Issue 34, June 2007
July Webinar:
Collecting and Measuring Automated
Customer Feedback
In today’s
world of technology we are often invited to attend free Webinars
sponsored by companies who sell/support the topic in one fashion or
another. Have you ever heard the phrase, “There’s no such thing as a free
puppy?" At the very least you will continue to receive e-mails from
these companies.
An IARE
Webinar covers a relevant industry topic, speakers are generally members
(or affiliated members), sharing their best practice, purpose for
implementation and the effect to their business. Most organizations
want to know “WHO” is doing something and “WHY” are they doing it as
part of their decision making process.
The next
scheduled Webinar is July 18, 2007 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. Our featured
company, Hilton International will present on
best practices concerning Collecting and Measuring Automated Customer
Feedback. You can gather your staff to participate in this highly
interactive session. The registration fee is $99 for members and $149
for non-members.
Click here for more
information and to register
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2007 Annual Conference Wrap Up
Submitted by:
Julie Silbar, Director, Call Center
Operations, Red Lion Hotels Corporation, Spokane, Washington, USA
If you
missed IARE 2007 in Tampa, FL you missed out! The team building event
at the aquarium was one of our best opening events! It was a fabulous
time to reconnect with colleagues, but also a perfect opportunity to
meet new faces. Monday’s opening session with Catch Your Limit
Consulting was a great way to start the day. It continued into the
evening with a wonderful event hosted by Nuance, where we were able to
eat, drink and be merry with our industry brethren. The networking was
fabulous throughout the conference, as always, and many people were able
to share and gain knowledge on all sorts of subjects. There were some
great discussions in the breakout sessions, where many business cards
exchanged hands. Overall, the 2007 IARE conference was a huge success!
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New IARE Members
Welcome to the following new
IARE Members who have joined in the past six months:
ACS
Avaya,
Inc.
Denihan Hospitality Group
Greyhound
Lines
Kimpton Hotels
Jabra
Mindshare Technologies
NICE
Systems
The
Peabody Hotels
WaterColor Inn and Resort
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IARE
Membership:
From the
perspective of a “Newby”
Submitted by: Robert Van
Bremen, Assistant Director of Revenue Management & Distribution,
Denihan Hospitality Group, New York, New York, USA
When I first
joined IARE in January, my thought was that it was going to be one of
those organizations like so many others. Great to be a part of, but so
big that you just get lost in the vastness of things that so often come
with them.
Well, I’m
please to say that I could not have been more wrong. From the Sunday
sessions were I had the opportunity to meet so many great new colleagues
and take advantage of learning new concepts from industry experts, to
the last day where as a new member we had an immediate opportunity to
impact the future of the organization and the leadership in the election
of our Board Members. The experience left you feeling that you had a
personal/professional stake in the overall success of the IARE
organization.
The most
important aspect of the conference for me was the opportunity to meet
people in similar positions within their organizations that are trying
or have already tried to do so many of the things that I want to
accomplish within my own reservations center in the near future. The
exchange of ideas was at times so overwhelming to a point that if you
didn’t start taking notes, you’d probably miss out on something that
would help guide you through those ideas and processes. You have no idea
what an advantage that is and I’m sure there are many who will agree
that you can’t do it all by yourself. You’ve got to be able to use all
the resources around you to push forward so many of the ideas that will
eventually become trends in our industry.
The planning
of the conference was especially well coordinated. The learning sessions
and discussion groups were point-on with issues and opportunities that
face all of us today. The Trade Show and all the participating vendors
gave you the opportunity to really see who’s out there that can help
your organization move forward and have the most impact using the
powerful technologies that have been developed. I can’t wait to start
working with those that will best fit the needs of my agents and our
hotels.
Lastly, the
IARE conference was “Fun”! The scavenger hunt Sunday night gave me the
opportunity to meet and really get to know the other attendees. It
absolutely made me feel so much more comfortable thru the rest of the
week. The dinner cruise was a blast. I still feel from all the dancing a
slight twinge in my hip when I move. What a great way to wind down after
a long day of learning.
