Why Customer Feedback is Crucial?

Any company can tune in to the voice of the customer by putting a few simple measures in place and with minimal effort, but the impact on the business can be remarkable.

When it comes to measuring customer satisfaction, it’s widely accepted that  relying on guests to complete surveys is common practice in the hotel and restaurant industry – but what about all that unstructured feedback as well – in other words, all those verbal comments that go un-captured everyday? Harness the ‘true’ voice of the customer and it can really pay off.
Research shows that over 90% of customer feedback are never actually captured which is why many successful enterprise organizations invest in systems and processes to ensure that they capture as much as they can. They know that putting customer feedback at the forefront of their business will help them make informed decisions to constantly improve their performance.
However, you don’t need to be a big business or even a customer service professional to benefit too. One organization that has seen some impressive benefits from adopting an enterprise approach to managing guest feedback is the award winning Felbridge Spa Hotel in East Sussex.
Matthew Drinkwater, who is the operations manager at the Felbridge, is a big believer in capturing and using customer feedback.
“Capturing customer feedback is critical for any business and provides us with actionable business intelligence that allows us to experience and the quality of our facilities including the spa and restaurant.” constantly improve the guest
Drinkwater implemented an on-line service called managemycomplaints.com that made it easy for all staff to quickly and simply capture guest feedback at every opportunity and in every department.
But unlike the name suggests, it’s not about managing complaints, it’s about managing all customer feedback – good and bad.
Since using the service Drinkwater has been able to identify areas in the business that they are doing well and areas they need to improve which has led to increased customer satisfaction, more customer recommendations and reducing waste and inefficiency in the catering departments.
He adds: “It’s a great benefit to the business and helps us maintain our customer focused approach to our business.”


Five simple steps to get started
Andrew Aldred at managemycomplaints.com says: “The hospitality and service sector has an amazing opportunity to tune in to the voice of the customer on a daily basis because their businesses are customer facing.
Just by asking one simple question at the end of each customer’s visit can really open a business’s eyes to what they’re doing well and what they can improve on: ‘Would you recommend our business to a friend or family?’
“Consider this as free business advice from the people who know you best – your customers and then make sure you’re ready to use it.”
Aldred advocates five simple steps for businesses to start benefiting from capturing and using customer feedback.

For detail articles :

• http://www.eatoutmagazine.co.uk/online_article/Why-customer-feedback-is-crucial-to-the-hospitality-industry-/10439
• http://www.managemycomplaint.com

Marketing Innovation for Hotel in 2010!
By Carol Verret
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While demand probably isn’t coming roaring back in 2010 it is returning. It’s time to shake off the ‘battle fatigue’ of 2009 and hit the ‘reset’ button for 2010 to take advantage of the positive opportunities that present themselves going forward. ‘In a recent AP-GFK poll, 72% of Americans said they’re optimistic about what 2010 will bring for the country. That’s a dramatic difference from their same poll answer where almost 75% of them thought 2009 was a bad year for the country.’ (Margie Fisher, Small Business Trends, 01/02/10) At the same time, many businesses thought leaders believe that innovation will be key to plugging into this sense of optimism and converting it to business success.
Innovation isn’t about sweeping change. It can be series of small initiatives that enhance the sales effort. A few positive innovations can add up to a big difference in how you locate and develop new business – how you attract and engage them.
Develop a Strategy for Marketing Innovation:
Don’t’ get too hung up on the plan and develop analysis paralysis. A bad plan well executed trumps a good plan that never gets off the ground. What kind of prospects are you looking for? Who are your current ‘great’ customers and develop a strategy to find more like them. How many large accounts or ‘whales’ are you working – what is the mix of smaller accounts or ‘tunas’ that you can locate and get to close faster than the ‘whales’? How do you attract them in innovative ways – what’s the ‘bait’? you can use business marketing  emails as of the strategy in your business

