Hotel Industry Benefiting from WhatsApp Business API

Increase customer retention and service through WhatsApp

Whether your guests are couples, families, or busy business people seeking a stress-free stay after a day of meetings. Whatever your target audience is, an important factor in customer experience is your service. A positive experience is among the key drivers that influence brand loyalty and set you apart from your competitors.

Here are some examples of customer service applications through the WhatsApp Business API.

• How about pre-ordering room service even before arriving at the hotel for when you're checking in late after meetings? 
• Or how about silently booking a table for dinner as a surprise for your spouse? 
• Or being able to request room cleaning or a wake-up call with just one word? 

Omnipresent means providing access to services right from the mobile phone, conveniently.

 Consumers worldwide are familiar with WhatsApp. Many of them even prefer WhatsApp to communicate with companies. Still, even at this time, many hotels require travellers to walk to the reception or use the old-fashioned telephone in the hotel room. 

This means your receptionist needs to handle incoming requests at the exact time of the request. For foreigners, calling may even be a threshold due to a language barrier. The WhatsApp Business solution is the solution to this problem, with communication from their favourite communication channel, at the time that suits them.

Guest experience through WhatsApp

Proactive service is the best way to make a good impression. Why not inform your guests, targeted to the customer profile (business or holiday), about a service they might be interested in? 

The WhatsApp Business solution allows you to offer low threshold customer care at any time of day. And this won't require you to react immediately. Auto-replies will take care of this for you. How?

After making a reservation:

1. Ask your guests to opt-in to receive notifications via WhatsApp.
2. Send them their booking confirmation on the day of the reservation, along with a message that their room ('number X') will be available at 'Y' time.
3. Let your guests know that they can request several services via this same WhatsApp channel

Automated, personal and relevant communication

1. Message Templates

Using message templates in automated responses helps you to have a genuine dialogue with your customers while also having your services available at all times. All conversations will be personal and relevant by merging tags and combining your messaging channels to your customer data platform. 

What are Message Templates, you ask?

Message Templates are pre-approved messages that can be sent in both inbound and outbound communication with your customers. To send real-time alerts from your business, you may utilise these messages. They can also help you respond quickly when a person contacts your support desk through WhatsApp. 

2. Merge tags

Whatever the use case, your messages need to be valuable, informative and relevant. This means personalisation is key. To personalise the message, you can use merge tags. Each of the placeholders can be filled with letters, digits, special characters and spaces.

In an automated flow, you can quickly request and transmit the necessary information. Create quick service depending on the expectations of the visitors using Message Templates and merge tags.

These are just examples of how you can use the WhatsApp Business API Message Templates to actively alert visitors about an enhanced customer experience. WhatsApp and your WhatsApp Business solution provider may provide you with Message Templates, or you can request your own. Approval of Message Templates is done by WhatsApp and your WhatsApp Business Solution Provider.

Start the conversation

The above was just one example of how you can use the WhatsApp API Message Templates to inform guests of an improved customer experience actively. To get the necessary information for outbound usage of these templates, you'll need your customer's active consent. Otherwise, they may be used only in the customer care window initiated by the customer.

Of course, you may have a spontaneous chat utilising WhatsApp Business, where you can send media-rich messages in response to a customer-initiated conversation. Long story short, WhatsApp Business's possibilities for personal and relevant interaction with your customers are practically limitless. What will your use case be?