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Travel and hospitality marketing is about selling an experience that is greater than the sum of its parts. When you advertise a room at a Cancun resort, you’re touting more than just four walls and a bed for the customer to lay their head on — you’re selling a “rejuvenating oceanside retreat filled with memories that last a lifetime.” You’re assuring prospective guests that you’ll cater to their every need and provide memorable entertainment options.
As a travel and hospitality brand, your experience is the differentiator that sets you apart from competitors. Some brands believe the customer experience begins when guests arrive at their hotel, cruise line, or resort — that it’s the receptionist who sets the tone for their stay (possibly by greeting them with a smile and a complimentary beverage.) But, like it or not, your customers form their first impression of your brand long before they arrive at one of your physical locations. From the moment they engage with one of your digital ads, they’re already forming perceptions about your brand, whether consciously or subconsciously. This perception continues to crystallize when they call to speak with your contact center agents.
The customer experience is omnichannel, and your customers expect white-glove service the entire way. After all, if you don’t deliver an exceptional experience when customers engage with you online or over the phone, how can they trust you to deliver one when they arrive in person?
In this post, I’ll share how conversation intelligence helps travel and hospitality brands create top-tier omnichannel experiences that drive bookings.
Let’s start with the basics: conversation intelligence is software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to derive insights from phone conversations between your representatives and customers. The conversation data can be streamed between other technology platforms like CRMs, ad platforms, data analytics and attribution solutions, contact center software, and digital experience platforms. Teams can use these deep insights to create personalized omnichannel experiences for customers.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s dive into some of the ways leading travel and hospitality brands use conversation intelligence to improve the omnichannel journey.
Travel and hospitality customers have higher experience expectations than ever, and many call centers are dropping the ball before the caller even gets a chance to speak to an agent. According to our recent study, 79% of people are rerouted at least once when they call a company. In addition, 53% say they need to repeat their reason for calling multiple agents. If you’re not sending callers to the right agent on the first try, you’re already setting them up for a bad experience. This will make it harder for you to earn bookings and long-term loyalty.
To exceed customer expectations, cutting-edge travel and hospitality brands are intelligently routing each phone call to the best agent to handle it. Tools like Invoca can track the webpage, ad, and other interactions that drive each call and automatically send it to the most relevant agent to handle the inquiry. For example, when someone calls from your Alaskan cruise webpage, you can automatically route them to an agent who specializes in selling that package.
If you want to give callers the option to route themselves, you can use Invoca’s easy-to-configure IVRs, which can be created in minutes with no assistance from IT or telephony vendors required.
Our research found that nearly a quarter of consumers who have never done business with a company before expect that the business knows who they are, why they’re calling, and how they’ve interacted with you online. This means that routing the call to the appropriate agent is only half the battle — the agent who answers the phone must also have the right information handy to greet callers like VIPs.
With Invoca PreSense, you can empower your agents to give callers a white-glove experience. Before each call is connected, PreSense gives your agents a screenpop with data about the caller’s digital journey. Here is a sample of the data it can give your agents:
With this information, your agents can anticipate why your customers are calling before they even pick up the phone. They can greet callers by name and pull up the necessary information to make the interaction as smooth as possible. For instance, if someone called from the “manage my cruise” web page, your agent could pull up their cruise information before the call was connected, rather than asking for a reservation number. This reduces time-to-resolution, increases conversion rates, and builds trust in your brand.
Watch the short video below to see how PreSense works:
A strong retargeting strategy is critical for maximizing the impact of your marketing dollars. It’s far cheaper to convert a prospect who is already “warm” than trying to start from scratch with someone who has never heard of your brand. In addition, if you blast your audience with irrelevant ads that aren’t targeted to their needs, you’ll annoy them and waste your ad dollars.
But your retargeting strategy is only as good as the data you use to inform it — and with privacy restrictions tightening, finding the right insights can be more challenging than ever. Invoca fills data gap caused by third-party cookie depreciation by capturing first-party data from phone conversations. These conversations are full of rich insights, such as if they’re a new customer, which vacation packages they’re interested in, and if they are looking to book a trip soon.
You can then use those insights to retarget prospective customers who didn’t convert. For example, you can serve prospects ads for the specific vacation packages they mentioned over the phone, such as an ocean-view honeymoon suite at your resort. In this example, you could also increase your bidding threshold for that caller as their honeymoon date approached, as they would be more likely to convert around that time.
In addition, you can use Invoca to detect which callers purchased a vacation package over the phone. You can then suppress those callers from seeing future ads for that package. This reduces wasted budget and creates a better experience for the customer, as you’re no longer pestering them with irrelevant ads.
Invoca helps travel and hospitality marketers connect the omnichannel experience and create white-glove experiences for their customers. Leading brands trust Invoca for its cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology and enterprise-grade security and compliance. But don’t just take our word for it! Visit our customers page to see what Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts has to say about Invoca.
Want to learn more about how Invoca can help travel and hospitality marketers drive better customer experiences? Check out these resources:
