In this week’s episode of Hotel Moment, we’re featuring a webinar from our series, Hotel Moment Deep Dive.
The voice channel is all about storytelling. And you know you’ve mastered the voice channel when reservation agents shift from securing a simple booking to actively selling your hotel and its compelling story. Guests love that.
To help you tap into more of the things that guests love, Revinators Jack Newkirk, Enterprise Sales Consultant, and Jason Wells, Customer Success Manager, walk you through where to leverage your guest data in phone conversations. You’ll also hear why it’s important to pair your marketing and reservation teams to nurture quality leads with a detailed outbound strategy. And Dean Blackburn, Director of Resort Experience, French Lick Resort, shares how it’s done with first-hand experience of transforming their voice channel into a selling machine and doubling their revenue with targeted campaigns.
Tune in and seize the opportunity to drive more revenue with the voice channel.
Meet your host
As Chief Marketing Officer at Revinate, Karen Stephens is focused on driving long-term growth by building Revinate’s brand equity, product marketing, and customer acquisition strategies. Her deep connections with hospitality industry leaders play a key role in crafting strategic partnerships.
Karen is also the host of The Hotel Moment Podcast, where she interviews top players in the hospitality industry. Karen has been with Revinate for over 11 years, leading Revinate’s global GTM teams. Her most recent transition was from Chief Revenue Officer, where she led the team in their highest booking quarter to date in Q4 2023.
Karen has more than 25 years of expertise in global hospitality technology and online distribution — including managing global accounts in travel and hospitality organizations such as Travelocity and lastminute.com
Watch the video
Transcript
[00:00:00] Jason Wells: It’s getting them excited to book instead of just what we like to say being an order taker. They’re actually leading that guest journey and getting that guest excited and wanting to book and picking up on those interests.
[00:00:15] Karen Stephens: Welcome to the Hotel Moment podcast presented by Revinate, the podcast where we discuss how hotel technology shapes every moment of the hotelier’s experience. Tune in as we explore the cutting edge technology transforming the hospitality industry and hear from experts and visionaries shaping the future of guest experiences. Whether you’re a hotelier or a tech enthusiast, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in and discover how we can elevate the art of hospitality together.
[00:00:44] Brenna Turpin: Hey, everyone. Earlier this month, we hosted a webinar that sparked so many conversations that we just had aired again here as part of the Hotel Moment podcast. And it’s really coming at a great time because budget season is upon us. And if you’re wondering where you can make up lost revenue, then investing in the voice channel is a worthy place to start. Support for the voice channel played out at the Hotel Data Conference, one of the largest annual hospitality conferences that took place earlier this month. Data released from the conference reveals some big numbers and revelations, like a strong correlation between GDP and hotel performance. Luxury travel is hot right now, and 76% of luxury travelers are willing to spend more on their stay if it delivers family connection and personal growth. So how does all this relate to the voice channel? Think of the data point I just mentioned. If luxury travelers want to derive more meaning from their stay, prove that when they call to book. If your reservation agents are trained on building personal connections and actively selling the amenities on your property that would make sense for a family vacation, then you’re speaking to that 76%. And to take that a step further, if your hotel is looking to increase profitability with ancillary revenue, you’re hitting that objective with this approach as well, especially when you use historical data from past guests. If a family took advantage of your pool, then that’s your sign to place an outbound call encouraging them to rebook and reminding them of the time that they had at your hotel pool and why that was so memorable. Revinator’s Jack Newkirk, enterprise sales consultant, and Jason Wells, customer success manager, cover all of that and take us through what it’s like to maximize your most profitable and powerful communication channel with Dean Blackburn, director of resort experience at French Lick Resort, sharing his firsthand experience of why the voice channel works to drive more revenue. Enjoy.
[00:02:36] Jack Newkirk: Appreciate it, and certainly appreciate everybody taking time out of your busy day to be part of this. We’re honored to be partnered with Historic Hotels of America and, of course, with French Lick Resort today. My name is Jack Newkirk, and I will be part of our conversation today. But, really, my goal today is to take a back seat and learn as much as possible from the relationship that Jason and Dean have been spending building over the last year that they’ve worked together, and, of course, the years that we’ve been clients. Again, my name is Jack. I’m an enterprise sales consultant here with Revinate. Been with the company about eight years, in the industry about twenty. And just here today to dive deeply into the change and process management that has been brought about as a result with partnership between our companies. I’m joined as well by Jason Wells, who is the dedicated client success manager for Revinate. Jason, would you like to introduce yourself further quickly and talk a little bit about your relationship with Dean?
