10 signs that show why hotels need to have a chat widget on their website

Shall we speak of them?

Your website is an ideal way to present the hotel and its commodities. But your guests want more than just looking around the website. They want to talk, ask questions and have a solution to their problems. In our fast-paced, digital world, the biggest challenge hotels face is to serve their guests in a timely and personal manner. Customers demand immediate service so, the response time of “within 24 hours” is no longer acceptable. With a chat widget right on your website, this problem would be instantly erased!

As a hotelier, you may think you have everything under control, but there are some signs that may indicate that you need to have a chat widget on your website to help you carry out your duties smoothly.

Shall we speak of them?

1. You don’t answer in a jiffy

Any delay in responding to your guests’ queries could be drastic, with the great majority of users expecting a response within 24 hours. Social media is the one to blame! It has completely changed the face of customer service and the way guests interact with hotels. Instead of dialling the call centre number and going through the pain of dealing with agents with little or no knowledge of their problems, customers prefer to chat with you through a website widget because they know that earns them an immediate response and their queries are solved within a blink of an eye!

2. Many visitors, but where are the bookings?

Did you know that the travel industry suffers from 81% abandoned carts? Indeed, this industry spends billions of dollars every year driving traffic to their websites, yet 81% of visitors still leave before completing their booking.

The problem is not the traffic, it’s the lack of assistance! Adding a website chat plugin can do the trick. Customers have questions in real-time but no answer or way to get answered too. Adding chat support using a widget is a great option to solve this. Indeed, the importance of a fast response can never be taken too lightly because it directly affects the chances of getting the booking completed.

3. Customer care is only available in 1 language

A survey found that 72.4% of consumers said they would be more likely to buy a product with information in their own language and 56.2% said that the ability to obtain information in their own language is more important than price.

With that said, your customer support should be available on your users’ mother tongue. A widget can help with that and provide you important feedback like if your website needs more polished translations for a certain language or if you only need to communicate in one specific language — allowing you to optimize costs!

4. Too much money spent on customer service — My question is: why?

Chat is a cost-effective communication channel compared to other customer support. From ROI perspective it has a return of around 300%. It is cheaper and easier to implement than email or phone support. Integrating the widget into the websites can boost your brand image and can streamline customer support processes. Not to mention that it facilitates the work of customer care agents, in the way that it promptly asks all the necessary information so that, if necessary, the intervention is as efficient as possible and without repetitions.

5. You are not where your guests are

It’s important to be where your customers are. And your customers are increasingly on social networks and messaging apps, so of course, customer support on these channels is indispensable. Although many guests still use channels such as email or phone for customer support, instant messaging platforms like Messenger or a widget on your website are always more appealing to those looking for a quick response to a problem.

6. You are just like your competitors…

Many hotels still do not use any sort of chat plugin on their websites to provide real-time support to their customers. This means that if you do opt to install chat widget on your site — and you should — chances are good that you will have an advantage over your competition in terms of friendly, instant support access. You will also have more opportunities to engage your website visitors proactively and have more bookings before the competition does.

7. You don’t receive most of your guests with a “Welcome back”

Building customer loyalty in the hotel industry is one of the most important steps for a hotel’s success.

How can you increase guests’ loyalty? With a chat widget on your website, you can provide your customers with immediate access to help which is a great way to gain their trust and loyalty. Help users quickly solve problems and find answers to their questions to increase engagement and customer satisfaction. So simple, yet most hotels don’t do it!

8. You have no data to personalise the guests’ journey

This is the age of using and collecting data, right? It’s the new key to staying ahead!

Use the latest technologies to store and use guests’ information. This will help you find innovative ways to encourage guests to book your hotel property for the next visit. For instance, with a widget you can have access to important KPI’s such as: the volume of most asked questions (FAQs) that provides a great insight meaning you can measure the users’ intentions, see what is not being clearly perceived on your website, what your marketing team is failing to communicate and users’ pain points that you might not even have a clue that existed.

9. No platform to manage all the conversations — Chaos Alert!

The synergy between channels is vital, to, guarantee and standardize the same experience to every guest in whichever channel or platform they choose. Many hospitality brands still lack the software to connect all channels of customer care together to foster efficiency. Consequently, interactions with guests aren’t delivered efficiently and intelligently across all touch points.

10. You think people want to talk to you

We know you are nice, but times have changed. People are ready to talk to chatbots, in fact, they prefer it!

According to a report, 63 percent of people would consider messaging an online chatbot to communicate with a business or brand. Online chat and messaging apps are the preferred way for 29 percent of people to contact retailers when making a purchase decision. What are you waiting for?

What’s next?

In addition to these 10 signs that you should start using a chat widget, there are many other reasons to do so in order to improve your customer care and increase direct bookings.

If you want to know more advantages of using a solution like HiJiffy, schedule a demo here — No strings attached!

NB: This is a viewpoint by Mariana Marques from HiJiffy. HiJiffy brings chat to the hospitality and travel industry, enabling customers to effectively connect with you through instant messaging apps.