Thanks to Call Center, Not Social Media, Hotel's Customer Care Team Drives Big Revenue

At European hospitality leader NH Hoteles, Alexandra da Silva is responsible for a customer care team that represents 1% of the workforce.

Since 2009, when the team accelerated its effort to drive actual business from the customer support function, it has driven 25% of the company’s annual revenue.

Talk about escaping the "cost center" stigma.

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Those pessimistic about achieving similar success in their organizations need not be skeptical, discouraged or intimidated. In achieving such significant—and rapid—success, da Silva, intriguingly, did not rely on a big budget. She did not make sweeping changes to the technology used by the customer care reps. She did not abandon the standards for customer service that build customer loyalty.

Admittedly, she—and NH Hoteles at large—did not sit on her hands. She did not wait for a bold declaration about escaping the cost center stigma to magically manifest itself as an improved bottom line.

In fact, when she first put forth the aggressive sales objectives, the concept was fairly foreign to her team.

"[The agents] were [simply] handling the telephone requests or the email requests," says da Silva in this exclusive CustomerManagementIQ.com interview. "If there was no availability in the [particular hotel location], there was no up-selling, no cross-selling."

That all changed in 2009, when da Silva championed the sales culture. In addition to getting her current reps behind the idea, she also focused hiring on those with commercial sales backgrounds, particularly those with experience in tough markets and cold-calling.

If the rep was capable of creating demand for something like a credit card, certainly, they would be able to coax a hotel patron to spend some extra money.

The corporate culture is also crucial—and a factor that simply cannot be ignored by those call center leaders who wish to spur change.

"In 2009, they began to understand this was more than [a response] center…this was the sales center of NH," explains da Silva, who clarifies, "They felt the importance came directly from general management. They need to feel that they are the most, or probably one of the most, important departments."

With the right talent in place and the corporation behind them, the next key step was identifying the communications channel best suited to sales objectives (particularly those that go beyond the initial reservation the customer wants to make).

While many customer management organizations are following the trend towards web- and social-based customer care, da Silva’s team is moving in the opposite direction: embracing live phone conversations.

For Da Silva, the traditional call center is unquestionably the best medium for converting customer care calls into sales calls.

"For us, the easiest channel to really sell, to really convince the customer is voice, the telephone," confirms da Silva. Her team is so convinced in the power of the phone for sales objectives that it looks for clues in email correspondence—such as the inclusion of a phone number in the customer’s email signature—that justify customer interest in making the dialogue audible.

The web, meanwhile, best works for trivial issues, such as reservation confirmations and basic information requests.

NH Hoteles’ successful utilization of traditional phone correspondence supports the same notion backed by companies like Google: relationships, which are crucial to understanding customers and ultimately driving business, are best forged via one-on-one phone contact.

The hazard of overlooking the traditional call center is especially significant given the role executive support plays in improving the customer care function. So many customer management leaders are campaigning for investment into social media and web-based channels, but it is important they do not undersell the importance of investment into the call center environment.

It is those investments that appear capable of paying dividends on the income statement.