Hotel guests have high expectations for a smooth and effortless experience from the moment they book their stay until they check out.
Any hiccups along the way can easily lead to frustration, and as we all know, these frustrations often find their way onto review sites for the world to see.
That’s why it’s crucial to prioritize guest satisfaction at every step of their journey. At PolyAI, we’ve worked with over 200 hotels to implement call center voice AI to handle reservations and billing inquiries and personalize the guest experience.
By leveraging this call center voice AI, these hotels have created a seamless and enjoyable stay for their guests.
How Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, and Choice hotels scaled personalized guest experiences
Over the past 18 months, PolyAI and systems integrator Fourteen IP have built and deployed a hotel concierge voice assistant, Evolution Virtual Agent or ‘EVA,’ across properties at Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, and Choice Hotels.
As lockdowns lifted post-pandemic, guests were keen to book travel again, and hotel call volume increased. Unfortunately, with limited staff to answer those calls, guests were waiting on hold, creating a frustrating start to the guest experience.
Fourteen IP used Google Dialogflow to build the first iteration of ‘EVA’ to automate internal and external calls. However, callers were met with a robotic voice that didn’t deliver the expected experience, and a high call volume remained.
Creating a voice assistant that understands
In their search for a better experience, Fourteen IP found PolyAI and co-created a solution to understand callers better. The voice assistant was designed to sound like a real person and encourage natural conversation with guests.
This guest-led voice assistant accurately extracts intent from long and complex stories without relying on the caller to use specific keywords.
Where the voice assistant isn’t sure of a caller’s intent, it asks clarifying questions to guide callers toward a resolution without asking them to repeat themselves. This natural approach to the conversation enables each hotel to contain more calls and gives staff more time to focus on other important aspects of the guest experience.
Scaling across hundreds of sites
Each hotel needed a variant of the same voice assistant to give site-specific details such as check-in times, location, directions, and hotel facilities.
Previous efforts at creating and updating a voice assistant meant the hotels had to work with separate platforms. The PolyAI voice assistant could be updated quickly and easily by Fourteen IP and pushed across multiple sites simultaneously. This streamlined process ensured consistency and efficiency across each hotel chain.
Personalized guest experiences
EVA 2.0 can answer hundreds of FAQs, continuously monitor guest satisfaction, and uses smart routing to ensure calls are directed to the correct staff or department.
With loyalty status recognition, EVA tailors the experience for each guest and can implement custom greetings, handoffs, and prioritization processes based on loyalty status.
How Golden Nugget automates 34% of hotel reservation calls
Golden Nugget had already partnered with PolyAI to deploy call center voice AI that assists their teams with handling calls to their hotel PBX operators.
With 87% of these calls fully automated by a PolyAI voice assistant, Golden Nugget looked to their next challenge – handling hotel reservations.
Handling complex reservations
Although online booking is available, 70% of Golden Nugget’s hotel room reservations are made over the phone. Each reservation takes around 4-5 minutes and requires guest details, room type, dates, number of people, and a deposit. They needed to automate the call booking process without compromising the guest experience.
Reservation calls are complex, with 15 different room types available, different levels of loyalty club membership, and availability. The voice assistant guides customers through the booking process in a natural and friendly way but still follows business logic.
Understanding guest names
As part of the booking process, it was important the voice assistant could recognize names accurately. PolyAI has developed a proprietary name-recognition technology that can understand people’s names 95% of the time. This accuracy creates a more seamless booking experience for Golden Nugget’s guests.
Within just two months of launch, the voice assistant averaged over 300 completed reservations per week, including taking secure payment details over the phone.
Listen to a Golden Nugget’s hotel room reservation below.
Golden Nugget continues to work with PolyAI to further improve the guest experience by introducing features such as negotiating dates with a caller depending on room availability and personalized offers or incorporating offer codes from email marketing campaigns.
How Mohegan Sun directs 30% of calls away from the contact center with call center voice AI
Once pandemic restrictions were lifted, call volume to Mohegan Sun’s contact center skyrocketed. With thousands of daily calls pouring in, the casino needed more staff to meet the demand.
Missed calls meant missed revenue, especially as a significant portion of the calls were related to promotions. It was clear that automation was necessary to manage the increasing call volumes effectively.
Automating FAQs and accurately routing calls
Recognizing the urgency of the situation, Mohegan Sun partnered with PolyAI to deploy call center voice AI in a phased approach, starting with the following steps:
- Automating FAQs to resolve customer queries without the need for live agent assistance.
- Accurately routing calls to the appropriate contact center teams.
Within two months, the PolyAI voice assistant was built, deployed, and successfully answered 100% of incoming calls. By efficiently handling frequently asked questions, Mohegan Sun’s agents could focus on more complex customer issues.
The voice assistant’s ability to handle FAQs and route calls accurately significantly reduced the pressure on live agents, allowing them to better support customers with more complex inquiries. The casino enhanced its overall operations with improved efficiency and customer satisfaction and created a seamless customer experience.
Conclusion
By implementing call center voice AI, hotels under brands like Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, Choice Hotels, Golden Nugget, and Mohegan Sun have been able to enhance guest satisfaction, deliver personalized experiences, and streamline their operations.
