Leaning into human-led connections that are reframed around more personalized experiences that begin and end with empathy, are most critical for marketers today as the pace of digital transformation only continues to accelerate. The post-pandemic world is still experiencing many shifts in consumer behavior and the jury is still out on which will remain permanent versus temporary. Winning brands are quickly emerging as those who have the ability to adapt in real-time to meet customers where they are at, all via a marketing formula that marries the best of science and humanity.
A Conversation With IHG’s Claire Bennett On 1:1 Customer-Centricity + Prioritizing Human Connections
For my latest column, I wanted to speak to someone who could offer a unique perspective on the nuanced shifts that brands must make around customer experience if they are to achieve true loyalty and engagement. I had the pleasure of speaking with Claire Bennett, Global Chief Customer Officer of IHG Hotels and Resorts. Claire is a marketing industry veteran with years of experience driving transformation, consumer engagement and growth at leading brands such as American Express and Dell. Following is a recap of our conversation:
Billee Howard: Tell me about your role as Global Chief Customer Officer at IHG and how/why your function is structured as it is?
Claire Bennett: At its core, our business is about taking care of people, and we apply that approach to everything we do – both on and off property. Every day and night, we go above and beyond to care for every guest across our 6,000+ hotels around the world. When this is done well, our guests come back, we drive strong returns for our owners and continue to grow our businesses together.
At IHG, we have two customers – owners and guests, and in my role as Global Chief Customer Officer, I work collaboratively across the organization to help ensure our guests are happy and cared for during every step of their travel journey, and our 18 brands deliver the highest ROI for our owners.
My function is designed to ensure that all our customers, whether travelling for leisure or business, have a seamless, end-to-end guest experience from the moment they plan a trip until they arrive home. From data and analytics and technological innovations that help us understand who our guests are and what they want, to building strong brands that customers love, to continuing to evolve our new IHG One Rewards loyalty program, my team is always thinking about how we can improve our guest experience – which ultimately creates lifelong fans of IHG.
Howard: Tell me about your approach to segmentation and how you’re accommodating for the gaps that exist between first and third party data and where empathy fits in?
Bennett: The hospitality industry is operationally complex. We’re there with our guests for some of their most important and personal moments – ranging from job interviews, conferences, business meetings, honeymoons, anniversaries and more – we take that responsibility very seriously.
As a customer centric company, segmentation and data are essential to ensure that we’re delivering the right message to the right person through the right vehicle at the right time. But data and numbers can’t always show the depth and breadth of the human experience. For example, a guest may normally stay in one of our Luxury & Lifestyle brands, like Kimpton or Hotel Indigo, when traveling for work or on a girls’ trip, but when they want to go on a family vacation with their young kids, they may choose a Holiday Inn Express with free breakfast. We use a combination of first-hand guest testimonials and third-party data to really get to know our customers and anticipate their needs on any given day, connecting them to the hotels, experiences, and people they want.
To round out the picture we get from our own proprietary analytics, we always take a human lens to things. We mine our customers’ words from their guest reviews and social commentary to understand the specifics of what they want. Additionally, it’s important that our teams are focused on trying the experiences firsthand for themselves, as customers. We stay in our hotels, test the new features on our app, read the guest reviews, shop the hotels, and taste the latest food and beverage offers to ensure we have the full view.
Howard: How is customer centricity changing and how IHG is evolving to continue to best meet customers where they are at?
Bennett: I see customer centricity moving to a one-to-one model where our customers expect to be seen as individuals and cared for in ways that work best for them. Increasingly, we’re seeing our customers reject the idea of jumping through predefined, seemingly arbitrary hoops. Instead, they’re looking for ways to chart their own, personalized journey. We have strengthened IHG’s position in the loyalty space by designing IHG One Rewards to be a modern loyalty program that lets our customers be rewarded in their own way, offering exceptional choice and empowering members to use points on their terms.
We’ve also adapted to our Next Gen Traveler, who we know values the speed and simplicity of digital. With that insight, we redesigned our IHG One Rewards mobile app and are enhancing our entire booking experience, making it easier and faster to book and seamlessly select additional requests – like a room with the perfect view or a higher floor – all from the palm of your hand. Our teams have also built an industry-first, technology enabled platform, Milestone Rewards, that offers members more options to choose the rewards that matter the most to them. Through this digital platform, members can select F&B Rewards, Confirmable Suite Upgrades, and an Annual Lounge Membership after just 20 nights stayed.
Howard: You have successfully developed what feels like a seamless personalized journey for each guest at scale that seems to be enabled through tight synergy between digital booking and on property experience. Tell me more about how and why this works?
Bennett: The market is evolving faster than ever, and we have built a multiyear technology road map that reflects and balances the needs of all our stakeholders. We strive to consistently improve ease of use across the guest experience, both digitally and in-person. We want to be easy to do business with no matter where you interact with us. With our new app, for example, we’ve made it possible to book a hotel in just three taps, and we’re continuing to pilot new on-property technologies that help to make the experience more efficient.
Across the customer experience, we’re exploring new ways to allow our 350,000 hotel colleagues to deliver high-touch care. We’re implementing technologies that allow us to engage with our guests digitally to improve the booking and stay experience. From our Digital Concierge chatbot to our Apple Messages for Business, and Google Business Messages, we’re working to be available 24/7 for our guests to address whatever they may need before, during or after their stay with us.
One key channel that allows us to bridge the on-property experience with the digital one is social. Our customers increasingly turn to social to celebrate, ask for help and to let us know when things have gone wrong across the customer experience. We have a best-in-class social response time to help our customers with anything they might need.
How we leverage data and analytics, and the thoughtful use of technology will continue to be a game changer in the hospitality industry, and we’ll continue to prioritize human connections.
