On Hotel Customer Relationship Management

Importance of Customer Relationship Management in Star Hotels

David, a professor of marketing at Wharton Business School? Bell believes that the lifetime value of customers is particularly meaningful for those industries with high costs of acquiring new customers and maintaining customer relationships. Bell said that customer lifetime value is more useful when enterprises use "asymmetric distribution system" to handle their business. Taking the hotel industry as an example, a few customers promote most of the business of the enterprise, so the enterprise can influence its consumption behavior through rewards and incentives. According to the investigation and analysis of 225 customer relationship management projects in North America in 200 1, Insight Technology Group found that the goal of enterprise customer relationship management has changed from efficiency to benefit. Based on the investigation of the present situation of customer relationship management in Jinhua star-rated hotels, this paper puts forward that star-rated hotels should attach importance to the application of 4R theory in CRM.

Problems and causes of customer relationship management in star-rated hotels

(A) Analysis of the main problems

Through questionnaires and interviews with Jinhua International Hotel, Guo Mao Jinglan Hotel, Today Hotel and five-star hotels, it is found that most of them are using CRM. CRM has played an active role in customer maintenance and retention, and brought corresponding benefits to star-rated hotels. At the same time, it is found that CRM also has many problems in the management of star-rated hotels.

Question 1: In the collected questionnaire, only 4 CRM users have used it for more than five years, 3 CRM users have used it for less than five years, 3 CRM users have used it for less than 1 year, and 5 CRM users have never used it. It shows that only a few star-rated hotels attach great importance to CRM, and some star-rated hotels do not realize the role of CRM, and the concept of customer relationship management needs to be strengthened.

Question 2: Among the hotels that use CRM, 9 think CRM is useful for hotel customer management, 1 thinks it is of little effect, and others are left blank. In today's fierce competition in the hotel industry, it shows that most star-rated hotels have a good sense of customer management and competition, and realize that customers are the most important resources of hotels. For example, Jinglan Hotel, Guo Mao, Jinhua thinks that the key to the hotel's customer relationship management is to provide good service and make customers feel at home. At the same time, the survey results also show that some star-rated hotels have doubts about the function and role of CRM, and CRM itself still needs to be improved and improved in many aspects, especially its marketing management function has not been well played.

Question 3: Four star-rated hotels only use CRM for data collection, five do data collection and customer retention, and six are unclear. Only a few star-rated hotels collect comprehensive customer information, while other star-rated hotels only collect some basic information of customers, and the information such as customer behavior characteristics and hobbies is relatively weak. As a result, CRM has become a warehouse for storing basic customer information. If the customer information collection is not comprehensive, the hotel will not be able to provide targeted and personalized marketing services for customers, nor will it be able to provide advanced services for customers who come again, and customer satisfaction will be reduced.

Question 4: Only eight star-rated hotels communicate with customers frequently, while the other seven star-rated hotels only communicate with customers occasionally, and some communicate very little. In star-rated hotels that communicate with customers, the communication targets are mainly government tourists and corporate business tourists. Because government tourists and business tourists are relatively stable, star-rated hotels must focus on development and maintenance, while individual tourists and leisure tourists have less communication because these tourists are relatively mobile. At the same time, telephone communication and greeting card communication are the main ways to communicate with customers, which are relatively simple and the effect is not satisfactory. The survey found that when contacting customers, customers generally said that they would come again if they had the opportunity, which was relatively reluctant. This may be directly related to the simple communication mode and untimely communication. Other star-rated hotels only communicate with customers occasionally, saying that the awareness of star-rated hotels to actively maintain and maintain old customers is still relatively weak, and they also lack the awareness of awakening dormant customers. The marketing concept of star-rated hotels is backward, and the idea of waiting for customers is more serious. Without active service marketing, customers are easily lost.

Question 5: Among the ways to retain old customers, only 65,438+0 companies use member clubs to retain customers, and most hotels use low-level customer loyalty programs, such as discounts, telephone communication or sending ordinary greeting cards. Low-level customer loyalty programs are easy to imitate. Due to the lack of personalized and targeted "one-to-one" service marketing, it is difficult to win the favor of customers, and the customer loyalty programs needs to be further improved.

Question 6: Most hotels think that the key to customer relationship management is to do a good job in service, make customers feel at home, and need to do a good job in customer communication and customer history management, which shows that star-rated hotels have attached great importance to customer service, but it is a pity that six hotels have not paid attention to customer service and communication, which shows that even star-rated hotels need to strengthen their awareness of customer service.

