As we all know, Social CRM is the primary tool for organizations to engage with customers. There are some industries that need Social CRM more than others. One such industry is Hospitality.

In this blog post, you can expect answers to the following queries:

• What is the big deal with Social CRM in the Hospitality industry?
• Is Social CRM really effective and efficient?
• Who is doing it right?
• What kind of problems you might be facing when it comes to Social CRM?
• How to implement a Social CRM strategy in 7 steps?

The Hospitality industry offers a huge potential for Social CRM. The Hospitality industry thrives on two basic factors- Segmentation & Uniqueness. Apart from the regular promises of customer satisfaction, it is the Identity or rather the personality of the hotel that really matters. And not to forget the Stand-out factor, that every hotel has on offering, as compared to its competitors. All these factors contribute towards the building of trust and customer loyalty, and eventually prolonged profitability.

Most hotels spend heavily towards enhancing customer experiences through various marketing ploys. They offer loyalty programs and other exclusive benefits to capture the customer’s attention. But, these promotions tend to become heavy on their pockets. Hence, including Social CRM mechanism in their framework will see a significant cut-down in their costs and also lessen the outreach efforts thanks to social media’s targeted reach resulting in a win-win situation.

Taking a cue from other verticals, social media is slowly but steadily being employed by players from the Hospitality industry. The InterContinental Group of Hotels was one of the first players in this field, to have successfully adopted social media to boost sales. Hotel Westin Mindspace, Hyderabad has also started really well. But, by far the best that I’ve seen is Hotel Royal Plaza on Scotts, Singapore. It seems to be doing everything right.

As we know, the Hospitality industry is heavily dependent on Word-of-Mouth. It can benefit immensely from Social CRM which is nothing but an electronic version of Word-of-Mouth. Any amount of negative feedback from customers can act as a dampener and affect sales, and the brand itself.

Another area of concern in this industry is the lack of qualified social media personnel with Hotel management background. As per a recent research, some hotels have already started including knowledge of social media as a requirement into entry-level job roles, while most hotels have simply engaged a social media agency to carry out the task and rely on them to implement effective social media marketing strategies and Social CRM to manage guest reviews, measure results, engage and communicate effectively with potential customers through social media platforms and blogs.

Also, its important to understand that Social CRM is an extension of the traditional CRM concept of an organization

I’m also listing down a couple of steps to implement Social CRM

1. Listen to what people are talking about your brand.
2. Understand the social graph of your customers and see where they’re coming from.
3. Try to identify your most frequent/best customers from the graph and see if they’re active on Social media.
4. Set your goals and objectives from the above steps.
5. Establish processes and requirements to meet those objectives.
6. Put together a Social media plan based on your requirements and processes.
7. Review and execute. Repeat these steps time and again.

The key is really to listen to your customers and see how best you can use Social CRM in your setup.

Do share with us your experiences with respect to Social CRM & Social Media in this industry. Thanks

References:

• · Towards Social CRM in Travel & Hospitality, Congnizant 20-20 Insights, 2011
• 10 Steps to start implementing Social CRM, Hotel Marketing Argentina, 2011
• Airlines, Travel And Hospitality, Overtone