Mr. Gambhir

Social Media & PR

Turning Social Feedback into Social Content

By Ashish Gambhir, Co-founder , newBrandAnalytics

The breadth of online guest feedback shared online is massive and is showing no signs of slowing down. Being able to mine the insight, extricate the rich details, and aggregate the feedback into industry-specific operational categories is a distinct competitive advantage. Only when armed with this information can hotel executives effectively determine how best to deliver an experience their guests will enjoy and, just as important, talk about.

As Ken Blanchard, critically-acclaimed author and management expert is quoted as saying: “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” With the explosion of social media and consumer generated content, Blanchard’s words ring louder and clearer than ever anticipated.

After all, who would have imagined that Facebook would amass more than 800 million active users? Who would have thought that TripAdvisor would now house more than 60 million reviews and opinions? Or that these online reviews would now be widely considered a top influencer of purchase decisions? According to the latest Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey of over 25,000 Internet consumers from 50 countries, recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are now the most trusted forms of advertising.

When you think about online guest feedback, it is important to understand commentary beyond the usual suspects like Facebook and Twitter. While these sites share a plethora of customer insights, additional conversation about your hotel is taking place in a variety of hotel specific domains as well. These include:

• eCommerce Sites: Sites where travelers go to make purchase decisions, such as Expedia, Hotels.com, and Travelocity, feature guest reviews delivered at point-of-purchase.

• Hotel Review Sites: Sites such as TripAdvisor offer a forum through which consumers can read and write reviews. While this feedback influences purchase decisions, no transactions take place on these sites.

• Individual Hotel Websites: Many hotels, such as Starwood, Marriott and Four Seasons have added an online customer review section to their own website.

While the flood of online commentary from these sources may seem ominous, hotel executives need to understand that the online conversations and posts are also the industry’s most robust source for market research. It is essentially the next generation of a focus group. The unstructured, real time feedback gives hotel executives the most comprehensive under-the-hood look at the experience they’re delivering to their guests. The negative themes point out areas in need of change and improvement; positive comments highlight what guests most appreciate about your property and their stay. Realized for most every property, feedback on the web is the best, and fast growing source, of customer experience data.

Social media needs to transition from a marketing tactic to an operational imperative

For some reason, the really negative reviews have a way of navigating through an organization. As a result, it is commonly considered to be true that people go online to vent. The latest research on reviews online, however, indicates they are quite balanced and if anything, favor towards more positive commentary. This means that when hoteliers go online and search for the best rated properties in a market, chances are that you’ll see reviews that highlight outstanding service, product quality and an overall positive guest experience. So if it is good content or reviews you are after, focus on service and operations. It is the root source for any commentary, and will be the foundation of positive content about your property on the web if executed well. Similar to the “If you build it, they will come” Field of Dreams mantra, we at newBrandAnalytics believe that if you execute well, they will write.

And there is no better place to learn how best to execute well than from guest feedback. Since guests share this information willingly on the web, their feedback typically goes beyond a simple rating of the hotel, offering deeper insight into the aspects of their stay which are important to them and to their overall satisfaction with a hotel. By understand the commentary, hotel executives get a closer look at the experience drivers that are impactful. Look at these excerpts, for instance:

- I loved my stay at this hotel. First of all, it is very dog friendly - I think my dogs had a better time than I did.

- The XXX Hotel is a first class experience from the moment you enter the front door. The sweet smell of burning wood from the huge fireplace in the sitting room and the complimentary champagne on check in is just a sample of the wonderfulness of this experience.

- If it’s the bright lights and Broadway shows that brings you to the big apple, nothing beats this hotel in terms of location. As they say, location is everything and this hotel is in the thick of it.

- The moment we pulled up out front we were greeted by two very friendly bellmen. We then were helped inside and the kindness just continued throughout our stay.

Going well beyond a simple star rating of the hotel’s attributes and amenities, these examples show how unfiltered, unsolicited feedback can bring outstanding information to you and your team. Only in the detail can one realize the drivers of a guest’s satisfaction.

While successful hoteliers embrace this type of positive feedback, they also realize the value offered in the not-so-great reviews. Clearly, through negative feedback, specifics can be realized about areas in need of improvement and opportunities to attract more business and improve reputation.