(B) Analysis of the main reasons

1. Lack of overall marketing concept. All-staff marketing means that all hotel employees must have a customer-oriented consciousness to guide their work. Its essence is to achieve horizontal and vertical coordination and work together to achieve hotel goals. Vertical coordination means that top-down or bottom-up must be smooth and cannot be blocked; Horizontal coordination means active cooperation and cooperation between departments, and there is no gap between departments. All-staff marketing needs the customer relationship between departments, and the mission of each functional department has changed from satisfying the boss to satisfying other departments. According to the concept of all-staff marketing, from the perspective of hotel service content, the service content provided by star-rated hotels to customers is diverse, including front desk, catering, guest rooms, recreation and other services. Different service contents must be completed by many service personnel, which requires all hotel employees to participate in customer relationship management. In terms of service process, the hotel service process includes doorman helping customers with luggage, filling in customer information at the front desk, waiter taking customers to the guest room, floor attendant arranging room supplies, restaurant entertaining customers for meals, and leisure department arranging customers for fun, which requires service personnel to do a good job in service handover at every link of the process. In order to prevent the lack of service, all departments of the hotel are required to work together, and all departments should actively cooperate with other departments to do a good job in customer service.

2. Lack of active service awareness. The purpose of customer relationship management is to achieve the goal of star-rated hotels by providing customers with satisfactory and even surprising services. This requires hotel service personnel to make a good prediction of customer service, think about what customers think, worry about their urgency and provide services to customers in time before they put forward service requirements. A considerable number of hotels provide services to customers, which basically belong to coping services, that is, when customers ask for services, they will provide corresponding services to customers. An important reason is that we haven't collected customer information, especially some subtle information of customers, such as hobbies. At the same time, service personnel lack customer awareness, and what they think about every day is how to complete the work assigned by the supervisor, rather than how to serve customers well. Therefore, when the old customers come back, they still need to ask the service personnel for service, and the most basic database function of CRM has not yet played a role, which is easy to cause low customer satisfaction.

3. Insufficient training of service personnel. To make CRM work effectively, service personnel need to master CRM not only from the technical level, but also from the management level. However, due to the low status and high mobility of hotel service personnel, the management does not attach importance to the training of service personnel, which leads to the fact that CRM is mostly used to collect basic information of customers, but not enough attention is paid to the training of customer information collection and application, which is particularly important in management. The consequence is that although the hotel has the form of CRM, it is difficult to play its role in how to use CRM, how to use CRM for customer management, how to use CRM for customer personalized marketing, and the significance of CRM for customer development and retention is not prominent.

4. Lack of understanding of the role and significance of CRM. Some star-rated hotels do not use CRM, or use CRM mainly to collect customer information, do not use CRM platform for personalized service marketing, and do not "one-on-one" communication with customers. One of the important reasons is that they do not fully realize the role and significance of CRM, and CRM has become the decoration of hotels. In fact, in today's fierce competition for customers, only by fully understanding and understanding customers can we formulate marketing strategies that customers like and win their support and recognition.

5. This kind of influence is difficult to quantify. An important reason why star-rated hotels don't pay enough attention to CRM is that although CRM has a good effect on customer development and maintenance, it is difficult to determine the specific quantitative indicators. There are some foreign data that can prove the benefits that CRM can bring to hotels, but there are few domestic empirical data. From abroad, the overall effect of CRM implementation is not very ideal. Therefore, star-rated hotels attach little importance to CRM.

The Strategy of 4R Theory in Customer Relationship Management of Star Hotels

4R theory put forward by American scholar Tang. E.Schultz, that is, relevance, reaction, relationship and return, is the key for star-rated hotels to implement customer relationship management and improve customer loyalty. The author believes that the application of 4R theory needs to closely contact the national conditions and regional cultural characteristics, and master a set of methods and approaches.

(1) Relevance: Integrate hotel service resources to improve service satisfaction.

In a highly competitive market, customers are dynamic. In order to improve customer loyalty and win long-term stable customers, it is necessary to establish a relationship with customers in an effective way, form a relationship of mutual assistance and mutual demand, and connect customers with hotels, thus greatly reducing the possibility of customer loss. Therefore, star-rated hotels should provide relevant services to customers. Mainly manifested in:

1. Relevance of service content-provide targeted services that meet customer preferences. The service content required by different customers is different. For example, some customers want the hotel to provide manual laundry service instead of machine laundry service, and some customers prefer to use healthy pillows instead of silk cotton pillows. To this end, star-rated hotels should provide customers with extraordinary services, small services, family-style services and hobby services, so that customers feel that he is unique and he is the master. Therefore, ready-made services can not be imposed on customers, but should help customers get the services they want.

