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IVR services play an important part in today’s business especially it is important to adopt IVR for hospitality and tourism sectors. The clock never stops ticking in a hospitality and tourism industry. As their clients are people who travel a lot and want to have the best time of their life their needs are constantly evolving. If someone gets confused about the wifi password in your hotel and pings your service to ask for it, you will have to answer it without service interruption. Everyone wants your customer service to work 24/7. In other cases if someone suddenly wants to check their travel plans at midnight and search for a flight during the wee hours your service needs to quickly answer their query.
This is where Interactive voice response, in the field of IVR for hospitality and tourism comes to play. It is a cloud-based technology that allows the system to interact with the customer using DTMF or dual tone multi frequency. It moves the ability of a simple phone system into something that can answer the basic queries of customers any time of the day without human intervention. It plays a key part in your business strategy.
Benefits of using IVR for Hospitality and Tourism Industry
1. Reducing the 24/7 gap
A cloud based IVR for hospitality and tourism will be always ON mode. Both the hospitality and tourism industry work 24 hours a day around the clock. With an automated IVR system they can reduce the gap that might occur in their service. With this tool, your service can provide automated and immediate answers to queries that are asked out of your working hours. Also this ensures that guests feel valued regardless of the time and location of the query.
Also this service helps to handle peak call volumes without the need to allot additional employees. Thereby the IVR helps to maintain cost efficiency along with service quality maintenance.
2. Reducing operational cost and agent burnout
IVR allows employees to focus on high value tasks rather than spending their time on basic work which can be easily automated. It helps to reduce their workload and improve their efficiency. In the case of a hospitality firm, if the customer asks for wifi password, amenities or basic queries like places of attraction, the automated system can give pre-recorded messages that can be prepared by analyzing repetitive questions. This helps to reduce the workload of employees by 80% and give them more time to focus on what is important for them.
Also by using IVR for payment processing and handling basic tasks your business can easily save up a large sum of money that can be used efficiently and strategically for business growth.
3. Key performance indicators (KPI)
By making a good investment in IVR for hospitality and tourism services, your business can see the benefits in increased first call resolution rates. By providing accurate answers to simple queries and routing the customers according to their issues to the right agent helps to easily solve the challenges and gives a good customer experience.
Also by reducing call queues and transferring them to multiple agents that might lead to frustration, IVR can ensure that every customer’s queries are rightly heard and solved. This improves the customer satisfaction score for your business.
This in turn, reduces the average handle time for the agent as IVR has already given the customer saturated information and the problem can be easily solved without escalation now.
4. Increase in revenue
IVR system can be used for upselling and cross selling by focusing on targeted ads. For example, when a customer calls and the IVR plays the response as “ you are eligible to upgrade to an ocean view room at just 2000 rs extra” and if the customer is interested he can choose the option in just one click. Such outbound IVR campaigns and inbound prompts can make an extra income for the business without further expenditure.
Application of IVR across Hospitality and Tourism Industries
1.Guest experience
The IVR system plays a key role in the hospitality industry. With an automated IVR system, guests can easily order their room service and housekeeping requests without going to the staff directly. Also you can get the basic details like local places to visit nearby with it. You can even arrange a wake-up call at a specified time using this service.
2. Airlines and travel agencies
By using IVR for hospitality and tourism sector, you can assist the customer by giving alerts and notifications regarding flight time changes or weather updates. Also travelers can select the seats according to their interest or modify dates or request for a cancellation through IVR system.
3. Places of attraction
Callers can check the availability of tickets for a specific date and see the variations in cost on weekdays and weekends and decide accordingly. Also given the global nature of tourism, IVR also supports customers with multi-lingual options that helps the traveller to take some burden from their shoulders. So in general, the IVR for hospitality and tourism helps the tourism sector by efficiently handling queries and improving customer experience.
Importance of personalization in IVR
1. Personalized greetings
By integrating IVR systems with CRM you can analyze customer calls and recognize high value customers who use your service repeatedly. This data helps to provide a more personalized treatment for the customer thereby increasing the brand value of your business. Also by analyzing these customers you can also prepare personalized greetings for them like if they call you can address the call by saying Goodmorning MR.X or something which makes the customer feel valued.
2. AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP)
The customers pressing one for this and two for that have been around for some time now. With the rise of AI, your business can offer them something of more value like Rather than simply pressing keypads your business can make it conversational with the help of AI.
Also with the help of NLP, the system can easily understand the message and intent behind it thereby routing the call to the appropriate agent. This helps in improving the first call resolution rate and reduces the average handle time for the agent. This results in work efficiency for the agent and increased customer satisfaction for the customer.
Conclusion
In order to solve and address the critical pain points in a business even if it is not related to hospitality or tourism, IVR plays an integral part. By relying on manual processes while every other company is enhancing their customer service to top notch quality your business loses the chance to win in their competitive era. Also by opting for an IVR for hospitality and tourism, you reduce the workload of your precious employees thereby preventing them from reaching a burnout situation.
Frequently asked questions:
1.What is an IVR System?
An IVR System is an interactive voice response system that helps businesses to automate simple tasks like answering simple queries and efficiently route the calls without manual labor.
2. How does an automated IVR system work?
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3. What is the cost of setting up an IVR?
The cost is mostly a predictable, scalable monthly fee that reduces upfront hardware costs . Check out our IVR solutions for IVR pricing plans and packages for more details.
Footnotes:
McKinsey & Company. “The state of tourism and hospitality in 2024.” McKinsey & Company, 2024, www.mckinsey.com/industries/travel/our-insights/the-state-of-tourism-and-hospitality-2024.
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IVR in hospitality and tourism sectors
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