Tools are available to aggregate, organize, and analyze real-time guest feedback from online worlds. True value is realized, however, when the tool can effectively turn guest feedback into actionable data. Whether your property is independent or part of a group, actionable data will help you identify strengths and weaknesses by department and service category, benchmark performance against competitors and affiliated properties, and engage brand advocates and re-engage detractors.

Let’s walk through a few steps to show you how this works. Here is a sample customer review of a hotel:

Stayed 3 nights earlier this month, location was okay… About 4 blocks from the metro, but no nightlife or dining around at night. Next time, I’ll probably get a room at the their other location in the city. We did get an upgrade, but I didn’t care for the Jacuzzi in the room, I wish they had a separate shower stall since the tub was huge and slippery. The tv in the room was small! It’s almost the same size as my computer monitor. The bed was comfy, sheets were soft, towels were a bit rough. You can also get free wi-fi if you join their loyalty program. Everything in the area closes at 10pm! We would’ve gotten something from room service, but the late night menu wasn’t much.

The first step is to dig into the rich insight of a review, capturing every relevant detail within the post. For instance, information revealed in this entry includes:

• Location – Proximity to public transit is a plus; lack of nearby nightlife a detractor

• Intent to Return – Unlikely due to location

• Room Amenities – Unnecessary room add-on

• Bathroom Amenities – Slippery floor

• Room Electronic – TV is too small

• Room Bed – Comfortable linens

• Loyalty Program – Customer recommendation

• F&B – Limited late night menu

This detail is fantastic insight about the property. This level of assessment, for all the commentary, unearths incredible value. The summary views of the industry specific points of detail, like a summary of F&B, Loyalty, Room Bed, etc, create an ongoing opportunity for excellence. Accordingly, each and every one of the insights expressed within a post needs to be organized into hospitality-specific categories.

As the dashboards illustrate, feedback from the same category is combined and rolled up to provide actionable performance indicators that help hotels better understand operational performance and crystallize the drivers of guest satisfaction. This information, in turn, can and should be used to pinpoint areas in need of operational improvement (such as service and team members) and reveal areas of service excellence about which guests are passionate to be touted in marketing communications (such as ambiance and room comfort). Many more use cases are realized with the data, including informing capital expenditure decisions, marketing opportunity, and employee management capabilities.

A recent example from Crave America Restaurants brings this process to life. Sweet Heat, one of the signature cocktails of Crave, is supposed to be spicy. Made with Bacardi Dragon Berry, mango, jalapeno, St. Germain, and white cranberry, it's meant to pack a punch. But, by mining and analyzing guest feedback, Crave uncovered a pattern of comments and complaints from customers who found the drink too spicy. One mention could well be an isolated error, but when they tracked mentions at multiple restaurant locations, management started thinking they had a problem with the recipe or ingredients. The issue, they learned, was that the potency of the jalapenos varied considerably from one batch to the next, so following a standard recipe for the drink was a mistake. Crave quickly addressed the issue by letting the bartenders use their discretion to season the drink to taste.

By analyzing guest comments based on industry specific operational categories, in this instance “Drinks – Named,” Crave was able to easily identify what their customers were saying and make the proper operational change to close the loop.

If feedback is the breakfast of champions, then hotel executives should be well fortified. The breadth of guest feedback shared online is massive - and its growth does not appear to be slowing down. Being able to mine this insight, extricate the rich details, and aggregate the feedback into industry-specific operational categories is a distinct competitive advantage. With this information, hotel executives can effectively determine how best to deliver an experience their guests will enjoy and talk about.

Ashish Gambhir is co-founder of newBrandAnalytics, the industry’s only social business intelligence platform proven to help operating and marketing executives turn real-time social customer insights into actionable information. Harvesting a depth and breadth of customer feedback unmatched by other platforms, newBrandAnalytics solutions deliver the tools, research and analysis required to distill a real-time, 360 degree view of social guest satisfaction data. His company is helping leading hotel executives generate the social business intelligence to improve guest satisfaction, increase guest count and drive revenues. Mr. Gambhir can be contacted at ashish@newbrandanalytics.com Extended Bio...

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