2. Comprehensive service-providing customers with a complete set of services. Serve customers with the mode of system integration, provide customers with integrated and systematic solutions, establish organic links, form a mutually beneficial relationship, and ensure that the solutions and all integrated parts are the best, thus forming the best overall service. To this end, star-rated hotels should carefully understand what kind of services customers want, carefully design and fully present the services provided by the hotel, pay attention to every detail, pay attention to every reaction of customers, eliminate possible doubts, resolve possible disputes, and provide thoughtful and exquisite services; At the same time, all the charging standards of star-rated hotels should be clearly understood, all the service contents should be clear to customers at a glance, all the service processes should be completed in one go, and all the service actions should be consistent, so that customers can enjoy the services of star-rated hotels at ease.

3. Related to customer expectations. Different customers have different hobbies and consumption levels. The service provided by the hotel should meet customers' expectations, be considerate of customers' needs and enjoy the sincerity of service.

4. Customer communication. In the process of hotel communication with customers, the content and form of communication should be related to customers' hobbies, so that customers can keep in touch with the hotel for a long time from caring about their hobbies, and communicate in a personalized and timely manner, so as to achieve diversity in form and pertinence in content.

Basic conditions for implementation: call customer information at any time. Every employee of a star-rated hotel has the obligation to actively collect customer information, and the customer information of all departments should be summarized to the marketing department in time, updated in time, as complete and accurate as possible, and classified according to certain subdivision standards, and all departments of the hotel can call customer information at any time. Only in this way can we provide customers with advanced services that surprise them again, and CRM can really play the role of marketing management. Customer segmentation. According to customers' ability to pay, hobbies, preferences and personality, customers are subdivided to provide them with the services they want. Segmentation of regional service consumption. According to customers' service expectations, for example, floors can be divided into smoking and non-smoking areas, male floors and female floors.

(b) Countermeasures: improve the information system and improve the timeliness and pertinence of services.

Response is the hotel's marketing strategy and the ability to respond quickly to the ever-changing customer needs and meet them quickly. Therefore, star-rated hotels should implement fast service marketing strategy and strive to meet customers' personalized, diversified and changeable needs faster, more effectively and more accurately than their competitors. The characteristics of fast service marketing are: the forerunner of service prediction. When contacting with customers, service personnel should predict in advance what services customers need, especially for customers who come again and loyal customers. As long as the customer sends out a signal that hotel services are needed, such as online booking, it should clearly understand what services the customer needs and dislikes by querying CRM, without requiring the customer to ask for services again. The rapidity of service preparation. After completing the customer service forecast, quickly prepare the service that customers need, reduce the waiting time of customers, and let customers enjoy the service in the shortest time; Accuracy of service response. When the customer needs service, the service content provided by the service personnel to the customer is completely what the customer needs and is completely provided for the customer; Handle service accidents in good faith. When the service provided to customers causes customer dissatisfaction, we should deal with it in good faith and put the responsibility on ourselves to satisfy customers; Timeliness of return visit communication. After the customer leaves, pay a return visit to the customer within two weeks, exchange opinions with the customer sincerely and ask for improvement suggestions.

The basic condition of realizing fast service marketing: empathy-consider the problem from the customer's interests. Hotel service personnel should adhere to the concept of customer-centered, think about what customers think, worry about what customers are anxious, and think more about their needs, rather than how much trouble it will add to me. Treat customers as their own relatives and serve hotel customers well. Establish quality service standards. Specify the time to provide services to customers and reduce the waiting time of customers; Set a standard service process, so that every action pursues perfection; Service personnel should have a good service mentality, and it is their pleasure to serve customers.

(3) Relationship: expand the cultural resources of contacts and improve the credit system.

Relationship refers to relationship marketing. "The foundation of relationship marketing is credit and commitment", which are important ties to maintain customer relationship and loyalty. Due to the star-rated hotels, except for a few frequent visitors, most customers are highly mobile. Star hotels should not only maintain their old customers, but also actively develop new customers on the premise of maintaining old customers. At the same time, they also need to make old customers have a word-of-mouth effect, let old customers drive new customers, let individual customers become regular customers, and let first-time customers become regular customers. Therefore, star hotels must implement relationship marketing.

