Managing the Customer Experience : Holiday Inn

Managing the Customer Experience

Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Company Overview.........................................................................................................................4
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................4
P1 Explanation of the values and importance of understanding the needs, wants and
preferences of target customer group for Holiday Inn Express Hotel.........................................4
P2 Exploration of the different factors that drive and influence customer engagement of
different customer groups of Holiday Express Inn Hotel............................................................6
Task 2...............................................................................................................................................7
P3 Creation of a customer experience map for Holiday Inn Express Hotel................................7
P4 Discussion about the creation of business opportunities by customer touch points in
Holiday Inn Express.....................................................................................................................8
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References........................................................................................................................................9

Introduction
Nowadays, the businesses all over the world face a great deal of competition in delivering their
products and services as the customers have a lot of options to switch. As a result, the businesses
need to develop a system which continuously monitors and manage customer relationship and
their experience in using the product. The hospitality industry is one of the industries which need
to focus more on the customer experience management. They need to take constant feedback
from the customer from which they can actually deal with the customer experience management.
In this report, I will talk as the Guest Relations Executive of Holiday Inn Express, London and
talk about the management of customer experience management of that hotel.
Company Overview
Holiday Inn Express is one the hotel brands initiated by the Intercontinental Hotel Group. This
hotel brand is one of the renowned and well established brands in the world. This brand operates
in a lot of countries and tries to increase the customer satisfaction to increase their business and
goodwill. In this report, the customer experience management will be explained in line with the
context, experience and activities of the Holiday Inn Express hotel (InterContinental Hotels
Group PLC, 2018).
Task 1
P1 Explanation of the values and importance of understanding the needs,
wants and preferences of target customer group for Holiday Inn Express
Hotel
In a business, all the customers are not targeted. There is a certain customer group or many
groups that are targeted by the businesses according to the differentiation by the customers’
income, age, taste and other social and demo-graphical factors. Why the firms shall understand

the customers’ needs? The values and importance of understanding the customer needs are
explained here.
Increasing Marketing Efficiency: There is no business which has a common marketing policy
for the whole firm. The marketing policy of the firms is differentiated according to its customer
segments. Identification of the needs, wants and expectation of the customers will help the
business to do the marketing according to the demand of the market. It will increase efficiency of
the business.
Market and Product Development: When Holiday Inn Express will be able to differentiate
customers’ needs, wants and preferences; it will be easier for them to identify new markets
where they can provide their service and where the service will have demands. Besides this, if
they find that the customers want something else, they can develop new services as well.
Branding Strategies: The strategies of creating a brand come out from the market research.
Knowing the needs of the customers also assists it (Jayaswal et al., 2007). As a result, the
creation of Holiday Express Inn as a brand is largely dependent on knowing customer
preferences. As it is an established brand, retention of brand will be easier.
Improving Distribution: Understanding the customer needs will provide us the knowledge with
how the customers want the products to be distributed and where the distribution channels shall
remain. It will also provide evidences about the inefficiencies related with the distribution
channel and how to improve those.
Increasing Customer Loyalty: If an organization like Holiday Inn Express understands the want
of the customers, they will be able to provide the service which is actually wanted by the
customers. It will make the customers much loyal to the company and will strengthen the
customer relationship (Cathcart, 2007).
These are the values and importance of understanding the needs, wants and preferences of target
customer group for Holiday Inn Express Hotel.

P2 Exploration of the different factors that drive and influence customer
engagement of different customer groups of Holiday Express Inn Hotel
The businesses are trying continuously to involve with the customers and make a long lasting
customer relationship and brand loyalty in an industry like hotel management. So it is significant
to know what the factors that influence customer management are.
 Increasing the customer engagement and involvement is largely dependent on how the
company understands the needs of the customers. If they understand the needs, they will
be able to engage with the customers according to their needs.
 The organization shall collect the information of the customers. The information will help
them to understand the customer more and react according to the need of the customers.
However, the company shall not consider any breach of secrecy and unauthorized use of
customer information (Dasgupta and Grover, 2018).
 The increase in customer satisfaction shall be kept in mind. So, the organization like
Holiday Inn Express shall review their value chain time to time to provide the customers
with the best experience.
 Communication with the customers is the most important thing in customer engagement
by which the company will be able to inform the customers about improvements of their
services, introduction of new services and market and taking feedback from them.
 Miscommunications in the customer shall be avoided strictly because it makes the
customers annoyed and makes the customer experience bad. It decreases customer loyalty
and increases customer hassle a lot. It must be avoided in the service industry.
 Connectivity with the customer is important. Otherwise, the company will not be able to
position their products to the customers. The technological use in the business sector has
made it possible for the business to be connected with the customers regularly. It will also
increase the brand loyalty (Smith, 2012).

 The employees shall be self-driven to keep good relationship and engagement with the
customers so that all the relationships in the businesses remain sound and healthy.
This is why the customer engagement is important for the companies and the factors which are
responsible for maintaining a good customer relationship.
Task 2
P3 Creation of a customer experience map for Holiday Inn Express Hotel
The customer experience mar is the whole visualization of the every end customer experience in
an organization. This map defines the places of points when the customer comes close to the
products, services and process of the company from the viewpoint of the customers. In this part
of this report, I will create a customer experience map for Holiday Inn Express hotel.
 In case of the creation of a customer experience map for Holiday Inn Express hotel, the
managers need to identify the characteristics of the service seekers. The service seekers
features will help to understand in which point they will come close to the organization
and experience the organization.
 The objectives of the buyer shall be identified. For example, if the buyer’s objective is to
consume the product or use the service at low cost, then their customer mapping will be
different from the buyers who expect to use high quality products with whatever the cost
is (Reagan, 2018).
 What are the touchpoints of the buyers shall be identified so that the points from which
the buyers get satisfaction can be identified. It will help the organization like Holiday Inn
Express to understand the area of development it shall have in their customer experience
management operation.
 The road blocks or the customer pain points shall be identified so that the best experience
to the customer can be provided by the organization like Holiday Inn Express hotel. The
improvements in the customer experience process can be understood by the
understanding the blocks.

