It’s hard to strike a balance when you’re gathering guest feedback; you want to give your guests every opportunity to leave you with some feedback, but at the same time, you don’t want to hound them so often that you end up ruining their stay with you!
There are a few ways that you can encourage your guests to leave feedback without them feeling harassed.
Why is feedback so important?
If you want to create a great hotel guest experience, then feedback is absolutely essential. You can take a good guess at what might make your guests happy and provide those things, but ultimately you can never know unless you ask them.
People really value feeling listened to, and so if you can gather feedback in a way that actually makes your guests feel listened to and cared about, you can benefit on two fronts. First, you get their insights on what they are enjoying and not enjoying about your hotel. Second, they will feel listened to, which will actually improve their experience.
Talk to your guests
This is probably the easiest way to get feedback! Ask your staff members to communicate with hotel guests that they come into contact with about what they are enjoying and not enjoying about their stay as often as possible.
Be sure that your staff capture this feedback and, where possible, take action to resolve any issues immediately.
Bar staff can speak with customers as they are serving drinks, as can other wait staff. Any staff members can open up a conversation with a simple ‘how is your day?.’
An old-fashioned but surprisingly effective method of communicating with guests is to leave comment cards. Put them in a prominent position in rooms and communal areas, and ensure that it’s easy for guests to return them or that you have a way of picking them up regularly. Particularly if they have a negative comment, guests might prefer to communicate it in writing.
Encourage interaction between guests on social media
By posting regularly on social media, and in particular creating groups for people who have stayed with you in the past, you create a place for a conversation to get started where you can gain valuable insight into how guests found their stays.
Not only this, but veteran guests can give newbies tips on the best things to do in the area, meaning that your new guests will feel welcomed before they even arrive.
Pay attention to negative feedback on social media
If your guests post negative comments on social media, be sure to respond to them so that people can see you take them seriously.
Responses should acknowledge the guest’s complaint, and where possible, outline how you are going to resolve their issue.
Create customer satisfaction surveys
Customer satisfaction surveys are a powerful tool if they are used correctly. Some ways that you can improve your response rates are:
- Keep surveys relevant. Only survey customers on things that they have experienced – this may mean creating multiple surveys for different groups, but it will improve your response rate.
- Offer an incentive. Offer a chance to win a prize or discount on a future trip; for example, this will dramatically improve response rates.
- Offer multiple ways to respond to the survey. Send it via email, but also make it easily accessible on social media and on your website. If they keep coming across it, they are more likely to eventually fill it in!
