Benefits of Using a CRM for Hotels

Benefits of hotel CRM software

The best customer relationship management software for hotels will streamline your customer service, marketing, sales, and operations departments, bringing it all together to improve your hospitality business on every level.

Benefits of using a customer relationship management system for hotels include:

Improve customer service

Customer relationship management helps improve customer service and build customer relationships, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction. With a good hotel CRM implemented, you can begin managing customer service before guests check in, starting with their first experience on your website or when they call to book.

You can also use hospitality CRM software to learn about the customer experience after they’ve checked out. With CRM, you can send your past guests' emails asking about their experience to help you improve your customer service for future guests.

Automate workflows

A hospitality CRM system allows you to automate several workflows throughout departments. Every hotel has its own processes for customer interactions, and you can optimize and automate your processes to ensure a streamlined approach to customer service and marketing.

For example, you can set up a workflow to ensure guest complaints make it to the right person at the right time to reduce the amount of time it takes for issues to be resolved.

In addition, a hotel CRM system enables lead management; you can use CRM software for hotels to communicate and track new leads, ultimately enhancing sales and ensuring the right actions are taken at the right time for several different types of possible scenarios depending on your configurations.

You can also automate your marketing messages by using CRM email features to keep in contact with guests after they’ve booked. Hotel CRM software can send automatic reminders about direct bookings and cancellations or thank you emails to guests who have checked out.

Enhance communication

CRM for hotels enhances communication with customers by allowing you to easily create and send email campaigns once potential customers have entered the marketing funnel.

You can further understand your customer by learning about their preferences or through actions they’ve taken on your website. For instance, if someone begins the process of booking a room but never checks out, you can send marketing emails to try to bring them back to finish the process.

The best CRM for hotels will make it easy for you to segment audiences and learn more about guests based on the customer data of those who interact with your website, emails, or other marketing efforts.

Monitor engagement

CRM software for hotels can help track and monitor customer engagement to help you learn from interactions with guests. Customer engagement can help you identify issues in your marketing funnel.

For example, you can identify points where customers drop off and brainstorm ways to improve them by tracking engagement rates. If customers fall out of the funnel, you can send them promotions or offers to bring them back or prevent them from leaving in the first place.

Build customer loyalty

Customer loyalty is crucial in the hotel industry because it means repeated bookings from the same customers.

In terms of marketing, it’s much more cost-effective to keep happy customers returning than finding and attracting new guests. Every booking has the potential for repeat bookings, especially if you can find ways to improve your customer loyalty program.

Hotel CRMs can help you understand your customer’s needs throughout their experience and implement strategies to show them you care with custom offers. For example, you can send post-stay surveys to learn about the guest experience and send them a gift card or promotion after completing them.

Manage communication

With so many guests and bookings to manage, it can be difficult to manage all the communications you have in a single day. However, CRM can help you organize, prioritize, and effectively manage all communications by combining phone systems, email, text messages, live chats, and social media into a single, easy-to-use interface to make it easier for you to respond to guests before, during, and after their stays.

Create better marketing campaigns

CRM strategies for hotels typically revolve around marketing and customer interactions. Because CRM can help you effectively communicate and learn about your customers, it can enable better marketing campaigns and marketing automation.

One of the main features of the best CRM software for hotels is segmentation, which allows you to group customers together based on actions they’ve taken on your website, their preferences, or where they are in the marketing funnel.

For example, you can build specific customer segments based on guest data to ensure you send the right messages to guests at the right times to improve your marketing efforts and earn more bookings.

In addition, hotel CRM software allows you to A/B test different elements of your marketing automation strategies to find what works best to attract more guests.

For example, you can test everything from email subject lines to improve open rates to offers to promote clicks. In addition, you can use email marketing to upsell room upgrades or additional services.

Track performance

Tracking the performance of everything from your customer service to marketing strategies is crucial if you want to attract and retain guests. Hospitality CRM software allows you to track everything from sales team activities to customer service interactions to improve the guest experience.

For example, you may find that it takes too long for customer service agents to respond to and resolve guest complaints. If that’s the case, you can use the data collected by your CRM to brainstorm new ways to reduce the time it takes to respond to inquiries.

Tips for choosing a hotel and hospitality CRM

There are several types of hotel CRMs available to choose from, and while they’re all similar, they have key differences you should consider.

Before choosing a CRM, always consider the features and whether or not you’d need them. Here are a few tips to help you choose the best CRM software for hotels.

Identify your goals

Goals dictate CRM strategies for hotels, and the software is meant to manage interactions between the business and its customers. However, how you use your CRM software depends on what your goals are.

For example, with sales management tools, sales teams would use CRMs to identify and organize prospects, while the marketing department would use them to create email marketing campaigns and workflows to promote customer loyalty.

Defining all your goals is key to ensuring you get robust CRM software that can accomplish different tasks for various departments.

Determine your budget

Your budget will also determine which type of hotel CRM you can use. CRM software ranges from simple contact management and workflow building to more robust systems that can be used throughout multiple departments.

Consider customer service

Remember, your entire team will need to use the software, so they should be effectively trained to ensure they know how to build workflows and use different aspects of the software to measure performance. Unfortunately, implementing a CRM with legacy systems can be difficult if you’re doing it on your own.

However, when choosing CRM, you can opt to work with a company that offers implementation, training, and free customer service support.

Look for integration

Hotel CRM should enhance various processes; it should not serve as a bottleneck or barrier, so you must ensure it can integrate with other systems to improve operations management. Your CRM should integrate with other applications and software you currently use, such as email marketing, sales, and other hotel management tools.

Encourage better client relationships with a hotel CRM

Hotel CRM can help you build and maintain better relationships with guests before, during, and after their stay.

By enhancing and building customer loyalty and providing exceptional customer service, you can bring guests coming back for repeat business. Remember, the customer experience is the most important part of hospitality, and CRM can help you improve guest satisfaction.

Mailchimp offers free CRM software for small businesses to make it easy for you to start building better guest relationships and enhancing their experiences with your hotel business.

With email marketing tools and contact management, you can start communicating with customers throughout the entire journey. Ready to start using CRM tools to build your hotel business? Try Mailchimp today.