With so many departments and so much to keep track of, hotels are at high risk of miscommunication and misplaced information between departments. And, since 70% of customers say connected processes—such as seamless handoffs—are very important to winning their business, making sure your team is aligned is paramount to hotel guest satisfaction and more efficient workflows.
Modern communication technology provides solutions for a dispersed or deskless workforce in the form of cloud-based communication and work management tools. But understanding how and why your property or properties should move away from standard methods such as binders, paperwork and Post-its, can be difficult at first. These methods have served the industry well in the past. But just like we moved away from horse-drawn carriages and pagers, it’s time that hotels retire outdated methods so properties can exceed guest expectations—and make the jobs of hotel staff much easier.
Businesses that adopt unified communication technology not only save money, but see an increase in productivity, as well as improved customer service and loyalty. For example, customers of the guest-messaging software Whistle have seen increased guest satisfaction scores and improved response times. Whistle also integrates with top hospitality management solutions like Quore to help streamline guest requests and provide a single source of truth for employees across your hotel and/or management companies.
By employing modern communication technology and deskless workforce solutions, your team can track and manage work in a more accessible and visible way. So your entire hotel—or network of properties—can be clear on the information they need to get their job done and focus on what really matters: your guests.
Better Hotel Workflow Management, Better Communication
Email can be a great tool, but when it comes to communicating about work and processes, it isn’t always the best option. Plus, at most hotels, 83% of hourly employee on staff don’t even sit behind a desk or have a work email address. Emails and texts can keep historical records of communications, but they can’t properly track work processes or handoffs in an accessible and unified way. On top of that, these methods of communication can be risky on personal devices due to potential data protection issues.
With deskless employees making up about 80% of the modern workforce, new ways of work tracking and management become not only important, but necessary. To increase visibility and streamline communication, it’s ideal to implement a solution that provides a single source of truth for your work. By utilizing a hotel technology solution that provides integrated features, you’ll be improving communication holistically, not just on one level or channel.
Solutions like Asana or Trello might be first in mind when it comes to this type of digital work management solution. But while tools like these allow users to visually track projects and to do’s, they aren’t tailored for hospitality and lack features that cater to a deskless team.
A solution such as Quore provides workflow tracking that includes features for every hotel department. So your housekeeper can track their inspections and cleanings and your engineer can record their daily readings and preventative maintenance all in one place. On top of that, your management team is able to send memos to the team and assign requests or to do’s to specific staff members.
Increasing visibility across daily work items and tasks as well as broad team communications, like memos, keeps everyone across your hotel on the same page. Your team is able to look within the system and see what’s been done, what needs to be done and how they can help. Plus, with a tool like Quore, handoffs are simplified with mobile and desktop notifications and reminders that keep things from slipping through the cracks.
Keep Guest Requests from Being Forgotten
Imagine you’re at the front desk of a busy hotel. A guest calls and asks for extra towels just before you’re about to swap shifts. You quickly take the call, and you jot down the guest request on a Post-it note to pass to the front desk agent that’ll be taking over for you. As you pack up your things to head home, you forget about the note.
The new agent arrives, and you leave. The post it note has, at some point, fallen from the desk and onto the floor. Because of this, the new front desk agent doesn’t see the request—so she’s really confused when the guest calls, frustrated that he hasn’t received his extra towels. Now the guest is late for a meeting, and he wants to lodge a formal complaint.
The whole situation could have been taken care of immediately, and the guest complaint could have been avoided, if more modern means of request tracking had been in place.
Systems like Quore allow front desk agents to quickly create guest requests within a digital form that immediately sends a notification to an on-duty employee. So, in our previous scenario, if you had been using Quore to log the guest request, that request would have been instantly sent to an on-duty housekeeper’s mobile device so that they could deliver the towels. This cuts out an extra handoff and speeds up the response time, ensuring happier guest experiences.
Plus, the guest request automatically triggers a callback reminder within Quore, so whoever’s at the front desk will be reminded to check in on the guest who made the request. That’s a big improvement in communication across the hotel, with minimal overall effort. All the team has to do is add the information into the system, and the tool takes care of the rest.
Hotel Communication Technology that Everyone Can Use
Taking communication digital increases efficiency, and utilizing software that incorporates every department spreads that efficiency across your hotel or organization. It may seem like these modern workflow solutions are simply for checking items off of a digital to-do list. But it’s far more than that.
These technology tools improve communication across departments by surfacing and structuring work. Teams know exactly what they need to do and can prioritize items by importance. This improves communication by automating aspects of the process—no more missing Post-it notes, no more unanswered emails, no more heavy binders to sort through to find the information you’re looking for.
Team members are automatically notified when something new comes up. Information for handoffs is logged in one singular place, so everyone on staff can access it at any time. Messages and memos are in a transparent and easy-to-find location. It keeps the entire team in the loop in an industry that can feel so segmented between departments.
To learn more about how Quore can improve communications across your hotel or properties, take a look at our website! To dive deeper into our industry, product tips and updates, take a look at our other blog posts.