[00:03:27] Jason Wells: Absolutely. Thanks, Jack. So I’ve been with Revinate about two and a half years. Background is in luxury hotels, some of them historic and mainly reservations, revenue, and operations roles. So voice channel, certainly a passion of mine. And I’ve been working with Dean and his team at French Lick for about the past year, and my role is really just to make sure that they’re successful, that they’re getting the most out of the revenue products, and that they’re most importantly growing their revenue.
[00:03:53] Jack Newkirk: Outstanding. Thank you. Today, we’re gonna get into really three main topics and learn from Dean and Jason about how they’ve managed the process of removing barriers both in place for their guests, Revinate’s guests, as well as the team of reservation sales professionals that he leads. We’ll talk about how it is that he evaluates those team members to empower them to be better sellers, better representatives of his brand. And then we’ll talk about how he leverages information learned from every caller calling into his reservation sales team in order to delight, surprise, and turn those guests into repeat lifetime guests. But first, Dean, I’d like to welcome you to the call and afford you an opportunity to share with folks a little bit about your background, what you do for French Lick, and what it is that makes you get up in the morning and be excited to come into work.
[00:04:39] Dean Blackburn: To be excited to, look at that photo right there. Two historic hotels in Southern Indiana. I’ve been with Forensic Resort for eighteen years, and Jack and Jason, we all share some backgrounds where we’ve had to be in operations over the years. So to keep all the hotels looking as good as they are and also just to work with every employee across the board to make sure that the employees or the guest experience is exactly what we hope it to be, it has always had me getting up every morning to come in here and have that charge. Every guest coming in is an experience and an opportunity. So we’ll talk, I’m sure, in a minute on how that’s related from operations down to the sales side.
[00:05:12] Jack Newkirk: Thanks, Dean. The first thing that was really on all of our hearts or minds as we’ve been planning for this webinar has been the kind of seismic shift and how it is that you have chosen to structure or restructure the team of professionals that work for you or with you. And most of that has been in response to a very deliberate strategic initiative at French Lick to target guests earlier in this kind of guest booking journey, which if you’ve watched any of these webinars before, we talked about being very cyclical in nature for repeat guests. And to my understanding, Dean, and you and Jason can discuss this fully here, prior to you making a major decision shift after the pandemic and coming out of that kind of revenge travel phase of American tourism, most of the opportunity for your team to harness additional ancillary revenue from guests who are already on the books came kind of in that bottom of the screen section between the inquiry and the actual arrival and stay. And as I understand it, upon analysis, what you realized was that you needed to shift that process of upselling guests earlier in their booking journey, not just to help capture more ancillary revenue from every guest that came through, but to really open the door for them to fully experience what it is to stay at a historic hotel like yours. Sprawling grounds, 13 food and beverage opportunities, spa, golf, you name it. Many of those opportunities where these guests were being overlooked because they weren’t fully aware of everything that there is to do there. So can you tell us a little bit more about how you shifted that earlier in the booking process and the results that you’ve seen and how that has impacted your overall strategy?
