Global marketing leader at HGS, CX professional, product promoter, outsourcing innovation fan – with a focus on what’s next.
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Travel is the most accessible it has been since before the pandemic, resulting in many planning summer trips. According to Transportation Service Administration (TSA) Administrator David Pekoske: “In January, we experienced our first full month where travel volumes exceeded the same month in 2019. We fully expect to see an upward trend in travel volumes throughout 2023..."
Many travelers are in the process of planning their ideal summer getaway they’ve been dreaming about for weeks, months or even years. Whether a relaxing trip to the beach, experiencing the thrills at an amusement park, camping in the mountains or exploring on a cross-country road trip, travel and hospitality brands constantly revisit and revamp business strategies that spark the magic of an ideal getaway.
However, with the current overflow of travel options, brands must not only create magic but keep up with the competition by building long-lasting relationships with each customer that interacts with their service or destination. More importantly, the dramatic influx of vacationers provides travel and hospitality brands the opportunity to amaze each customer to keep them coming back for more. An excellent customer experience (CX), fueled by the right tools, serves as a critical component of this strategy, offering additional support that not only attracts customers but resolves challenges when unforeseen circumstances occur.
In this article, based on my experience as the executive vice president and global head of marketing at a digital-led CX transformation company, I am going to show you how brands can provide an excellent CX, even during high-volume periods.
From road trips to resorts, how can brands step up their CX strategy?
Strong Social Media And Online Engagement
Naturally, given the visuals of a dreamy getaway, travel destinations have a leg up on other brands when marketing via social media, an essential element for attracting younger generations. In fact, Expedia’s 2023 Traveler Value Index shows that 35% of consumers use social for travel inspiration, surpassing travel agents (29%), media publications (26%) and entertainment (25%).
In a world where social media functions as a core pillar of marketing, a brand’s social and online presence should be not only about incredible images but also engagement with online users. To build high engagement, consider user-generated content campaigns, responding to mentions of your brand and posting question-based content.
During busy seasons, these actions can fall by the wayside unless supported by effective tools and technologies. If this rings true for you, many brands use sentiment analysis tools to monitor social and online posts based on their ability to evaluate the emotional tone of text—typically online, from an email, social media platform or chat window—to determine and categorize customers’ opinions about a product or service. These tools offer an awareness that could otherwise go unnoticed.
Considering 81% of surveyed travelers over the last few years always or frequently read reviews before booking a place to stay, sentiment analysis can be extremely beneficial to alert brands when a review has an overall negative sentiment. Sentiment analysis monitoring can help flag online posts that require immediate assistance, allowing CX agents to support positive social and online feedback by prioritizing and de-escalating challenges quickly.
Balancing Automation And Human Connection
While automation can appear easy to set up and then magically handle entire processes on its own, most often there is a CX agent helping behind the scenes. This way, if a customer experiences a snafu on their dream getaway, an agent can identify the fastest solution and control the situation. Therefore, an excellent CX strategy not only harnesses the power of automation but balances it with a human touch.
For example, when a customer travels a long distance in a rental car and it breaks down, immediate assistance is necessary to get their experience back on the road. We often work with rental car brands to deploy automated dispatch chatbots that enable customers to contact an emergency roadside service (ERS) and receive immediate assistance. When a digital dispatch is created via a platform, it can streamline the process of ordering the nearest tow truck, dealership and/or mechanic, saving customers much-needed time and effort in a stressful situation.
For other travel brands where a call center is valuable to provide customers easy access to information, robotic process automation (RPA) solutions can help CX agents more quickly enter data and serve customers, allowing information to be extracted more easily, as well as to be compiled in the background through its innovative processes.
AI-powered cloud solutions can also offer CX agents summary notes supported by speech analytics and can even compile all CX agent-customer conversations. However, as CX agents become acquainted with automated technologies, thorough onboarding will help to avoid detrimental errors, which require the right balance of automation and human touch to support an excellent CX. When deployed effectively, automated call center technologies offer a 360-degree view of customers, allowing organizations to streamline their agent workflow while enhancing agent and customer interactions.
Let Your CX Strategy React
On the tail end of a pandemic that kept us cooped up, both business and leisure travel is back on track. From road trips to resort vacations, high volumes of customers will require more maintenance than in recent years. And no matter how much travel and hospitality brands prepare, unfortunate circumstances will still arise. But even if something should go wrong, CX tools and strategies should support travelers before, during and after their journey, offering quality experiences that leave them wanting more.
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