This case study was from a project we completed a few months ago, for a client who wanted to renovate their ability to centrally track interactions and action items with their hotels, to enable their internal teams to have a complete 360 degree view of their hotel interactions and the resulting action items teams have across their enterprise.
The opportunity: implement a solution on Salesforce to allow the above property operational teams to track their interactions with the hotels, along with creating and tracking status of any action items coming from those interactions.
This was very important for the corporate above property operational support teams and the company leadership because it provided a 360 degree view of the interations with the hotels - including historical reporting for interactions with each hotel or with a portfolio of hotels for a particular ownership company or management company. This type of awareness and historical reporting is invaluable for the company leadership.
The solution: we built a custom solution on top of several out of box Salesforce objects combined with a couple of custom objects that we introduced to their Salesforce environment. The solution was built to be mobile-first, since many of the resources on these teams do their jobs on the road, visiting the hotels in person.
Besides being primarily a mobile solution, it provides several pieces of functionality that are mandatory for this type of solution:
It allows the users to view the hotel information, including location details, hotel contact details, historical performance reporting related to the respective function the user is from (such guest satisfaction, REVPAR, occupancy rates, etc.), as well as interaction history for in person visits, phone calls, and emails, and upcoming visits from any above property team.
It allows the users to view, create, and update interactions, for any visit, call, or email that occurs with a hotel. This includes integration with the company email system, so emails and calendar events or visits can be associated to the respective hotel automatically.
It allows users to view, create, and update action items which result from the interactions. These action items can be categorize (which helps for improved reporting) and can also be assigned to a user's own team, or to users from other teams. These action items can also be assigned to external service providers and routed to them automatically - a topic which will be discussed in a future case study article.
*** While we did not do it yet during this particulare implementation, it is also possible to use Salesforcd Maps functionality to optimize the driving route a resource should take, based upon traffic conditions and hotel locations. There are other automations that can be used with this type of mobile solution too, e.g. automating the start of an in-person visit (based upon location awareness of the mobile device), automated creation of visit checklist which should be performed at the hotel, etc.
The value delivered: the client was really happy with the end result - and also excited to continue to enhance the functionality of the solution as we move forward. They were able to centralize the creation and tracking of all of the interactions their internal teams were having with their hotels - including any action items resulting from those interactions.
All of this has dramatically improved the ability of their leadership to have much better insight into their historical interactions with hotels, as well as ensure that action items do not get lost in the shuffle - so the internal teams have been more successful in completing their action items in a timely basis, which has ultimately helped the performance of the hotels (which is the whole reason these internal teams exist in the first place, right?).
There are many ways this type of solution can be tailored to meet the work processes and organizational structure of your company, so if you'd like to discuss this type of solution in more detail, please CONTACT US.
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