Call Answering for Hospitality

The hospitality industry was one of the hardest hit during the Covid-19 pandemic. With unclear guidance and hardly much notice between opening and closing dates, most businesses really struggled during this time.

Throughout the pandemic, many hospitality businesses have needed to completely transform how they serve customers. From restaurants to accommodation, the constant restrictions make it extremely difficult to run their businesses effectively due to the number of people allowed in one place and the protocols they must follow. Most hospitality businesses have had to pay more on a daily basis to ensure they’ve enough staff in but also accept less customers than their actual capacity capability.

One of our largest clients is a high-end aparthotel with multiple apartments in many locations over England and Northern Ireland. During the pandemic they provided accommodation for NHS, key workers, and homeless people.

As we are emerging from the pandemic and into a more ‘normal’ world again, our clients are flat out with bookings. Their customers are now starting to visit family again, take part in work trips and enjoy holidays in the UK. This is creating a huge demand in most major cities at the moment. Their current client base is choosing the aparthotel structure over hotels due to the fact they have a full apartment rather than just a room, at a similar price. Due to the busy nature of their business, their call volumes have been higher than ever. They currently have less people answering calls as their staff are occupied with other covid restrictions which require immediate attention.

We currently answer all of their reception’s overflow calls for 4 different cities and they’re constantly expanding. When their callers ring, it rings through to their reception and if no one answers within 30 seconds, the call is then transferred through to us. We have 4 different numbers setup for their calls so we know which city the call is for.

We have a wealth of information stored for each city including amenities in apartments, check-in and check-out times and any other quick information which we can provide to callers. This is extremely handy for our client as we can deal with the callers without their staff having to action anything.

With calls which require action from the apartment, we simply take messages and let the callers know someone will get back to them. We have different email groups which we send messages to for each city for someone to go back to their customer. This means the staff can prioritise call backs and their own time efficiently. We also mark any urgent calls with ‘high importance’, so their staff know which call backs are the most important.

We’ve been able to help our clients on a customer service and an operational level by handling calls that they simply do not have time to answer. We are capable of answering calls for restaurants and bars to take bookings or answer simple questions for their callers such as opening, closing times or what’s on the menu today.

For more information on how our call answering service can help your hospitality business, click here to get in touch!