Customer Experience Management in Hospitality: A Report

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PLANNING FOR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT
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Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................................3
LO1................................................................................................................................................3
P1 Explaining the value and importance of understanding the needs, wants and preferences
of target customer groups for the hospitality industry................................................................3
P2 Exploring the different factors that drive and influence customer engagement of different
target customer groups within a service sector organisation.....................................................5
LO2................................................................................................................................................6
P3 Creating a customer experience map for a selected service sector organisation................6
P4 Discussing how the touch points create such opportunities throughout the customer
experience in your hospitality organisation................................................................................8
LO3................................................................................................................................................9
P5 Examining how digital technology is employed in managing the customer experience
within the service sector organisation, providing specific examples of customer relationship
management systems................................................................................................................9
LO4..............................................................................................................................................10
P6 Illustrate customer service strategies in a specific service sector context.........................10
P7 Demonstrating how customer service strategies create and develop the customer
experience in a way that meets the needs of the customer and the required business
standards.................................................................................................................................12
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................13
Reference List..............................................................................................................................14
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Introduction
Customer experience management is a method used by the company to track and organise
interaction between the company and the customer (Homburg, Jozić and Kuehnl 2017). This
management system is used in most industries. However, planning on customer experience
management is not so simple. The industry needs to follow some steps for successful customer
experience. Firstly, any company needs to understand its customers. They need to create
customer segmentation based on requirements and behaviour of customers. Then a customer
vision has to be made. This will help in interacting with the customers and retain them. After
this, an emotional connection has to be developed. This will create a brand personality. An
emotional connection can be done with the customers. Lastly, customer feedback needs to be
captured. It will allow the hotel to measure customer satisfaction (Kandampully, Zhang and
Jaakkola 2018). This will help the hotel in improving their services.
LO1
P1 Explaining the value and importance of understanding the needs, wants and
preferences of target customer groups for the hospitality industry
Target market simply means dividing the market into segments and then focusing the marketing
efforts on specific key segments (Kotler et al. 2015). The needs and desires of the customer
should match with the products or the services given. This target market helps in attracting new
business and increasing sales. Hospitality industry targets a variety of customers and they try
matching up the needs according to the customer's behaviour.
This marketing strategy helps the hotel's staffs to understand their customers and give them a
personalised experience. The advantages of target marketing in the hospitality industry are:
 This marketing approach creates a better understanding of the customer’s needs and
categories people into different group depending on their requirements. There might be
customers travelling with families or friends and so the service requirement will not be
the same. Some customers might want special services. So there are various criteria
which need to be met.
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 Hotel operators can find new marketing opportunities which can increase the revenue.
There are customers with the requirement of bulk booking for their wedding or functions.
Hotel people should make the customer experience a greater one
 Target marketing helps in boosting customer experience. In this case, personal
marketing is important. The customers should be given personal attention and this will
help in increasing the booking.
 Couple weddings are the best target marketing options. There are many guests coming
for the wedding and giving them a satisfactory service can later do wonders for the hotel.
The senior management team should interact with the wedding guests and should
provide the hotel information. This method will surely impress guests.
Target marketing is important because it gives a brand awareness of the hotel and industry
(Choi et al. 2016). Promotions of particular hotel help in gaining customers. This is a never-
ending process and a simple way to achieve success in the hospitality industry. Such marketing
method creates a good relationship between the customers and the hotel staff. It also looks
after the needs of the customers. In order to increase revenue and gain success, focusing on
the customer is necessary. Customers do have a lot of expectation from a hotel. It includes
proper connectivity, good values, mobile check-in and check-out, authenticated services and
sustainability. In order to know about all these things, it is important for the hospitality industry to
use the target marketing strategy.
The different target groups in the travel and tourism industry are:
 Business travellers: The customers in this group are constantly in the need of a hotel
for their business meeting and stays. The preferences of customers under this group
includes the mobile application of the hotel, super-fast services, dry-cleaning services,
printer in room, Wi-Fi and fast check-in and check-out.
 Leisure Travellers: This group of customers is not at all in a hurry. All they need is good
services, activities, amenities and special food services. They also want a comfortable
stay to enjoy with their family or friends. Hotels should set up some fun events like
games, live music and dancing in order to entertain the customers (Tsai, Wu and Chen
2015).
 Group Travellers: The customers under this category have a long list of requirements.