[00:06:59] Dean Blackburn: Sure. Happy to do so. It was post COVID, Jack. It was as we all came out of reopening and decided, alright, how are we gonna look at business? How are we gonna welcome the business back? How are we gonna maintain the revenue and also gain revenue for every person that comes to the resort? It was my direct report. He had a discussion with me, and we, uh, as a multiple group of leaders said, you know, we’ve always heard the comment from our guests when they left saying, you know, had we known you had x, we’ll go say it another night. We would have done that. We would have done that and dined. So when you hear that over the years and then you have COVID and then you enter into this great revenge business of leisure, you’re like, hey, we’ve got an opportunity to do this different. Let’s reengineer it. So our first attempt actually, which has kinda grown differently this last year and a half, our first attempt was we said, alright, we’re gonna call every leisure guest prior to their stay, after the reservations made, but prior to their stay and we had to figure out what time that meant as far as when was a good time to call the guest. And those were the easy decisions as we all know. You don’t wanna call a guest at 6PM. You don’t wanna call a guest on a Saturday. So we found it was during the day, and it was Monday through Friday. And we called the guest typically about that fourteen day window prior to arrival because that’s when they were ready to make some of those final decisions. And, Jack, it started off just as really kind of a welcome. You’re coming to the resort, and to be completely honest on this for everybody on the call, at the beginning, it was folks, a lot of arrival or, uh, pardon me, a lot of guests answering the phone saying, oh my gosh. Are you closed? Did COVID do something to you? So we’re like, no. No. No. We’re welcoming you, and we wanna go ahead and ask you, what is the one thing during your stay that could really make this an experience that’s memorable for you? So we kinda came into it as that moment. And as we were asking them the big questions, the big questions turned into lead forms down the road, which I know you’ll talk about in a minute, was why are you coming to French Lick? Why did you make this choice and who’s coming with you? Those will then lead into opportunities to then help the guest plan their experience. So we took professional group planning and kind of moved it to the leisure side and at the same time, we didn’t take, I wanna say just our call center agents, our what we had over the years, we took some professionals with some of the different departments. Someone out of food and beverage, someone out of golf and we took some of them and said, hey, you’re gonna be outbound sales before the guests come in. And it was kind of an experiment, like I said, ten to fourteen days and what we found was the guests were very receptive And the amount of opportunities we had to then make dining reservations, it just opened up on us, uh, to be honest, spa reservations. We were then scratching to figure out, alright, we’ve gotta get a reservations platform somehow put in place for everything the guest wants. Uh, and I kinda finish this one sentence by saying, when a guest is inquiring and asking about something, that’s your opportunity to sell it. And that’s when we found out that’s when the guest wants us. We were happy to service them prior to their stay.
[00:09:55] Jack Newkirk: Very insightful to be proactive about filling those reservations up. I think, as you mentioned, we all came from operations and when I think about the availability of spa technicians, availability of tables within your dining facilities as you can fill those up further in advance, It helps a lot with the operational side of just managing people and knowing how many technicians to bring in for a certain day.
[00:10:19] Dean Blackburn: And to add to that, Jack, it was interesting because the spa was our first kind of experiment on this because over the years, someone would call in to PBX, like all of our hotels are listening in, and what would you do with that call? You would transfer to the spa. As we saw the spa being inundated with all these reservation opportunities and the calls and them having to repeat calls back, we right away said, hold on. We’re gonna take that call and put it back into the reservation sales and we’re gonna take care of that. The calls that go to the spa and as this kind of transformed out, the calls that go to operations are those expert needed calls. If we can make a booking, let’s make it now and well, let’s let them operate down the road and then it did. It developed in some other ancillary revenue products.
[00:11:03] Jack Newkirk: So beyond the operational side and Jason feel free to chime in too because I know that you closely monitor these. Dean, I don’t wanna put you on the spot, but a little bit of putting you on the spot here. What was the associated impact to your revenue? Did you see a measurable change in ancillary spend per stay?
[00:11:18] Dean Blackburn: We did, of course. Though, as we wouldn’t have stayed invested in this, and it started on that outbound, really. And as we saw that outbound starting to happen, we really then started to look at our inbound calls, and and I think that’s one of the greater things as far as I’ll go ahead and say for Rev and A or any CRM is when you have the ability to listen to calls and hear your agents and hear your guests when they start asking about questions, you then have the opportunity, and I will throw this number out. We typically have a handle time of two minutes. When we started talking to our agents and say, hey. You know what? Take your time. Answer all the questions you need to with the guest. Jason can confirm our handle time is closer to eight minutes now. That’s on inbound and outbound. So then now you’ve pushed that opportunity even on inbound to allow someone to ask questions and allow the guests to book when they want to. Could be on the inbound, could be on the outbound, it could be when they’ve already made an online reservation, now they’re calling back in again to make those specify reservations. So it’s interesting as it’s changed, but revenue is the item we got every time we called.
[00:12:22] Jason Wells: Oh, and, Dean, to kick you back on the average handle time, I know the mentality with a lot of call centers is, like, we gotta get on the phone, we gotta get off the phone, we gotta get that next call and minimize abandonment. And we did not see a crazy uptick in abandonment as your team’s spending more time on the phone with the guests. We did see an increase in conversion, though, which is super important because they’re walking that guest through that experience, getting them excited to book. Instead of just what we like to say, being an order taker. They’re actually leading that guest journey and getting that guest excited and wanting to book and picking up on those interests. So even if they don’t book the spa, the restaurant, the golf on that initial call, it is marked on that reservation and that lead form. So when your outbound experience design team’s giving them a call, they know exactly what to focus on when they’re talking to that guest and engaging with them.
