Deep Listening was the topic for the in-house Learning session held at office, last Saturday. We went about deconstructing it and arrived at some very interesting inferences.

First, we shared each other’s individual experiences when it came to deep listening and observed what difference it had made in that particular context. It’s sincere application made a positive impact while its non-application tended to made things worse.

When we have one-on-one conversations with our peers, family members and others, we often are put into situations where we have to do the listening part or to put it in simpler words- hear out somebody’s story. At this point of time, we often find ourselves getting distracted due to some random reason or unable to pay concentration to what the other person has to say. Deep Listening is the approach we’ve gotta take!

We further discussed on the topic and here are the inferences from the same.

• For Deep Listening to be successful, we’ve got to ask questions to get clarifications and get more info.
• We’ve got to pay utmost attention to Facts in the story, Feelings at every level and the Intent of the speaker in that context.
• There is also a need to give feedback/acknowledgement, the most critical element of effective communication, so that the other person feels ‘being listening to’. This gives him/her the ability to proceed further with their story in an uncomplicated manner
• Deep listening more often than not results in progress/positive change or shift from the previous state.
• We need to listen to the other person without any preconceived notions and an empty mind. This will help us to analyze the other person’s situation better.
• While deep listening, we’ve also got to make sure that we are non-judgmental and don’t come to any conclusions during the conversation.
• At no point of time should the speaker be sympathized with, the listener’s job is to empathize with them.
• Also, we should remember that deep listening is really about understanding the context of the speaker’s story and not about coming to an agreement with it.
• And lastly, deep listening is all about patience and willingness to hold in the heart.

Post the deep listening phase comes action time, when we need to reply to the speaker and express what we feel about the whole thing.

• Rephrase the account and narrate it to the speaker
• Name that feeling
• State the Intention

“The choice to Listen, is the choice to Love!” – Kiran Gulrajani

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