Keynote: Guest Experience in the Hospitality Sector by Sharon Head.

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EVENT INTRODUCTION:

Realizing that the Covid 19 pandemic has ravaged all industries and the Hospitality industry not being spared in this tragedy as activities have been brought to a halt because of this new normal, on the 3rd of June 2021, CX-Centric in partnership with CX-Brussels together with Freshworks hosted a very successful and befitting event on Driving growth in the Hospitality Sector through exceptional experiences in bringing out some of the most common challenges faced in this sector and some of the workable solutions which hospitality companies can make use of. It goes without saying that many organizations have struggled to stay afloat amid this pandemic, this has then forced these organizations to take their Guest Experience seriously in trying to increase their success rate. It is the Guest Experience with which the keynote speakers of this great event gave much more attention in their presentation.

As part of the event, we drafted out some of the key challenges in the hospitality sector in which the attendees were very much participative when it came to discussing these challenges. These challenges included:

• How can hospitality companies convey hygiene and restore confidence in safe travel?

• How can companies like Marriott prioritize tech investment to drive guest engagement?

• How can hotels entice the return of more dominant guest segments like business meetings/events?

• Being a highly competitive industry with extensive players, how can hotels compete for a share of leisure demand?

• How might Franchises communicate the value of brand affiliations and the need to deliver great experiences to preserve brand equity, to their Franchises?

This event consisted of two keynote presentations. The first part of the keynote was done by Alec Dalton and the second part was done by Sharon Head.

KEYNOTE PRESENTATION BY SHARON HEAD:

Sharon Head is a Customer Success leader with over 20 years of experience in CRM, marketing automation, and digital marketing. She is currently the head of CS at Freshworks. Freshworks is a huge and successful organization that makes it fast and easy for businesses to delight their customers and employees. The company achieves this by taking a fresh approach to building and delivering software that is affordable, quick to implement, and designed for the end-user. Over the past 12 years, Sharon has provided leadership for some of the world's leading SaaS marketing providers. She is well regarded for putting customers at the heart of strategic planning and change initiation in high-growth technology companies, both pre and post-acquisition. Her vast experience includes results orientation, solid financial acumen, sound decision-making, and the ability to motivate teams to own and achieve corporate goals.

Sharon started off her keynote by delving into the importance of service speed in the hospitality industry. Service speed, just like ensuring the safety of guests in a hotel, Sharon mentions it is very important. In talking about the speed of service, Sharon breaks down her presentation into three sections that are:

• Why the speed of service is important

• Some of the roadblocks to improving customer service

• Giving some practical steps to provide quicker response and resolution time when it comes to engaging with customers

Sharon mentions that the speed of service is the number one driver of customer satisfaction. This is according to an analysis of 107 000 000 customer support interactions across 15 different industries including hospitality which has proven this point. With a lot of customers being driven away from the traditional physical touchpoints and starting to do more online shopping, this has given companies an opportunity to sell with every customer interaction online hence the importance of speed of service.

Moving on with her presentation, Sharon mentions some of the roadblocks to improving customer service. These include:

• Investing in sales and marketing over CX

• Staffing crunches, long waits, backlogs

• Tech projects on the backburner

• Settling for ‘good enough’ customer service

With the attendees exuding much excitement from Sharon’s presentation, in closing her presentation, Sharon touched on an anticipated and very important part of her presentation which was the mentioning of the practical steps to speedy customer service which organizations can make use of. These steps include:

• Make your service easily available

• The human touch is key, but don't be afraid to automate

• Shift from reactive to proactive

• Give your staff access to enough information

• Rethink the metrics you measure for customer service