[00:13:07] Jack Newkirk: And we’re gonna tackle this in maybe section three, but when it comes to that turn and burn mentality that many folks with large contact centers very frequently experience among their agents, it can be a little bit exhausting for the team members as well as to manage them, and it does have an impact on the bottom line. But what I’m hearing you say, Dean and Jason, is that when you put the right people on the phone and give them the right tools to do their job appropriately and remove those barriers, it does have an associated impact to your revenue as well as to employee morale. It’s just a good nice transition here because I think what we’re learning from you, Dean, is that the voice channel is not dead. We do hear it in the industry quite a bit, but I like to say that it’s neglected. But I’d like to hear your thoughts, Dean.
[00:13:47] Dean Blackburn: I think how you break down the voice channel is the voice channel when someone is not bugged the room yet. And this isn’t a question, of course, for you, Jack, but it’s a question, I think, for all of us is, or is the voice channel when they’ve already booked and now they’re calling back in? So those are two different segments that kinda grew with us as we listen to this. The key was we listen to our employees, and our employees said, hey, I’ve got a guest on the phone who’s wanting to do this and I can’t transfer them. When we talk about transferring calls, we all have that pain. Calls start bouncing around everything and all the guest wants to do is what? They want to confirm something. They want to spend money in our hotel. So as has that handle time, as Jason said, went from two minutes to eight minutes, we didn’t freak out on that. He said, you know what? Let’s listen to these calls. And it was because the guest was wanting more information and then we asked to close the sale. When you can convert the call to a closed not only room sale, dining, spa, and more golf destination. So we took let’s just call it order takers, and we needed to basically transform them into sales folks. That is not easy. And we partnered well with Revinate on that because, literally, the training module that you all have didn’t work well with that and still does. But when you have to take someone from has no idea about golf to at least be able to explain golf in general, to sell golf, the guests like it. Definitely, the employee feels happier because they’ve been able to take care of a guest. They all just wanna serve the guest.
[00:15:12] Jack Newkirk: There’s a saying in sales that people buy from those that they trust and it sounds as if the time spent investing in those really earnest guests who, like you said, they just wanna spend their money with you. Uh, it has paid off. Even if it means handle time does increase and those teammates of yours are on the phone a little bit longer, the value is there both from the guest experience as well as from the resort’s profitability. I wanna take a little bit of a pivot here, and we’re gonna come back to how it is that you structured or restructured your team and maybe some of the hurdles that you faced in that process. But one of the items on here doesn’t really apply to you, and it’s a pretty major talking point among my clients at Revinate, which is OTA over reliance. And so that center statistic about fifty eight percent of people who book via OTAs, they’ll call the property first. My understanding, Dean, is that you decided to just leave the OTAs entirely. Tell us what’s that with Dean? Oh, it wasn’t a Dean.
[00:16:07] Dean Blackburn: It wasn’t a Dean thing. These are all team decisions. These are group decisions. I have to give a lot all this credit to our revenue manager. I tell you, she was so good at knowing the industry and what we knew ourself to be as a product as opposed to some of the other hotels that may be out there since we knew we were a destination. She knew the opportunity for us to not lose rate through OTAs, to not lose rate through discount programs all the way across the board. And, again, if you have a solid product and it’s more than just selling, I’d say I’d kid around and say we sell more than mattresses, more than just overnight beds, but we really do. It’s that overnight experience. So our revenue manager really went in through and said, hey. We’re gonna do this. We’re gonna do some OTAs. And what we found was when we were able to tell our team, hey. You don’t have to discount. All of a sudden that pressure was left off them saying, alright. So if I don’t get the sale, I’m okay. Right? We’d say yes, but at the same time, build out that lead form because with automated campaigns, with follow-up campaigns, and outbound calls, we then can capture that business. So it really changed the stress of the call center and, again, transforming that into a reservation sales module.