They usually come for special events like wedding, anniversary or some functions. It is a
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difficult task for the hotel people to manage the guests but personalised services can
create a great impact on the wedding guests.
P2 Exploring the different factors that drive and influence customer engagement of
different target customer groups within a service sector organisation
Customer engagement is a connection between a brand and the customers (Rather and
Sharma 2017). Those customers who are highly engaged usually buy more, promote more and
show high loyalty. Similarly in hotel industry customer engagement is the key to gain success
and revenue. In hotels, the management team needs to create an emotional bond with the
customers. This will leave a great impact on the customers and loyalty will be established.
Customer engagement in hotels takes place both online and offline. This experience includes
the time period from pre-booking to post-stay. There are different target groups in the hotel
industry and there are various factors that are influencing customer engagement.
Business Travellers: This category people are the ones who spend the maximum amount in
hotels to the required facilities. Business travellers require hotels to have advanced
technologies. They generally set a meeting in hotels and so they need projectors, printers and
laptops for easy and fast working. Hotels need to have proper meeting rooms for such events to
take place. Hotels must be able to provide Wi-Fi facilities and mobile application. Hotels should
be able to provide a clean environment for the customers. Business discussions are
something which can make or break the image of a company. Such discussions take place in
hotels and the management team’s needs to ensure that they provide clean meeting or
conference rooms. A clean environment will attract business traveller to that particular hotel. All
the required materials should be available in the rooms and the meeting area. Lastly, business
travellers require excellent customer service (Camilleri 2018). This is an important factor for
customer engagement. Business travellers do have great expectations from the management
team of the hotel. Personalisation is important for business travellers. All their needs have to be
fulfilled. If the requirements are up to the mark then customer satisfaction is achieved by the
hotel.
Leisure Travellers: This category people expect a comfortable and fun stay at hotels. If this
criterion is achieved then the customers are satisfied. Leisure travellers need a lot of
amenities. They want proper breakfast, parking and free Wi-Fi. Various surveys have shown
that complementary services attract customers. The most important requirement of this group is
recreational facilities and spa services. People come with their families and friends so they
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need a relaxing environment. The hotel should have recreational facilities like swimming pool,
golf course, spas, steam rooms, gym and special games and live music. Hotels should be
helpful in concierges. Leisure travellers always to have an expectation that hotel management
provides the information and tips for the best places to visit, eat and shop. Such gestures
always help with customer engagement.
Group Travellers: This section of people is generally coming for a specific purpose like a
wedding. They always have many requirements and hotel management needs to ready for it.
Firstly they need excellent customer services. This includes personalised services. They
usually need personal butlers for food arrangement at a wedding. They want fast services as
the number of people are many. The basic amenities should be looked after so that none of the
wedding guests faces any kind of trouble. They need cleanliness and decorators for the
functions or events. Hotels need to make arrangement for decorators for some specific event.
Cleanliness is also important as it will gain customer attention and leave a great impact on them
(skift.com 2019). These factors will surely help with customer engagement in the hotel industry.
LO2
P3 Creating a customer experience map for a selected service sector organisation
Customer journey and experience map is a visual representation to show how customers are
obtained (Micheaux and Bosio 2018). This map is generally created from a buyer's perspective.
CJM is used in almost every industry. The advantages of CJM are great customer satisfaction;
improve in process of sales and current customer advocacy. While making a CJM there has to
be an understanding of the process. Then the end of the process should be known. A proper
perspective needs to be taken for this mapping and finally, a rough draft has to be created. This
map is needed because to check the sales process, post-buy customer interaction and to note
the average buying cycle. Given below is the customer journey and experience map of Hilton
UK. In the map, it shows the factors on which customer needs depend, the expectation of Hilton
UK and how the hotel can improve by the opportunities provided to them.
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Figure 1: Customer Journey Map of Hilton UK
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(Source: Self-developed)
P4 Discussing how the touch points create such opportunities throughout the customer
experience in your hospitality organisation
In the customer journey and experience map, there are some touch-points. These points help
the customers in interacting with the hotel directly. These touch-points create a lot of
opportunities in customer experience in Hilton UK. This hotel is having a big brand image and its
customer journey and experience map is given above. Through this map, the touch-points were
noted down. Hilton UK gives special offers through newspapers. This is the best source of
attracting customers as almost everyone reads the newspaper on a daily basis. In the research
part, the hotel gives the facility of comparing the room rates and then accordingly customers can
book it. They provide special offers like complimentary breakfast with the cheapest room rates.