Try New Ideas – don’t be Afraid to Fail!
Generate many ideas on small innovations that you can enable now to get the attention of your prospects and clients. They don’t have to carry a high price tag and if you generate enough ideas, some will succeed and others not so much. For example, how about developing videos and using them on the social network profiles to engage customers?  Embed a video in business marketing email of the hotel team assuring the prospect that if they book their business at your property, the entire team will service their business well. Include the GM, front desk team, the chef – let your imagination be your only limitation. A Flip video cam is all you need to enable a video strategy. A company that manufactures and markets office furniture decided to have a little fun and developed a video of their sales team playing musical chairs using their office chairs – a little fun never hurts and their customers loved it!
Enable a Mobile Strategy:
Many web sites and business marketing email eblasts are not mobile friendly. It doesn’t take much to ensure that you are sending TEXT versions of your HTML eblasts that are more easily read on mobile phones. Experiment – see if your open rates increase with mobile friendly content. If your content sends the reader to a landing page ensure that it is mobile friendly with short concise offers that are easily accessible.
Attracting Business – Not Pushing Product:
Your online presence and property profile on social networks are like an online store – some will pass by and not look over, others will look over and smile, others will walk up to the ‘window. ‘When they walk into your store, they may be just ‘looking’, when they begin to interact with you and share what they are looking for, you have an opportunity to take them offline and begin the dialogue. You have effectively ‘attracted’ a potential client – they check out you and the hotel before they ever engage you one on one.
We have entered the ‘culture of engagement’ – prospects look to engage with hotels and sales people that set themselves apart from the other 100+ hotels that approach them every day. The innovation challenge – what five small innovations can your team think of to engage new business prospects?
if you would like to know about busines marketing emails tips read here !

Critical Email Prospecting Straregies
Jay Schwedelson, Corporate Vice President of Worldata, focused on the newest trends and lastest developments in prospecting, in his presentation ‘Critical Email Prospecting Strategies for 2010,’
At the Email Evolution Conference 2010 in Miami Beach, Florida. Below are some quick tips your hotel in Business Marketing Email can use to improve your email marketing campaigns:

• Test your e-mail creative on a mobile device to make sure it displays correctly.
• Keep your e-mail campaign on a server so that people can access the message at a later date.
• Don’t use recipients’ names in the subject lines because they can be picked up by spammers.
• Include the offer deadline date in the subject line. This can increase open rates by 39% (i.e. offer ends Jan 31st).
• Analyze why recipients unsubscribe – why they leave is just as important as why they arrive. Send a follow-up email with a short survey asking why they unsubscribed.
• The top reasons people unsubscribe to a mailing list is because they receive too many emails from a sender (38%), or the emails are not relevant to them (23%).
• Include links that allow recipients to share your email with their own social network. People who use Facebook or Twitter at least once a week are 38% more likely to open a 3rd party email promotion, and people who use LinkedIn at least once a week are 37% more likely to open a 3rd party email promotion.
• Send your e-mail at least 2 weeks prior to the event date.
• Send a reminder email 2-3 days prior to event.
• Try sending your emails on different days of the week, and at different times of the day, to see what is most effective for your audience. In the past, many businesses avoided Mondays, but now Mondays are showing the best response rate. Test deploying your emails on Fridays as well.
• Never send an email after 4 pm. Experiment with sending emails at 8 am.
• Test your subject lines. Select 10% of your email address list and divide it into 2 groups. Send a different subject line to each group. Wait 24 hours, and then analyze the data to see which subject line was most effective.
• Include an offer in your subject line. Some offers that work well are Free Shipping, Invitation Only, Discount on Next Purchase, Gift with Next Purchase, or Exclusive Secret Sale.
• When you analyze the metrics on your open rate you may not be seeing the whole picture. Open rates are tracked only when the recipient enables the email images. Many recipients don’t enable the images, so even though they have opened your email, it won’t be tracked as an ‘open.’
• Your click-through-rate is more important than your open rate. Generally speaking, if your open/click through rate is more than 2% you are doing well.
• Use tools to help you manage your overall campaign. Below are some free tools you can start using right away.

Strive to improve your email campaigns in 2010 and increase your ROI with progressive email tactics. Work to build a solid database and make sure you segment your e-mail campaigns and avoid one-size-fits-all mailings. Email campaigns are a very effective way for hotels to connect with their audience and generate new and repeat
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