[00:17:16] Jack Newkirk: Yeah. Jason, were you paying attention to, like, their database cleanliness health during this time period when they, uh, moved away from OTAs because that means, at this point, booking direct or part of a group is really the only option for booking, which in that case would require an email address. So did you see a noticeable uptick in their database health?
[00:17:35] Jason Wells: It was a decision that was actually made prior to me working with the team. So I can’t say what it was before or what it is after, but I do know their database health is healthy because it’s not clogged with OTA emails that they’re not able to market to.
[00:17:48] Jack Newkirk: Understood.
[00:17:49] Dean Blackburn: I think Jack plays along the line of if you’re coming across, say, guests on the phone as informative, as helpful, and when you can ask the questions, the emotional questions as far as maybe ask why you’re coming. And you hear some of these, these are historic properties, Just says some of the clients listening, they’re coming here for a reason. We’re not just a stop on the highway. We don’t get the flight crew coming through. We’re on Southern Indiana. So when you hear the stories of why they’re coming and then you can then build in their experience or memorable experience with that, It does not lend to discounting, it lends to the opportunity for them to have a good stay.
[00:18:24] Jack Newkirk: I love that. You brought up your team and I’d like to transition over to talking specifically about how it is that you have used information on your team in order to really make wise and thoughtful decisions about how to deploy them. One of the things that we talk about in the management of people is that there’s really four areas that will keep your team loyal to you. Are they doing a job that they enjoy doing? Are they compensated fairly for it? Are they trained well and empowered to be good at it? And do they find joy in bringing the experience of French Lick Resort to your guests as well as just coming into work. And so with this idea of the Japanese referred to as Ikigai in mind, I know that you have I think you initially told me that you started with a team of 19, and that over time, there has been a restructuring of that team to be leaner, but yet more effective and powerful at their jobs. And I’d like to spend a little time talking about that because your retention is impressive to us when we know that in this industry, the average annual turnover rate in a contact center is about 200%. So, in simple math, that means that at the end of a year, you’re gonna have two whole fresh batches of employees that come and go through that contact center and new faces all the way around. And it’s expensive to have that turnover happening on an ongoing basis because we also know that it’s roughly about three months salary that it takes to hire, recruit, and train a new employee in a really specific role like this one. So let’s focus in on Dean on how you restructured the team, what it looked like prior to this shift, and how it is, like, maybe the characteristics that you were looking for and how it is that you incentivize your team today to keep them happy and keep that retention rate high.
[00:20:12] Dean Blackburn: Well, you probably give me way too much credit. Let me say that right up front because it is not just an I situation here. We’ve got some great managers here and some supervisors and they have intent and they have the emotion behind the calls. And again, it’s different when you have the opportunity to listen to a call and make that memorable experience with each guest. So the number of staff has attrition and has gone down and what we found was is we can become more efficient with the voice skill sets of calls coming in and getting when you get the right call to the right person, you’re then empowering that call center person, which I keep referring back to call center, which is horrible because, again, the transformation to reservation sales is you’re selling. So as post COVID, we reopened, we saw attrition with the call center kinda go down and I and I have to say, I’ve heard this with other hotels as well. Sometimes call centers are agents or employees that perhaps just aren’t front of house sales folks and great on the phone, more of a PBX oriented, and then we made a commitment to them. We said, hey, we really wanna equip you with the opportunity to make a dining reservation. That’s a big surprise because when you have someone on the phone say, well normally I just transfer that call. Well no, you can make that dining reservation. But the first thing you’re gonna get jacked is they’re gonna say, well that’s way too much for me to do. But when you can empower them and say, no no no, we’re gonna invest in you, we’re gonna keep you, we want this to be easy for you to do. They’ll then learn the multiple platforms and it’s not easy at the beginning. When you make a commitment to them, a lot of times you’ll see the employee hang in there for a long time. And again, as you listen to their calls, this is the interesting thing about any kind of a voice recording, When you listen to your calls with the employee and basically empower them and say, you know what? You did a great job. You did an incredible job. Let’s do that again. Now you’ve got someone walking back to their area and saying, you know what? I can do this. I can take care of guests. I think one of the most satisfying thing, Jack, at times is when I see reviews of guests that have come and they said, you know what? Our experience started with our reservation. We’re always talking about curb appearance of a hotel, but when it starts on the phone with a reservation and when they ask to meet the reservation sales agent in the lobby, they’re like, wow, you know what? That’s dynamite and that’s what grows the experience. So we’ve got a good team of managers and supervisors that put this together.
