Ever wonder why people leave your hotel website?
Well, the reasons can always vary. Except, it is time you change your way to approach potential customers.
Increased bounce rate for your hotel website becomes an indicator that your target audience is reaching out to your competitors or hasn’t found relevant information. What’s more, being a product-centric business, your hotel website has to wait for people to reach out to you first. So besides being found online, you also need to understand how to keep people on your website.
Other than customer engagement, you need to ensure that people can approach you no matter what time it is or where you are. It sounds complex. But one of the best ways to keep people engaged and provide round the clock support is to add a live chat software to your hotel website.
In the past decades, FMCG companies used door-to-door as a tool to reach customers directly. However, now the customer can reach a brand from the comfort of their homes, through their smartphones. A website is a representative of your hotel. That’s why a live chat for hotel websites can be a game-changer.
How a Hotel Business Can Benefit From the Use of Live Chat Software?
Here are a few ways of how your hotel business can benefit from adding a live chat software to the website.
#1: Engage Potential Customers With Queries
A website is generally used to provide information about a hotel’s services, locations, facilities, and other such information. However, it is equally useful when you cater to potential customer questions.
Generally, people book hotel rooms on comparison sites or travel websites. But they seldom have the chance to clarify any queries they have. They might be looking for a baby-room or a quiet night in. There might be some special requests like a romantic night setup for a honeymoon couple, or, a business person might want to host a few clients for dinner.
Such queries generally need to be clarified over a phone call or directly after the booking has been made. In such cases, the customer already has to put in effort and time for which there is no return. By enabling them to raise questions directly with a live chat software, they need not spend any money or even make a call. The target is to provide convenience to the customer in ways where your competitors fail.
Customers want personal and instant modes of communication. A recent survey reveals that 41% of customers prefer live chat, with the phone, email, and social media all ranking below it.
#2: Promote Services
To define a live chat tool as a medium to talk with customers wouldn’t be fair. With a tool such as this in place, you can see every interaction with a potential customer. Plus, it is a great avenue for promoting your service and spreading awareness. The live chat service can be used to target a specific customer demographic with related offers. For example, if a customer is looking to book a suite for Thanksgiving’s night, you can use that information to forward them a special discount offer.
This endears the brand to the customer, as well as informs them of special promotional offers and services. The same strategy can be applied to target specific demographics, geolocation, and other criteria. According to a survey, 79% of businesses mentioned that offering live chat has had a positive effect on their sales, revenue, and customer loyalty.
#3: Gauge Customer’s Interaction With the Website
Live chat software provides comprehensive user tracking, monitoring, and tagging features. This means that any and all visitors on your website can be tracked. You view the pages, they are visiting, where they are originating from if they are repeat visitors if they are an existing customer and more such information in real-time. Not only that, some applications even let you visualize which part of the page your visitors clicked (engaged with) most and how far your users are scrolling.
Such information can help you understand how your customers view your brand. For example, if they aren’t visiting your gallery section, then they probably aren’t interested in viewing hotel room pictures on a separate section. Or, if your customers are not engaging with a particular sign-up form, maybe it’s time you tested a different form design.
#4: Promote Brand Awareness
A 2016 study by Hubspot showed that 55% of customers rely on reviews from social media and comparison websites. Many such websites offer hotels by having their own mini-website on their platform. With live chat for travel websites, differentiate your hotel website from the rest.
It will allow customers to not only compare their rooms and services with other competitors but also instantly get in touch with a support operator that can readily answer their questions instantly. As such, it will allow the hotel to promote their brand on a third-party website and create awareness among the customers.
#5: Prevent Customer Drop-offs
E-commerce and online sales mechanisms are built on sales funnels. Sales funnel refers to a conceptual funnel that starts with the first page that a visitor lands on and ends with a particular goal. In most cases, the goal is a sale or a booking. However, depending on the need, a form fill-up, newsletter subscription, or live chat engagement, can all be targeted as goals.
Generally, it’s a very difficult process for companies to identify where their customers are dropping off and why. However, live chat applications provide real-time tracking of site visitors, sales funnel and allow organizations to understand where they are lacking.
#6: Provide Online Concierge Services
A hotel website should not only be used for bringing in new customers. In fact, it should also be focused on how to provide support and concierge services to their existing guests. For most patrons, if they need something, they will need to call the hotel reception or customer desk. However, during peak season, the hotel reception can be a very busy place.
As a support mechanism, live chat option on the website can offer concierge services to their existing customers. This will help relieve the pressure off the on-site hotel staff as well as offer an instant avenue to hotel patrons for resolving their issues. The live chat support executives can relay the message back to the hotel concierge so that issues can be properly handled.
Provide Delightful Customer Service Experience With Live Chat
The use of live chat has now spread across industries. So much that we now witness various travel and hotel websites add one too. That’s because they do not want their potential customers to leave their website without converting into a sales opportunity.
With a live chat for travel websites, your hotel business can:
- Reach visitors in real-time
- Resolve their question for hotel packages faster
- Provide information they seek instantly
- Help them make an informed decision
All these benefits from a live chat allow your hotel business to build a delightful customer service experience. One that prompts people to reach out to you again when planning their next trip to your city.
