There's no industry that DEMANDS customer service more than the hospitality industry – hotels, restaurants, and related sectors. The hospitality industry faces the challenge of providing reliable consistent service to its customers, across many properties that are often scattered across different parts of the world. In addition, when their customers are on the property, they interact with different parts of the organization – with the restaurants, in the recreational areas, in their rooms, at the reception, and so on. Customers want to be recognized, and to be treated in a caring, personalized, and consistent manner at all times.

Some of the key customer interaction challenges institutions in this domain face are:

Differentiated customer service - To optimize each customer relationship through differential treatment. For an organization today the major challenge is to cut through the clutter of the existing product and service offers. The next logical step for the organization is to train and enable its agents to be able to use the information in the most appropriate manner. For instance, the organization can have real-time suggestions appearing on its agents' screen, prompting them to interact with the customer in a specific way.

Expansive customer base and HNI’s - The need to tackle an expansive customer base by automating the routine queries to save agent time and serve the HNI’s on a priority basis.

Abandoned call rates - To reduce abandoned call rates and long wait times and enable the agents to handle calls during peak hours.

Multiple touch points - In an organization specific situation, the challenge was to unify multiple touch points and intelligently route all inbound interactions to the relevant agent / hotel.

Convenience - Frequent guests want to be able to conduct their business with the establishment in a quick and painless manner. Be it making a reservation or checking-in at the counter. The frequent traveler does not want to load his memory or his PDA with details of individual hotel numbers. And a good way to delight him would be to have a pre-filled in registration form awaiting his arrival, so his check-in time is reduced. Centralized reservation services through multiple channels, integrated with the property management back-end that allows agents to recognize individual customers are being increasingly used to deliver convenience.

Recognition - Customers want to be recognized when they arrive at a property or call for reservation. They do not want to go through all the details – name and address, corporate tariff structure, room preference, each and every time they call or arrive. Customer interaction technology is being increasingly used to ensure that agents in the Contact Center, front office staff, and other hotel employees have access to a unified view of the customer that helps them recognize the customer and deliver the appropriate service.

Personalization - Most guests tend to have a specific set of preferences. The challenge for the business is to ensure that such information is captured and presented to their staff that is interacting with the customer in a manner that enables personalized service to the customer. For example, the agent can offer the kind of room preference and other value-added services in a proactive manner based on customer history made available in real-time – generating true customer delight.