[00:22:31] Jack Newkirk: So speaking of that, and I know Jason, you work super closely with the reservation sales managers at French Lick, and you were yesterday telling me a little bit about, like, this culture that they’ve built internally. Would you like to elaborate there?
[00:22:42] Jason Wells: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I’ve had the pleasure to meet all of the reservation managers in person and experience the operation on-site as well. And like Dean mentioned, being able to listen to a call with an agent, coach them, you’re providing them with that feedback. You’re providing them with the support that they need. They feel important. They’re an extension of your sales team. It’s sometimes easy to forget that. You think of operations, but, no, these are individuals that are responsible usually for one third of the revenue that’s coming into the hotel. And they’re treated as such, and they feel that warmth and that love from the managers. And getting that individual time to help them hone their craft and to be better at it goes back to that ikigai philosophy where they have fulfillment from their job. And I got to meet the agents. We walked around. They had amazing questions. They loved their job. They loved being there, and that’s why most of them have been there for a very long time. I think everybody I met there had at least five years, it seems like, of experience in reservations, not even to mention the time that they’ve been with French Lick in total. So they’re getting what they need out of that job. And in turn, that’s the service that they’re able to provide to that guest too because a happy employee is gonna be much better at their job than somebody that doesn’t feel valued or somebody that doesn’t feel important. And the team has done a really good job, the managers and the supervisors, of empowering their agents to feel in an elevated role and that they’re not just, as Dean said, order takers. They’re actually part of that guest experience, and they’re the initial impression of French Lick. And and they take that very seriously, and that comes through in their calls, and it comes through in their numbers. So it’s super important that they have that engagement. And one thing that I was even impressed with, even down to where the agent sat was thought about. This agent would do better in this environment. This agent would do better in this environment. It’s thinking about all these little things that really do help employees feel special and make them wanna stay and make them wanna be better at their job.
[00:24:36] Jack Newkirk: Dean, in this process, I’d be curious to know, were there barriers or hurdles that you had to overcome in order to get the team to where it is now? And if there were, any tips of wisdom to share with the folks on this call today to let us use your experience for our betterment?
[00:24:53] Dean Blackburn: Well there were some pain points, let’s just be honest on this. When you have all the different products that LaFrestec Resort has dining, spa, golf, stables, that’s not all real easy to put in one reservations platform. First of all, it’s not and and I think a lot of properties across there experience the same situation. So now you’re asking an employee to learn multiple platforms, to do multiple things. At the same time, you’re wishing to record that information not on the voice channel but also in a lead form. And I know you’re gonna talk to a lead form in a minute, Jack, but when you develop out that lead form with all the information you can put in there for the marketing value in in the future, you’re gonna have some pain points of the employees little push back to be any saying, you know what, I can’t do this. But, again, when you’re able to tell the employee, you know what, you can do this. You can use your PMS. You can do this. You can do your dining. You can do all these different things. And when they feel that satisfaction of being able to take care of the guest, truly take care of the guest, and then you can give them feedback based on your survey model that you may have on your post stay. And when that name of that reservation sales age is mentioned in their survey as the beginning and part of their entire stay, that’s a big wow moment. And that’s when you really tell someone, you know what? You’re in the right spot. You’re doing a great job.
[00:26:04] Jack Newkirk: And it’s not a one time thing. It’s an ongoing process with my understanding. You told me yesterday that anytime and stop me. You have 13 restaurants on-site, right?
[00:26:14] Dean Blackburn: We do. We have 13 restaurants and we’ve had events, we do a lot of things and there’s a lot of things to offer. So just like when all of us travel out there, we’re gonna make a reservation and if you don’t ask the guests upfront why they’re coming, you’re just gonna sell crazy.
[00:26:29] Jack Newkirk: Yeah. You told me yesterday that anytime one of the menus changes, you send your reservation sales professionals down there.
[00:26:36] Dean Blackburn: We like to also know when the menus change because we wanna know from the chef how soon we can get our res agents up there so we can taste the food. Absolutely. Because if I’m gonna sell it, we want them to own it. We want them to be proud of it.