Such ideas help Hilton UK in giving great customer satisfaction.
People feel that they are saving a huge amount of money. Hilton group has a website which
attracts customers by giving then offers which they can’t find anywhere else. People also get
different payment options and date modification options. A direct booking through the website
helps the customers to avail airport pickup and drop. While having hotel experience, the
customers can enjoy the smart technology facilities, amenities, spa, virtual reality and special
events. Such things make the customers satisfied as they feel that they have spent their money
in the right place. Hotels provide various things post stay of the customer. They have a reward
point system and loyalty programs which enable people to do visit the hotel again. However,
there are some touch-points which need to be improved so that customer satisfaction can be
gained. Hilton UK should try maintaining their rooms and cleanliness is an important part. There
has to be a customer feedback form which will enable them to give reviews. This will give an
opportunity to the hotel in improving themselves. They also need to be active on social media
pages, as people follow Facebook and Instagram these days. To keep pace with the trending
technologies, Wi-Fi facilities have to be improved. Hilton UK should be connected with its
customers by informing them about their new properties in various parts of the world (Huynh
2018). All these efforts will pay back soon and the company will gain quite a lot of profit.
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LO3
P5 Examining how digital technology is employed in managing the customer experience
within the service sector organisation, providing specific examples of customer
relationship management systems
Travel and hospitality industry is a highly competitive and lucrative one (Rahimi and Gunlu
2016). With new technologies coming up, hotels need to be updated with it. There are many
hotels which are already having the latest technologies which give great customer satisfaction.
These technologies make things simpler for customers and they don’t have to follow traditional
methods in hotels. Everything is available at their fingertips. Given below are different digital
technologies which are employed in managing customer experience with the hospitality
industry.
 Mobile Application of hotels: These days’ hotels are having a personal mobile
application which makes things easy just with a click. Customers are requiring
downloading this application and then they can book rooms through it (Ozturk et al.,
2015). They can digitally check-in and check-out and this will save time. Customers can
also manage their bookings through the application. The hotels keep on sending
important notifications in order to remind the customer and keep them updated.
 Smart Room Technology: This technology is adopted by most of the hotels. It gives
digital facilities inside the room. Through this technology, customers can control room
lighting, heating, ventilation, air conditioning. The rooms also have touch screen
television and it gives a personalised experience to the guests (Neuhofer, Buhalis and
Ladkin 2015). They have a special arrangement of voice assistance inside the room.
 Virtual Reality: Hotels are using this technology for their marketing purpose so that they
can attract customers. The hotel management is providing a special room for virtual
recreation (De Pelsmacker, Van Tilburg and Holthof 2018). Customers don’t need to go
through websites, brochures, and pictures. Hotels are using Samsung Gear VR
headsets which will give the customers an amazing experience.
 Chat-based Solutions: This is in great trend and most of the famous hotels are taking
up this solution. Customers can convey their problems through this system. The chat-
based thing replies quite fast. It is built on the Artificial Intelligence norms like NLP.
These chatbots provide solutions in seconds. It does not require any human help and
guests can have a better conversation through it.
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 Cybersecurity system: This system is taken up by maximum hotels as keeping the
customer information safe is necessary. This system protects the data of the customers.
It keeps the credit card information safe. It also creates a back-up of files and data in
case if there is an attack. Such information can only be accessed by hotel employees. It
keeps the IT Infrastructure secure and hence it is good for both customer and hotel
management.
Hilton UK is one of the biggest hotels in the hospitality industry in the UK. They have taken up a
customer relationship management and it is known as Customer Really Matter. It manages the
different segments of hotels and also helps in improving customer experience. Hilton UK has a
custom-built OnQ information system (hilton.com 2019). This system builds the guest profile
which is used by the front desk staffs and reservation team of Hilton UK. This helps them in
serving the customers properly. This information system improved the efficiency in the operation
of call-centre. This also reduced customer service flexibility. It also informs the hotel when not to
invest in a customer. This CRM system of Hilton UK gave competition to many hotels. The OnQ
system created a closer relationship between the hotel and the customers and gave customer
analytics. Hilton UK uses CRM for targeting market, looking after guest preferences and adds
points automatically to participant’s honour account of Hilton. The CRM system of Hilton UK
runs on IBM's relational database. It also triggers an alarm if a terrorist attack is suspected.
