Customer Experience Management in Hotels

The provided study focuses on customer experience management in hotels, highlighting key stages such as research and planning, evaluation and booking, feedback, check-out, and overall value. The assignment emphasizes the significance of managing staff to ensure a smooth customer experience. It draws from various sources including books and journals that discuss customer experience management in different contexts.

MANAGING
THE
CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
LO 1.................................................................................................................................................1
P1. Value and importance of understanding needs, wants and preferences of target customer
groups. ...................................................................................................................................1
P2. Various factors driving and influencing customer engagement of different target groups . 2
LO 2.................................................................................................................................................4
P3 Customer experience chart for the hospitality industry....................................................4
P4. customer touchpoints throughout customer experience creating business opportunities for
hotel HILTON........................................................................................................................5
M2. Making detailed customer experience from map that charts customer journey model.. 6
..........................................................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Managing customer experience is an essential part of each and every business or
organisation that helps an organisation to develop and sustain strong customer relationship. It
plays an important in sustaining the sales and profit for the business (Homburg, Jozić and
Kuehnl, 2017). This report is in context to Hilton hotel, a leading hotel chain within the
hospitality industry. Understanding customer's value and engagement in the hospitality services
will be discussed in the following report along with the factors that impacting on customer
engagement. Furthermore, the report will also discuss customer mapping and their touchpoints to
determine the elements that influences customer experience in Hilton hotel and services offered
by them.
LO 1
P1. Value and importance of understanding needs, wants and preferences of target customer
groups.
Knowing customers is an essential factor or element required by an organisation or
business. Successful entrepreneurs or business owners understand the needs and wants of their
customers along with the most effective method of making their services or products available. It
is very essential for Hilton hotel to understand the needs and preferences of targeted customers.
Therefore, obtaining proper information and knowledge regarding the same is very much
important so that their demands can be satisfying in an effective manner. Hilton is one of the
leading hotel brands in the world, there is a strong position of the brand among the customers
within global market. The organisation can achieve higher sales and profit by understanding the
real requirement of their target customers. Identifying the needs and wants of the customers
helps a company to develop most satisfying products or services which can be offered to the
people and attract them (Yates, 2017). If Hilton Hotel offers attractive services to their customers
it will be easy for them to sustain in the competitive market as well as retain their customers.
There are various significances of understanding needs and preferences of target customers as
discussed below -
1. The organisation can attract huge number of customers
2. It helps in setting the best and effective price for their products or services offered to the
customers.
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3. Hilton hotel can also enhance the amount of customer spending on their services.
4. The business can enhance their sales and profit
5. This will also assist in improving customer services.
Organisations that are aware of their customers' needs, wants and preferences can easily
work on developing customer experience in order to create loyalty and to retain their customers
by repeated business.
P2. Various factors driving and influencing customer engagement of different target groups
Target customer groups can be classified into different categories which includes several
segments of market that consist of demographic, behavioural, physiographic and geographic
segmentation. The customers which can be targeted in hospitality industry can include
demographic segmentation. Customers can be classified into age, gender, marital status and race
with religion. Such as age group of 18 to 30 is mostly involved in tourism and adventure, o this
group is to be focused by the organisation. Likewise females who are unmarried are crazy for
having small trips which can be targeted by the company while planning local trips.
Customer engagement refers to a business interaction connection between an external
stakeholder and a company via different communication channels. This connection can be a
response, communication, impact as well as overall experience of customers that takes place
offline and online. Customer engagement helps in building an emotional connection between a
customer and a brand.1. Changing social interaction – Many organisation in present world are using social media
as a channel of communication with their existing and target customers. People are highly
attracted towards social media platforms and use them to communicate directly with a
business or organisation. Hilton Hotel can use this element in order to interact with their
target customers, they can share their products and services on various social media
platforms such as Facebook, Instagram etc, so that it can attract more and more customers
from the target group ageing from 18 to 30 as they are mostly involved in use of social
media applications (Jain, Aagja and Bagdare, 2017).2. Language – Language also plays a major role in customer engagement, it is important for
a company or organisation to communicate with customers in their preferred language. It
has been reported that more than 50% of customers avoiding purchasing products whose
information is not available in their language. Although, this factor is not applicable in
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geographical demographics but on the other hand it is also concluded that language plays
an essential role in attracting customers from different regions.3. Preferences or choices – Another most influencing factor related to the customer
engagement, providing more choices to customers during purchasing process make them
to feel in control of the experience that they have with organisation or brand. Hilton hotel
focus on offering customers a wide range of services that help them to choose most
satisfactory service and get engage with the organisation. These can help in targeting the
customers as per the education as they need tours to specific places as per their
preference and choices.4. Accessibility – It is also essential to make sure that customer can easily find and access
the services and products that are offered an organisation. There should not be any barrier
or friction in finding or accessing the services or products. Hotel Hilton can make sure
that their customers that are targeted demographically can easily use services offered by
the Hotel. It can help the customers to get attracted towards and use services of the hotel
easily and efficiently.