[00:26:48] Jack Newkirk: I love that. Let’s talk about how it is that you act upon this because results are what this team is interested in, data capture specifically. And for those who don’t know, you keep hearing Dean use this term lead form. We’ll get into what that is in a second. What we know from our client base in North And Central America and Europe and Australia is that about 66% of people who call and don’t book are willing to offer up an email address if the agent that’s on the phone has earned that person’s trust. And we also know that there is a premium associated to a voice channel booking and you’ve certainly illustrated that today, Dean. What I’d like to talk about a little bit is this lead form and how it is that data capture, deliberate data capture, has become just the jaw for these folks that are on your team. The lead form itself that Dean keeps referencing here is a think of it as a pop up on the agent’s computer screen that appears when a call comes in, and it affords them the opportunity to harness all of the information that they need on that caller, the dates of inquiry, the room type, the rate code, the marketing campaign that drove the call, and a bunch of other things. But what my understanding is that you learned that there was a multitude of other data points to capture leading to a collaboration between your team and the customer success team here at Revinate to create a customized lead form to specifically capture data on very specific inquiry or interest types. Jason, I know that you oversee that closely today. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you and the team work together to identify those data points and then what they’re doing with the data right now?
[00:28:28] Jason Wells: Yeah. Absolutely. So when they’re doing the call, they have opportunity with these customized fields we created to put, did they make a reservation at this restaurant or make an inquiry? Did they book equestrian? Did they book clay pigeon shooting? Did they book call? And with that information, once you have it, you’re able to really sell back to the guests. Then, also, you’re able to market to them in the future. We’ve a lot of really great success lately on some very targeted campaigns specifically for F&B events, for family days, that are generating just as much revenue and engagement from a small sample set of people that have indicated that they have an interest through these discussions that the reservations team is having and documenting on these lead forms to retarget them specifically for these events, and the revenue percent has doubled. Doubled. Yes.
[00:29:22] Dean Blackburn: Let’s not give away too many trade secrets here, guys, about that. I do wanna bring it back to the initial. I think the point is listen to the guest, listen to the guest on why they’re coming and if you can collect some information like that and Jack, I’m stealing some of your thunder. There’s a huge component here we’ve yet to mention and that’s the marketing. If you don’t have the marketing team also on board with the Revinate and they understand the lead form and they understand all the way you can put all this data together and do campaigns, not only to guests that have not booked, but this is for guests for repeat bookings, for guests for extending their stay, I guess I mean, for holidays, all the different things out there. So, yeah, I’m not gonna give away trade secrets here, but but I’m telling you, our team, our marketing team is an absolutely incredible piece of this. They take all this data and you’re talking about a pain point. At the beginning, your sales agents will say, well, why am I doing all this? This isn’t my job. I’m a salesperson. Again, they’re doing a huge piece of that marketing start, so you gotta have a marketing team who also believes in what can be done for the guest. We’re fortunate we’ve got some great marketing people here that have been with the property for some years as well and they understand what campaigns to put out and then they look at the data every day to say, hey, this is what’s causing a reaction from a guest, this is what’s booking and this is what’s not booking.
[00:30:37] Jack Newkirk: Yeah. Well and you bring up the whole ecosystem of it. Like, when you think about what it is that you’re asking your team to do, which is field inbound and coordinate outbound to selling opportunities, it’s a lot. And for many of the clients that I talk to, what they lean into is essentially shopping cart abandonment, but for the voice channel. These automated campaigns you talk about when a guest calls in but doesn’t book and they do give up that email address, the robots can assist in the background by retargeting that guest and keeping them informed based off of what their interests are. And that is what I think is probably what frees up your team to have these eight minute average handle times and to be dedicated to the outbound and to be able to be highly specific about the priority order in which they retarget guests based off of maybe the value of the potential stay or the length that they’re gonna be on property and all these other components. Do you see the email retargeting that’s automated as supplementing your team’s efforts?
[00:31:36] Dean Blackburn: Absolutely. Yeah. Because you’re instead of just doing a blast to the entire United States or whoever your email camp or email database is, you’re sending it to those that may have a reason originally on why they called it or just think about time of year and the seasons. So you have a good pattern. Now are we still also learning from that? Yeah. I mean, we’re gonna do some targets out there that sometimes we don’t always hit a 100%, but I think what’s important is at least you have some intrinsic data on it prior to sending a campaign out. And we all get emails, and nothing’s worse than an email on something in your email box that is just completely unrelated to you. But, Jack, maybe you surf. I don’t surf, so I don’t need a surfing email coming to me all the time. Delayed it. So but, anyway, so I have to really get a lot of the emphasis on the marketing team understanding exactly what we’re doing.
