Return on Experience (ROX) has been discussed widely lately and it is being referred to as “the new ROI” (Return on Investment).

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What is ROX?

Comparing with ROI, which directly measures the amount of return on a particular investment, ROX measures the soft business results that a great experience can generate. ROX is to deliver the right customer experience management strategy and to orchestrate and personalize the whole end-to-end customer experience moment to moment, at scale, on any channel, and in real-time (Forbes) with quantifiable results.

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Why Return on Experience is important? – Because consumers have changed!

Today, the development of technology has greatly empowered consumers, making them more discerning and demanding than ever before. In particular, access to technology means consumers demand a more personalized and social media-powered experience.

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What do your guests want?

Technologies and improvements have greatly increased speed, convenience, friendliness, and knowledge, which are the core expectations of consumers. In the meantime, it has also opened opportunities for companies to improve how customers interact with their brand.

The PWC Consumer Intelligence Survey states that 73% of all people consider customer experience as an important factor when they make purchase decisions, and many are willing to pay more money for greater convenience (43%), and friendly and welcoming experience (42%).

Take the U.S. customer as an example, as many as 80% of Americans identify speed, convenience, knowledgeable help, and friendly service as the most important elements that form positive customer experiences.

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Focus more on Customer Experience

Concerning the changes in consumer behavior and consumption trend, the recent Global Consumer Insights Survey 2019 points out that now companies need to focus more on customer experience. And by measuring ROX, you can better understand the return on the aspects that are related to how customers interact with your brand.

Both customers and employees play important roles in creating ROX. It’s a combination of the “customer journey” and the “employee journey”, and it provides internal as well as external data and insights, which can be used to identify the decisive experiences and the behaviors that produce the best results (Medium). Having these understandings, companies will be able to invest better in the areas that are crucial to the company’s success.

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Result Data of ROX

For the hospitality industry which emphasizes service and experience, ROX is even more critical and worthy to be looked into. The potential return on experience can be all-round and comprehensive. It can be：

• Increase of guest satisfaction
• Higher social media exposure
• Higher hotel ranking/score
• Spread word-of-mouth via satisfied guests and employees: brand fans will make 10% – 15% more visits and spend 10% – 15% more (Medallia).
• Retain more loyal guests and employees: Loyal customers spend 67% more than new ones; An increase of 10% of customer retention can result in a revenue increase of $60 million for the company. (GetFeedback)
• Increase direct sales & revenue: Charge 14% price premium (PWC); Cross-sell & upsell – 10% of total customers have made one extra purchase valuing at $500 each (GetFeedback). The case of BarkTalk shows a ROX of 495% (GetFeedback).

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How to get started?

To start to identify and measure ROX for your hotel, there are some questions to be answered (Medium):

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1) What should your customers feel and share in every moment that matters in the customer journey?

Identify the critical moments within the entire guest journey and point out what a satisfied guest should feel and share in these moments.

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2) How do you create a frictionless and coherent experience across your channels?

The experience of your guests should be consistent and smooth regardless of which channels they receive information from. You need to think about the guest experience as a whole and coordinate across departments to ensure consistency.

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3) How do you create the framework for your employees to better serve your customers? And, how can we do that in a smarter and more efficient way?

Great employee experience drives superb guest experience. Thus hotels should provide a framework and guidance for their staff in serving guests. Here, technology acts as an enabler. It helps employees do their job quicker and better.

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Use Guest Messaging to create & increase ROX

Guest Messaging for hotels allows you to message guests via various channels (Website Chat, SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp…) while guests can also reach hotels via the same channels in turn.

Ultimately, Guest Messaging aims to create seamless guest-hotel communication, so as to develop satisfying experiences for guests and bring revenue to hotels. We can see that Guest Messaging and ROX share the same goal. In fact, Guest Messaging is a tool, which can be used to improve the guest experience and increase ROX.

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How to create and increase ROX using Guest Messaging?

1. Build – Use Guest Messaging to build great experiences

Identify the critical moments before, during, and after the stay, and think about what a satisfied guest should feel and share in these moments.

To ensure these great moments happen, you need the help of Guest Messaging tools. For example, install a website chat on your website to help your staff be more available for potential guests and to react more quickly to their inquiries. This builds a satisfying booking experience and a good first impression of your hotel.‍

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2. Smooth – Use Guest Messaging to smooth the experience

After building critical moments, you need to connect the dots of key moments to secure a smooth overall experience. Employees are highly important when it comes to bridging the guest experience, particularly for hotels. Hotels rely heavily on their staff to provide service. Helpful and knowledgeable hotel staff make guests happy. To achieve better guest experience, you should create a framework for your staff to better serve guests. One example is to facilitate employees with good understandings of the hotel and the local area. You can utilize Guest Messaging to pre-set the answers to frequently asked questions so that your staff can be an expert when replying to guest inquiries.

On top of that, the coordination among staff and departments are also vital to establish consistent experiences. ROX is measured across the business and the hotel has to work together as a whole. You wouldn’t want your guests to be given different information from different staff or receive no follow-up after their requests are transferred to another staff member. Converse with guests on a Guest Messaging platform, which integrates all messages from various channels (website, email, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp…), this too will be helpful to your staff. They can handle all messages from all channels at once while cooperating on the platform through assigning and handing over tasks in a highly efficient way.  In return, your guests will harvest a smooth and satisfying journey.‍

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3. Personalize – Use Guest Messaging to personalize the guest experience

Personalization is the core of ROX. In order to build a great experience, you create customer profiles and activate tailored experiences. And this can be done by Guest Messaging.

Guest Messaging tools integrate with your hotel PMS seamlessly to automatically abstract guest data. Hotel staff can see the guest profiles when communicating with them to easily generate personalized conversations. By filtering the guest data, your employees can also anticipate different guests’ needs and send individualized offers to target guests specifically. In this way, guests’ needs are fulfilled even before they realize them, making guests’ experience more enjoyable.

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Overall, consumers today are more tech-savvy and social-powered than ever before. To satisfy their needs for more efficient, convenient, and personalized experience, Guest Messaging technology is a smart choice.

Talk to Bookboost and see how can we increase ROX for you!