 The identified blocks shall be identified and fixed by giving priority so that the flow of
the customer experience become undisturbed and the pain points of the customers can be
decreased (Chang-Juck Suh and 황황황, 2009).
 Innovation shall always be there. The business shall always try to update and improve the
customer experience management process.
This is how to create a customer experience map for Holiday Express Inn hotel.
P4 Discussion about the creation of business opportunities by customer touch
points in Holiday Inn Express
The business can experience a lot of opportunities from the customer touch points. The customer
touch points are the areas when the customer interacts with the business and experience the
products, processes, operation and services of the businesses. It can create a lot of opportunities.
How?
The customer touch points are the areas from where the businesses can acquire a lot of
information which can be used for the product development and experience management. That
means, the touch points also work as a feedback point for the customers. If the touch points have
blocks, then the customer experience will not be soothing (Nabi, 2018). Opportunities of
innovation and improvements in a business will also be blocked if the touch point of a business
is problematic. Service is the key to success in the hospitality industry and these customer touch
points help firm to provide best service. Moreover, the touch points for customers start from
booking to post purchase or post stay in case of hotels or restaurants. Additionally, with the help
of this element hospitality business can do customer mapping. However, Holiday Inn Express
develops customer touch points for their business operation in order to improve their overall
performance are discussed below:
 Pre- Arrival: Under this, Holiday Inn manager takes an initiative to identify the current
or emerging trend of company and then make a corrective course of action in order to
capture the attention of wide range of individuals towards brand. However, manager
adopts several tools or techniques to retain or convenience them to maintain the

relationship as well as producing repeated sales. Moreover, Holiday Inn Express can still
change a user purchase preference by tapping touch points present at buying location.
Some of its touch points involves collateral like danglers, leaflets, standees for offline
purchase and at the same time they acquire some online buying tools i. e. affiliates and
advertisements on newspaper, magazine, social media in order to attain increased level of
productivity and sustainable profitability ratio. With the help of these techniques, Holiday
Inn promote their product or service and present all relevant information regarding their
brand so that each consumer feel satisfied and can consume product in an effective and
efficient manner.
 Day of Arrival: This phase is considered as one of the most important aspect in customer
touch point within hospitality industry. Moreover, under this customer make up their
mind to consume their desire or demand and it is their first real face to face encounter
with Holiday Inn Express service. However, company's attendants or staff ensures each
individuals best attention span as they believes that great experience means repeat
business and more profit. Hence, its superior arrange all facility for their guest as they
make themselves accessible and behave very ethically or positively which bring high
level of satisfaction among arrived customer. Due to this, Holiday Inn Express can easily
enhance their proficiency as well as can build strong relationship with customer in order
to acquire best positioning within competitive marketplace within prescribed time limit.
 Post Stay: The guest experience is not end up with as soon as they step out from hotel,
after all the world of online review and feedback make or break hotel's success in the
modern age. However, Holiday Inn Express track their customer and encourage them to
give their valuable opinion regarding their experience in hotel for improving
shortcomings and enrich their service in an impressive or productive way. With the right
technology in place, Holiday Inn Express can extend their guest courtship efforts beyond
the confines of each customers visit with personalized post stay communication, survey,
relevant offers to drive loyalty and direct bookings.
Henceforth, the above explained Holiday Inn Express touch points of guest journey is viewed as
an opportunity to connect with them and transform their stay within its business premises. Thus,
Holiday Inn Express invest its best effort in every step of guest journey with hotels, mobile

technology, holistic or personalized approach in order to ensure that each customers will
continuously invest back towards their brand that reflect in attaining sustainable profitability
ratio.
Conclusion
Customer experience is the key factor in the product positioning, creating loyalty and the
creation of a brand for an organization. A well-established customer experience management
system can also establish a good customer relationship and loyal segments of customers in a
business. All the business of recent time is really focusing on this issue in order to increase the
sustainability of the business by managing the customer experience.

References
Cathcart, J. (2007). Connecting with your customer. Boston, Mass.: Acanthus Pub.
Chang-Juck Suh and 황황황 (2009). Effects of customer experience factor on process effectiveness,
service quality, and customer satisfaction in work process design. Journal of Korea
Service Management Society, 10(2), pp.105-132.
Dasgupta, S. and Grover, P. (2018). Optimizing Millennial Consumer Engagement with Mood
Analysis. Hershey: IGI Global.
InterContinental Hotels Group PLC. (2018). Holiday Inn Express^®. [online]
Available at: https://www.ihgplc.com/our-brands/holiday-inn-express [Accessed 21 Nov.
2018].
Jayaswal, B., Jayaswal, B., Patton, P. and Zultner, R. (2007). Understanding customer needs.
Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall.
Nabi, M. (2018). Customer journey mapping: The opportunities and obstacles. [online]
MyCustomer. Available at: https://www.mycustomer.com/service/channels/customer-
journey-mapping-the-opportunities-and-obstacles [Accessed 21 Nov. 2018].
Reagan, R. (2018). Six Steps to Creating The Complete Customer Journey Maps. [online]
Invespcro.com. Available at: https://www.invespcro.com/blog/six-steps-to-creating-the-
complete-customer-journey-maps/ [Accessed 21 Nov. 2018].
Smith, I. (2012). Meeting Customer Needs. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.