This week I participated in a webinar, along with Voxify, on the new VUI or Voice User Intelligence in customer support applications. You can listen to the replay here if you are interested. The main theme was the importance of creating a better user experience for customers within self-service and some of the advanced ways of improving self-service applications to achieve this. The folks at Voxify and I have talked for a long time about how they are improving applications in the hospitality sector with such customers as Red Lion Hotels, so from a over-the-phone customer support perspective, Voxify is using speech, and intelligence about the customer to give the customer better service when they call in.
That theme coincides with another one I am seeing lately and that is more focus on providing superior a superior customer experience within the hospitality industry in general, whether that is over the phone, such as with some of Voxify’s customers, or whether it’s on property as with the hotels I blogged about back in June about what NEC Phillips Unified and Nortel have been up to with wins in the hospitality sector.
We have more on that front. For example, NEC Phillips Unified announced another hospitality deal in November; this time with the Scandinavian Hospitality Group (SHG) who is the master franchiser for Marriott International in Scandinavia. NEC will be providing complete communication systems to hotels in that chain starting with the Renaissance Malmo Hotel and the Courtyard Marriott Stockholm.
Yesterday, I sat on a call with Avaya and they told us about the Avaya Guest Media Hub, which is an in room hospitality phone that has an iPhone look and feel to it, that from the picture, just made me want to pick it up and play with it, and I’m not an iPhone fan. But the reason it looked so compelling was because short of controlling the TV, which I’m not sure it does, it provides guests with access to Facebook, YouTube, Google Mail, stocks and other information as well as local services such as nearby restaurants. It will let guests control room temperature, lighting, and communication services, such as the phone, and it can be used by guests to IM other guests.
One of the compelling and “green” things the Guest Media Hub provides is alternatives to the costly use of paper for guest services. For example, rather than filling out the paper breakfast room service menu and hanging it on the door, guests can order room service from the phone. By the way, they also mentioned the use of the Media Hub in hospitality suites inside stadiums for ordering food, tickets to upcoming events, etc. I’m sure that any other service, such as booking spa appointments, getting theatre tickets, etc. would be easy to add to the device was well, but just weren’t mentioned.
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