The hospitality industry is the poster child of customer-centricity and always putting the customers’ needs first. This mindset is now embodied by other industries as well. Customers are now accustomed to a new level of customer care. Thus, those in the world of hospitality need to, again, elevate their own service and boost the experience they provide to guests.

Market trends, industry-specific waves, and recognizing emerging customer behavior patterns are all relevant. However, feedback is at the core of making your business more successful. Especially now, when travel is affected by the COVID pandemic. People have limited dining out and getaway options. If you’re operating, your goal should be to go the extra mile.

With fewer options and rising frustrations, customers are in dire need of refined services. They also need to know their voices matter. They need to feel taken care of. Do that by asking for feedback. There are many strategies your hotel or restaurant can employ to ask customers thoughts and suggestions. There are also various ways to use that feedback to grow.

Here are a few benefits of receiving guest feedback, and how you can generate feedback to boost your business over time.

Increase Customer Retention

Superior customer experiences inevitably leads to repeat business. If your barbecue ribs are to die for and your service exquisite, your customers will come back for more.

However, if they found the waiter unhelpful or the food subpar, it’s better for you to know. You have the opportunity to make it right. Asking for feedback and constructive criticism is the best way to increase retention over the long term.

You can learn and grow from a missed chance to impress someone. Most of all, it’s also an opportunity to invite the customer back to have a better experience.

This will not just help you retain that one, single customer. It will help you prevent numerous similar issues with future first-time visitors. You’ll also earn the respect of your existing customer base. People love brands that own up to their mistakes and turn them into ways to improve.

Deliver Better Service

Although key human interactions in your restaurant or hotel are vital, don’t neglect the entire customer journey. Find ways to make your brand more appealing, simplify booking processes, and intrigue potential guests with personalized offers. Keep all those touchpoints in check. Learn from interactions at different stages of the customer journey.

To do this, more hospitality brands use unifying communication platforms. For example, utilizing VoIP platforms with integrated CRM can be helpful. They’re great to manage customer complaints, ask for reviews, and resolve issues. You can prepare automated responses to common queries, route calls to the most competent person, and build a knowledge base with your customer data to boost future interactions.

Simply put, create an overarching communication strategy that focuses on feedback throughout the customer journey. By doing so, you can elevate customer service on your website, social media, through email exchanges, and on the premises.

Boost Customer Engagement

Considering the saturation levels in the hospitality industry, the more you can do to stand out, the easier it will be to survive any future crises and to retain your brand relevance. Enhance customer engagement every step of the way.

Engaged customers will recognize their role in the creation of your brand story. They will feel eager to contribute, and they’ll be more likely to stay loyal. When you ask for feedback, and make an effort to do so in a fun and exciting way, you engage your customers on several key levels. You make the feedback-generating process more engaging, and you make the customers feel valued.

To do that, try to gamify reviews with the help of tools similar to Typeform that allow you to create engaging quizzes and collate customer data easily. With branded surveys and engaging quizzes, you’ll make your brand more memorable. You’ll also inspire customers to share their ideas without imposing a long and tedious process. Gamify your review generation, and you’ll boost customer engagement slowly, but surely.

Enable Better Customer Acquisition

When you’re running a restaurant or a boutique hotel, reputation is everything. However, that reputation comes to life through your customers’ words whenever they share their experiences with their friends and loved ones. In a manner of speaking, your customers are your best influencers when communicating your brand message.

Users keep your reputation alive. When they post photos and share comments about your business, they entice other potential customers. While asking for feedback is a great source of opportunities to innovate and improve, it’s also a perfect way to market your brand online and offline.

The next time they tell their friends about your spotless rooms and extraordinary views, rest assured more people will rush to your website, and likely to your actual venue, too. Communication is the key to boosting brand relevance and awareness in the hospitality industry.

Your customers need to recognize your initiative to not just ask for their opinions but to actually take action and adapt where and when necessary. Even small-scale hospitality businesses should take on such a proactive mindset to connect with their target audience and ensure that their customers feel heard and valued.

Asking for feedback and acting upon it will set your brand apart, help you connect with your customers even during these challenging times, and allow your brand to outlive its competitors.