To sum up, I
feel that joining IARE will not only help me immediately in moving my
reservations sales center to another level, but will help support me in
the growth of my professional career. Thank You for making a difference!
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Shhhhhh! You Say We Have to Downsize?
Submitted by:
Liane Potter, Hilton Reservations & Customer Care, Tallinn, Estonia
Downsizing……that's a scary word to see on the Project
plan. Recently, our company went through a significant change the
resulted in positions at all levels being eliminated. My first reaction
was to find the best method of presentation to our affected team
members. It is a scary experience and as a company, how we choose to
handle this is in our 100% control. The best I can offer as a leader is
to provide information and help to ensure those affected, personally
feel safe and in control of how to proceed to their next step in life.
A Communication Board was put in place that became the
focal point in our center. We provide in writing, accurate details of
the progression of the change. This allows us to keep the information
coming to everyone at the same time and time the communications
effectively with the temperature in the office. We also provided the
options for people to leave questions for me. I would then post the
questions and answers on a continuous basis. How has this
worked? Superbly! We have a few questions (hard ones) the first few days
and when I posted the answers honestly and as thoroughly as possible,
the questions slowed. This also gave me the information that I needed to
enhance on the board in order for everyone to feel they had the best
answers known at the time.
Second, we decided to create the atmosphere of marketing
our displaced team members to the hiring community. We interviewed
companies both in the call center and other hospitality industries to
see if we would be interested in offering them a chance to come into our
center and offer information to our displaced team members. The goal was
to have our team members interview the companies rather than the
companies interviewing the team members.
We provided resume preparation classes, conducted our
Career Day, and then conducted interview enhancement training. This made
the team members really feel very valued and demonstrated to the other
team members in the office our level of professionalism.
A risk…..other team members not displaced might want to
participate. We gave the companies a list of the displaced team members
that could participate and monitored the day’s activities. We did not
want to base our decision on what might happen and proceeded with the
plan. Not one incident happened.
What were our results? Our displaced team member’s
performance did not drop while working out their notice, attendance
dropped only slightly, there were no increases in resignations, and the
environment in the office is sad for those leaving and proud for the way
our company is handling this change.
This process worked so well, we
will be using this again should the need arise. The entire office of
team members saw us follow through with our plans and the displaced team
members are actually excited and content at starting another job
somewhere else. They are definitely going out on top.
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The Basics of
Bringing New Levels of Accuracy, Reliability, and Ease of Use to
Speech-Based Self-Service Applications
Submitted by:
Tim Gallagher, Strategic Account Manager, Nuance Communications,
Addison, Texas, USA
In today’s
competitive business environment, customer care is a highly effective
means of achieving differentiation
and winning customer loyalty. As a result, speech applications are
playing an increasingly
pivotal role in defining the customer care experience. Companies are
investing in speech-based self-service
solutions to meet growing demand for convenient 24x7 access to
information, transactions, and
customer service. The most successful of these speech solutions balance
automation with usability to deliver self-service interactions designed and managed from
the customer’s point of view.
Relying heavily on speech
recognition, these solutions enable more efficient phone-based
interactions that result in improved customer satisfaction and
significant cost savings. Companies
use best-of-breed speech recognition software to increase the efficiency
of
self-service solutions, helping them deliver a consistently excellent
customer experience.
Speech recognition technology uses an engine that takes the caller’s
spoken input and matches it to what is in the grammar. This in-turn
will let the application know what to do next, whether it is to play
another prompt, gather a piece of information such as a reservation
date/time, or transfer the caller to a specific destination…all without
agent intervention. It is important to note that you must be using
technology that provides the highest accuracy, reliability and has the
greatest ease of use. If not, you will end up with caller frustration.
Just at paramount to the technology, is application design. You could
be using the best speech technology, but if your application is not
designed to the highest standards using proven methodologies and
best-practices, your callers will experience something less than your
customer care standards. In the next newsletter we will explore what
applications are best served using speech recognition and what your
industry is experiencing when it comes to ROI and customer satisfaction.
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