How unified communications can improve customer & staff communications in the hospitality industry
Telecommunications has always been a grey area when it comes to hospitality, but why? Good communication is a priority for every successful hotel, pub and restaurant, so why can’t hospitality businesses have systems just as effective and cost efficient as other markets?
Businesses from all industries use hotels for meetings and conferences with colleagues or clients and take advantage of any conferencing resources the hotel may have. Typically businesses use audio conferencing to make conference calls around the world. But with the progression in technology, video conferencing is increasingly being used due its more personal approach than the telephone alone. Seeing someone’s face and their body language improves the conversation, even if you’re hundreds of miles apart. You may find yourself using Skype to make these business video calls, but wouldn’t it be better with more reliable software and a HD camera that automatically picks up the current speaker and focuses in on them, meaning your whole board room can be part of a cross country or overseas call.
Pub and restaurant managers know the pain of being off site for any reason and having team members back on site calling to let you know who has been trying to reach you, what should they say to them, should they ask them to call back? Wouldn’t it be great if you could redirect calls from the office to your mobile when you’re not on site so you don’t miss anything important when you’re out? Unified communication provides that option, as well as redirecting to a free voicemail service or another number if that’s better for you at the time. And with a hosted solution, using Cloud services, the server for your phones can be at head office or another convenient location and not one on every site.
Naturally, in a pub or restaurant chain, there will be hundreds of sites and all with only a few phones. However, implementing a unified communications solution gives you free internal calls, including site-to-site, and with it being extremely easy to add more sites at any time, it’s perfect for a growing chain. It also provides you with the option of a desk phone or a soft phone depending on which you prefer. Through using a unified communications solution all your colleagues, or sites, come up in an easy list and with one simple click of a button you can call, message or email them. It also shows you who is on the phone, not available or in a meeting so you know whether to call or not, and of course, all this can be linked or redirected to your mobile phone with our Android and iOS apps, which are just as simple to use.
A unified communications solution gives you the option to have a completely mobile workforce. Although this doesn’t completely apply to the hospitality industry, it gives you the option to work on the move and deal with a smaller workload when you return. You don’t have to miss calls from your manager whilst off site and free site-to-site calls have never been easier, or cheaper.
