buying more tools. Instead, your focus should be on optimizing the solutions you already have and empowering your teams to work more collaboratively. That way, you can streamline and harmonize customer experience delivery without revamping your entire system.
Know your customers.
To be successful, brands need their experiences to adapt to the individual needs of the customer based on demographics and psychographics, stated preferences, and recent behaviors. Very often, a customer’s recent behaviors will directly signal their suitability for your market.
Embrace today’s tech.
As an industry, we must transition from one-off “push” campaigns to sophisticated automated ones. Manual campaigns are no longer feasible. Instead, ad, marketing, and loyalty campaigns should be responsive and data-driven.
In addition to opting for programmatic, time-based, personalized campaigns, we should strive to use automation as much as possible in every facet of campaign creation and execution. By lessening the work our teams must do, we can unlock the ability to create personalized CX at scale without burning out our talent.
Use ROI to refine.
ROI isn't just a metric; it's a strategic tool. Not only do personalization and automation drive better ROI, but ROI itself can also be a positive feedback loop. Track your campaigns closely to see what’s working, and get that data back to your creative teams as quickly as you can. Doing this allows you to tailor your campaigns to capitalize on trends, real-world conditions, and good ideas.
If your team is agile and responsive, this approach can allow for more relevant, personalized, and successful customer interactions.
Your First Three Steps into the Future of Hospitality CX
Today, advertising, marketing, and customer loyalty are intertwined—or they should be. For brands to present a cohesive, powerful, and loyalty-inducing CX, they must view each ad as a critical touchpoint in the customer journey.
For hospitality brands eager to begin, we’ve got you covered:
- Start by ensuring your customer data is organized, ready for analysis, and accessible to all who need it.
- Invest in customer journey mapping. Understand when and where prospective clients engage with your brand.
- Using those insights, work with your ad and marketing teams to create, deliver, and experiment with cohesive creative experiences across all channels.
Remember, this doesn’t have to be complicated. Keep it simple at the start and scale up as you see success. Hospitality already knows the art of personalization. It’s just time to level up your CX to match.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Darren Waddell is an accomplished CX strategist who deeply understands the industry's ever-evolving landscape. For 9+ years, Darren has served as the executive vice president of Innervate (formerly RevJet), the dynamic customer experience company. Darren combines his expertise in technology, data analytics, and consumer behavior to drive success for hospitality brands.