5. Convenience – Convenience is another important component of a positive customer
experience. It affects customers methods to make decisions related the product to buy,
services to use, place to do and with whom to engage with. The convenience factor
includes 5 main variables as described below -
 Access convenience – How easily the store or organisation is accessible.
 Decision convenience – How quickly and easily a customer can what to buy in an
organisation or company (Lee, Lanting and Rojdamrongratanak, 2017).
 Benefit convenience – What main benefits a customer obtains at your store or
organisation such as acquiring great customer service.
 Transaction convenience – How quickly can the customer complete the payment. Post benefit convenience – How effectively organisation is handling post purchase
problems or issues such as return of products or replacements.
6. Real time – If an organisation or company needs to capture the attention of the target
customers, it is important for them to take advantage of real time experiences. It is all
about showing up when the customers need the organisation, its products or services.
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Hilton hotel should focus on improving their customer experiences by increasing the
effectiveness of their hotels in providing services to them.
LO 2
P3 Customer experience chart for the hospitality industry
There are some points using in mapping for the hotel HILTON they are written below-
Check in- hotel London house is giving the facility of online key facility in their phones
to all the guests who come across the world. This facility will help them to open the locks of
doors.
Stay at hotel- it shows the services for all the rooms of hotel HILTON. Hotel Hilton is
providing the all the housekeeping facility for the guests.
Check out-hotel is giving the facility to pay all the bills through various ways. And all
these ways will help to guests to pay their bills. All the guests can pay online bills. This facility
will help to provide comfort for customers.
Websites- websites are the best sources to interact with the customers. Because websites
provide all the informations about the hotel. And it will help to approach all the customers .it
indicates the facilities of the hotel. Tourist can access the page of hotel and they can interact with
customers. websites also helps for the marketing of hotel. Hotel can expand its business from the
websites. Hotel can include different different contents to show off the facilities . Because
designs of websites attract many tourists. Image of the hotel should be mentioned on the front
page of the website so the customers can easily attract from the designing.
E-mails- mainly this source used for the official purpose. But now a days people are
using the Emails to know about updates and for connectivity with hotel. Because social media is
a best platform for the hotels. To expand its business people can follow the web pages of the
hotels . They can also get all the updates. So hotel Hilton will provide the facility to be connect
with customers on Emails.
Telephone- now a days every one is using telephones. It helps for the connectivity.
Mobile phones are the new technology for the promote any business. It also helps in
advertisement of the companies. Hotel should hire a receptionist . Who should have clam and
sweet voice to talk with the customers. It also provide the flexibility to do any work. It is a
necessary thing for all the work. Telephones are playing a main role to connect with the people.
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Customers can easily approach the hotel by using this facility. They can also know many things
about hospitality and hotel should provide the customer care services. It will help to clear out all
the complexity related to the any services. Hotel should arrange a department of customer care
service. It will help to gather all feedbacks of company. This thing will help to engage with the
customer's.
P4. customer touchpoints throughout customer experience creating business opportunities for
hotel HILTON
The term Customer touchpoint word indicates to the journey and the process of the
customers. It is all about the experience of the customer. That means from where a customer
starts their process of journey. Meaning of touch point is, all the sources through which
customers and companies can interact with each other. It shows a common platform to provide
information to the customers. Hotel Hilton has different different sources to be connect with then
customers so all these sources are the touch points of the hotel.