Hilton UK provides 100 per cent guest satisfaction. This is also considered as the greatest
advantage of Hilton UK to attract customers.
LO4
P6 Illustrate customer service strategies in a specific service sector context
Customer Service Strategy is offered to the customer in order to provide care and services
(Weinstein 2016). This is an important step in building customer satisfaction. The advantages of
customer service strategies are it will help in retaining customers and increasing profitability.
Such things give employee motivation and create a good marketing scenario. It also helps in
retaining customers and increases the business. Given below are some customer strategies
took up by the hotel industry.
 Hotel management should celebrate and encourage the customer’s joy. This main aim of
the hotel staff is to bring happiness to the faces of their guests. They should try to
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impress their customers by giving them special services like spa vouchers or dinner
vouchers.
 Hotel staff needs to be patient listeners. They should understand the customer’s needs
and listen to them. They should not argue with the customers. They have to accept the
mistakes and help the customers in solving the problem. They have noticed the voice
tone and customer's body language.
 The best customer strategy is to put yourself in their shoes. This will help in
understanding the customer's perception. They should understand the customer’s
concern, experiences and difficulties. This will help the hotel management to improve
them.
 Hotels need to understand customer satisfaction and it is usually based on loyalty,
identity, relationship and values (Hill and Alexander 2017). There have to be a core
understanding of the customer's values and beliefs. Most of the people are spending a
lot in hotels and all they need is proper services and comfort.
 There should be personalised services in order to meet the guest’s needs. A personal
touch can change the customer's minds. The example just greeting guests by name
gives a personalised touch. There should be special treatment given to the guests so it
has a lasting impression on the guests.
 Special operations should be integrated into the marketing strategies of the customers
(Secchi, Roth and Verma 2018). These days’ customers are having high expectation
regarding speed and efficiency in hotels. The hospitality industry needs to incorporate
marketing strategies according to the requirements of the customer. They can set up
self-serve kiosks which will help in saving time during check-in and online booking
process. This allows customers to use digital technologies.
 To give good customer service, hotels need to know their customer base. There are so
many different types of customers like business travellers, leisure travellers, group
travellers, backpackers and some wealthy travellers. Hotels will have to look for their
target market so that they can gain profits.
 Every hotel should differentiate them from their competitors. They should have special
features like Wi-Fi lobby lounge, serving local cuisines in the hotel etc. Such different
and innovative ideas will help hotels in capturing a great market share.
 Digital assistance can improve customer services. Hotel rooms should have Google
Home or Amazon Echo which will give an entertainment purpose to the customers. Such
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things will attract customer and will give great customer satisfaction. It will give a
personal experience to the customers.
P7 Demonstrating how customer service strategies create and develop the customer
experience in a way that meets the needs of the customer and the required business
standards
Customer service strategies have always helped in developing customer experience. It looks
after the customer’s requirements and business standards. Each of the industry uses these
strategies to get customers and gain profit. In the hospitality industry, customers are the main
one through which the business is running. So to develop customer experience few things need
to be followed.
 Customer feedback should always be captured. A special feedback form should be
given to the customers or should be kept in the hotel room. This will help the customers
in expressing their views related to the hotel, its services and improvements. The hotel
management will also get to know their positive and negative points. This will give the
hotels a scope of improving themselves. Customer feedback can be taken through a
phone call also. This will keep the company and the customer connected and hence the
customers can freely explain the issues or needs.
 Development of the team can be done through the quality framework. Hotel people need
to study the areas where there is a possibility of improvement. They should set up
training for individual hospitality staff or the customer support team. Team development
can be tracked through coaching, group training or e-learning process.
 Hotel management should listen to the employee and ask for their feedback (Rahimi and
Kozak 2017). They should set up surveys which can take the overall feedback of a
particular team. This allows the employees to give innovative ideas which will help in
customer experience. This feedback system will show how much the employee is
dedicated to their work. There are special tools which will allow continuous feedback in a
closed environment.
 The personalised services given by the hotel management will always work in a positive
way towards customer experience. A word of mouth will be spread by the customers
who will make the hotel more popular. All the hard work will get paid off. This will create
a good brand image for the hotel in the market. This is beneficial to both the customers
as well as the hotel owners.
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