Hospitality Highlight: Hilton Houston SW

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September 23, 2016

As a Hilton property, the Houston Southwest always seeks to “Make it Right” with their guests. Saud and his team know that “Make it Right” means something different for every guest. Sometimes, it means texting well-wishes to guests in town to care for family and friends at the regional healthcare centers in the area. Other times, it means delivering Valentine’s chocolates and flowers from spouses back home. Or it means sharing some rewards points to guests who loved the stay, but found the TV to be a bit grainy. Whatever “Make it Right” means for an individual guest, Saud and his team have successfully used Kipsu to deliver top-tier, personal service.

This kind of success takes work, but Kipsu removes a lot of the friction from that work with easy-to-use interfaces and a proactive customer success team. For newcomers to Kipsu’s method of in-the-moment interaction, Saud stresses the importance of communication, both with the team behind the counter and the guests at the property. While Kipsu is “super easy to use,” it did take a conscious commitment to integrate the tool into the hotel team’s daily lives. Saud explains that “communication is key. We do a standup every day to make sure Management and Agents are all on the same page.”

Saud’s team operates in a culture of congratulations and empowerment, which shows itself in the many instances where the hotel exceeds its daily goals to connect with guests through Kipsu. In our chat with Saud, he was quick to praise four team members in particular. Maria, Madison, Jennifer and Van all keep track of the pulse of the Hilton Houston SW using Kipsu, and are then “empowered to make any decision to make sure our guests are happy by keeping the hotel policies and procedures in mind.”

As our readers know, there is no magical one-size-fits-all, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants-type hotel. Concerns and rubs are bound to arise from time-to-time. Industry research tells us that it is as important (if not more important) to resolve guest issues as it is to prevent them from occurring in the first place. In a 2012 J.D. Power & Associates survey of over 60,000 U.S. hotel guests, they found that, when a problem arose, the average guest experience score dropped from 757 out of 1,000 to 573. But when an issue was successfully resolved, that average score shot up 842, higher than if there had been no issue in the first place.

Of course, it’s not best-practice to plant guest issues so that your team can rock some slam-dunk resolutions. But with a tool like Kipsu helping Saud and his team identify, engage, and resolve problems during the guest’s stay, they can continue to provide excellent service that exemplifies their “Make it Right” commitment. That’s what top-tier service looks like: when a hotel team (1) communicates with guests in the guests’ chosen channel, (2) communicate clearly with one another and the guest, and (3) are empowered to address guests’ needs in order to make it right. Congratulations to Saud, Maria, Madison, Jennifer, and Van on their ongoing success with Kipsu!

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