[00:32:23] Jack Newkirk: Well, this is the where the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone because you’re not just getting email addresses on those guests that book, you’re getting email on addresses on guests that never did book, but they did call you. And it’s not like they magically didn’t need a hotel to stay in. That means that now your marketing team has access to your competitors’ databases because your team diligently captured those email addresses not just to compete against your competitive set but also next year you can peer into everybody who inquired for the month of September but who never did stay and then be able to strategically remarket to them as well. And the marketing team could not do that without your team.
[00:33:02] Dean Blackburn: Well, the marketing team, I will tell you another piece of that is and not to release too much is your marketing team builds your website. Your marketing team is what puts the photos out there. Your marketing team is what puts out the look, not the voice of what your resort is. When you have a subscribe for newsletters and the guests are getting that information in, now they’re interested in you. So they’re interested in that stay as well. So the the relationship with marketing is key.
[00:33:26] Jack Newkirk: Dean or Jason, is there anything that’s on your heart that you wanted to bring today that we didn’t cover?
[00:33:32] Jason Wells: I just wanted to say that the point of this is the voice channel isn’t dead. It’s not only not dead, but it’s kind of reinvented itself in some of the ways that we’re talking about here. It’s not just capturing that initial call and booking it on that first time. It’s, can you book it on that second or third time if the guest wasn’t ready? And being able to get that information such as the email address on those guests that didn’t book is super valuable. And without having to rely on OTAs, a lot of business does come through the voice channel for you, and it’s more profitable. You control the margins on that, which is huge, and it’s just such awesome. Every week we meet, and we get to talk about how well you’re doing. And it’s a constant improvement, and that just shows that the voice channel really is impactful to the overall business.
[00:34:13] Dean Blackburn: I have to mention this, Jack. You see one of the hotels there, you saw the other hotel at the beginning, none of this happens without the 1,000 employees that make that happen. We’re a destination resort again, so they have to make the commitment to come here, but it takes an entire team to make that experience because when you sell something up front, the promise you make to that guest has to be fulfilled all the way through. So very proud of the area that I work at because I tell you, it is just such a unique opportunity and I think a lot of historic hotels I’ve traveled to is it’s just very unique in itself.
[00:34:43] Jack Newkirk: Yeah. Not to end this on a low note, but if anybody on this call was at the hotel data conference last week and is looking at some of the statistics coming out of that, looking at reforecast for occupancy being down and knowing that as a part of the world right now, we’re definitely struggling bringing international tourism back in. When I think of historic hotels, people don’t travel to them on accident. They are destinations, like you said, Dean, and it’s a part and parcel of the overall vacation experience that folks plan for, which means that every call is more important now than it was at this time last year when we were still in the post pandemic recovery phase. Now that’s flattened out and that we are facing some kind of macroeconomic headwinds leaning into the value behind every time that phone rings is what’s going to make the difference between I think hitting RevPar forecasts and missing them and it takes work. I’m not gonna lie. Like, what you do and what your team does and Jason, how you coordinate with the reservations managers at French Lick, it is a day in day out maintenance and innovation process that if neglected would certainly you would see a pretty immediate results in your book’s revenue but keeping your energy sharp and keeping your team motivated and capturing as much data as possible and making people feel as if they matter and loving their jobs could keep you in a much healthier place as we kind of bounce down this road right now. Alright. Well, there’s one important thing that we do need to do today, and that is a major thanks to Dean for being part of this and for inspiring us. Jason, thank you for being here as well. Of course, none of this could have happened without our deep partnership with Historic Hotels of America, and we’re so grateful for them to partner with us here and the lovely miss Stephanie Calhoun as well. Thank you all for taking time out of your day.
[00:36:31] Dean Blackburn: Thank you. Have a good day.
[00:36:36] Karen Stephens: Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hotel Moment by Revinate. Our community of hoteliers is growing every week, and each guest we speak to is tackling industry challenges with the innovation and flexibility that our industry demands. If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if listening on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe for more content. For more information, head to revinate.com/hotelmomentpodcast. Until next time, keep innovating.
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