Customer experience is one of the major advantage which can help in creating
opportunities by using several aspects. Positive feedbacks of customers can be used in form of
screen captures that can be shared through several touchpoints, mainly social media should be
targeted by the company as most of the customers are using these social media applications
through which advertisements can be made with the help of these screen captures of positive
feedbacks from customers. Positive feedbacks play a major role in advertising as these are the
elements which are true achievements by a hospitality industry. There are some sources which
are written below :
Interaction with the customers through the social media and web page : it is one of the best
source for the interaction with the customers. Website should be customer friendly . It should be
easy to access to attract all customers. This website will help all the customers to provide more
information and updates.
SMS touchpoints : It is one of the most effective technique to contact all the employees and
customer through the SMS. This touchpoint is the effective way for the communication. All the
employees in hotel communicate with each other through the professional ways like SMS and
emails. This type of touch point s helps to rise the standard of the hotel.
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M2. Making detailed customer experience from map that charts customer journey model.
Customer journey indicates towards all the experience of any customer. There are many
stages to find out the process to select anything, customer journey model shows the journey of
the customer to select any product or service in the market. That what are the initial level. And
map is all about the process and journey of the customer that how a customer select the
products . Thins model helps to provide feedback also. Because experience shows the feedback
of the customers. And map shows particular moment and event ,or an accident of the life below
context- there are some points of customer journey map- Travel idea, research , purchase , hotel
stay and the feedback(Helo Gunasekaran and Rymaszewska, 2017).
research and planning – this is the first stage where customers starts to search about various
hotels and the travelling places. Mostly person use the internet to search about the places. There
are some area also of feedback of every stage- easy to collect all the information about hotels.
 Fact values and contact numbers , and contact numbers , address
 attraction of advertisement.
Evaluation and booking- it is a phase where customer decides to book any hotel after the above
phase research and planning.
 Feedback- easy effective booking
hotel customer experience- it includes all the interaction between customers and hotel at the
moment of check in and check out
this is all about the experience of the customers about production. It is the stage where customer
gives their perceptions about hotel.
 Feedback- all the facility of room service. And overall value of the money.
Check out- this phase is all about the end of the journey. Hotels should provide the smooth
process of billing. Guest should not wait for a log time in raw.
 Feedback- for the management of staff.
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CONCLUSION
From the above study it has been summarised that all the needs, want and preference
help to know of all the customer experience about the customer perception about the hotel, also
known about tall the factors which has affected the business of hotel which influence the
customers perception and also noticed the factors which has affected the economical position
of the company.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Homburg, C., Jozić, D. and Kuehnl, C., 2017. Customer experience management: toward
implementing an evolving marketing concept. Journal of the Academy of Marketing
Science. 45(3). pp.377-401.
Yates, J., 2017, March. Managing service quality in a software defined network. In Optical
Fiber Communication Conference (pp. M2H-4). Optical Society of America.
Jain, R., Aagja, J. and Bagdare, S., 2017. Customer experience–a review and research agenda.
Journal of Service Theory and Practice. 27(3). pp.642-662.
Lee, K.W., Lanting, M.C.L. and Rojdamrongratana, M., 2017. Managing customer life cycle
through knowledge management capability: a contextual role of information technology.
Total Quality Management & Business Excellence. 28(13-14). pp.1559-1583.
Ascarza, and et.., 2018. In Pursuit of Enhanced Customer Retention Management: Review, Key
Issues, and Future Directions. Customer Needs and Solutions.5(1-2). pp.65-81.
Kandampully, J., Zhang, T. and Jaakkola, E., 2018. Customer experience management in
hospitality: A literature synthesis, new understanding and research agenda. International
Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.30(1). pp.21-56.
Berthon, P.R. and Pitt, L.F., 2018. Brands, Truthiness and Post-Fact: Managing Brands in a Post-
Rational World. Journal of Macromarketing.38(2). pp.218-227.
Venkatesan, R., Petersen, J.A. and Guissoni, L., 2018. Measuring and Managing Customer
Engagement Value Through the Customer Journey. In Customer Engagement
Marketing (pp. 53-74). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
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