Star hotels need to do the following work to implement relationship marketing:

1. Timeliness of relationship maintenance. Whether it is a new customer or an old customer, when the customer leaves the hotel, he should follow up the emotional communication and emotional contact with the customer in time. Let the customer feel that the hotel attaches importance to him and hopes to continue to maintain the relationship. For dormant customers, the hotel must communicate with them in time to make them become repeat customers.

2. Progressive relationship upgrade. On the one hand, it is not enough to maintain customer relationship only by discount sales, and emotional marketing is more important. As long as star-rated hotels and customers form an emotional relationship, mutual assistance and mutual benefit, the relationship will last for a long time. On the other hand, the upgrade of customer rewards. In addition to implementing the hotel's usual customer upgrade plan, for valuable old customers, we can give customers a higher level of reward and surprise them by fictional reward levels. Then it is to establish a hierarchical management system for old customers. The same old customers, different old customers have different contributions to the hotel. Hotels should classify different old customers and give them different honor and reward policies. For example, the old customer of 1 year is a copper customer, the customer of 2-5 years is a silver customer, the customer of 6 6- 10/year is a gold customer, and the customer of1year and above is a diamond customer, and the honorary certificate of lifelong customer is issued.

3. The word-of-mouth effect of relationship-driven marketing. The customer development funds of star hotels are always limited. If the hotel wants to develop, it needs to rely on the word-of-mouth effect of existing customers and let old customers drive new customers, so that the number of hotel customers will continue. In order to let more old customers drive new customers, star-rated hotels should give these old customers some rewards, so that they can better serve the development of the hotel through rewards.

4. Commitment to relationship assurance. Relationship commitment is one of the most critical concepts in relationship marketing, and it is an important factor to determine whether the customer relationship can last. One party to the transaction thinks that the current relationship is so important that it will try its best to maintain it, that is, the commitment party thinks that this relationship is worth maintaining for a long time. The promises of star-rated hotels should be fulfilled, such as the timeliness of the promises, the feasibility of the standards of the promises, the diversity of the promises, and the expected surprises of the promises.

The basic condition to realize the relationship marketing of star-rated hotels is to improve the quality of employees. Because employees directly deal with customers, the quality of employees is directly related to the maintenance and maintenance of customers. We must do a good job in employee training so that employees can fully master the theory and skills of CRM. Let customers feel the concrete benefits. It is difficult to arouse customers' loyalty only by discount and general emotional communication, and it is necessary to develop from financial reward plan to establishing customer clubs. At present, club (clubhouse) marketing is a network marketing method that is paid more and more attention and used. This method has been widely concerned at home and abroad. At the same time, it is necessary to implement the customer upgrade incentive plan. Only by letting customers see not only the specific financial benefits, but also the communication platform for developing interpersonal relationships can we continue to attract customer loyalty. Establish a hotel website and open a customer forum. Customers can not only place orders online, but also make comments and suggestions on star-rated hotels and discuss them. Hold customer activities every year. Every year, we will focus on inviting old customers and promising customers who have made great contributions and have been loyal for years to participate in the activities organized by the hotel, which can not only exchange experiences, but also carry out emotional marketing and expand business opportunities. Pay equal attention to welcoming and sending. "Don't start ignoring customers after paying the bill", sales means the beginning of customer relationship. The hotel has always paid attention to welcoming guests and paying equal attention to seeing them off. Paying attention to seeing them off is a very effective means to improve the customer's return rate. Therefore, when the customer checks out, the hotel manager should not only see the customer off, but also give him a small commemorative gift to remember the hotel from now on.

(d) Return: Pay attention to customer feedback and market demand, and pursue the final return.

Hotel returns. Reward is the premise for the hotel to provide customers with satisfactory services, and it is a kind of reward given by customers to the hotel on the premise of realizing customer satisfaction and social satisfaction. Pursuing returns is the driving force for the marketing development of star-rated hotels, and it is also a necessary condition for maintaining customer relations. Hotels should get market returns for providing services to customers, and regard market returns as the power and source for enterprises to further develop and maintain their relationship with the market.

Customers return goods. The customer's return is to increase the delivered value of the customer by increasing the total value of the customer's purchase and reducing the total cost of the customer's purchase. Through the effective return of customers to the hotel, the emotional connection between star-rated hotels and customers will be further strengthened, so as to realize the lifelong value of customers. "A competent hotel earns customers money for a lifetime, and a hotel without the ability earns customers money once".