NATIONAL REPORT— As the lodging industry continues to investigate and adapt customer relationship management solutions to better leverage guest data, hoteliers need to realize that the technology itself is only a small part of the CRM pie. First and foremost, CRM is a business strategy and hotel companies should have a clear understanding of what they are looking to accomplish before ever deploying such a technology system, industry consultants and analysts said. Secondly, because the lodging industry is such a pioneer in customer loyalty programs, hoteliers must make sure any CRM solution enhances and works side by side with their current loyalty programs to enhance the guest experience. “In terms of the actual [movement to build customer loyalty]the hospitality industry has been one of the early adopters of this,” said Chris Moloney, director/marketing strategy for Maritz Loyalty Marketing. “Going back 10 to 15 years, the hospitality industry made customer satisfaction their primary objective.” However, one of the big challenges facing the lodging industry is that many times customer satisfaction does not turn into customer loyalty, Moloney said. That is where a CRM solution can be extremely effective, he added. “The challenge for the hospitality industry is that the major hotels have found that there is not a perfect correlation between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. A customer may be fully satisfied but switch to the competition just because of price or geographic location,” Moloney said. “The hospitality industry is realizing what are the drivers for customer loyalty, and while satisfaction is a driver, hotels have realized it is not the only driver,” he said. “What a CRM system can do is help a hotel understand what makes a customer loyal. It combines much information that hotels can use. There are things a CRM system can do to predict behavior and some of the big hospitality companies have done a great job with this, such as Starwood. Members in their loyalty program have a different experience and are being treated uniquely. They get special services and upgrades while they are at the property, rather than just earning points towards a free night,” Moloney said. “They are changing the customer’s stay for the better while they are there.” That is a critical component to any loyalty program and personalized services and specific target marketing is where a CRM system can be most helpful, industry executives said. For one, Six Continents Hotels recently selected Art Technology Group’s ATG Commerce CRM platform to increase the scalability and effectiveness of its targeted marketing campaigns and the personalization of its websites. As a result, Six Continents said it will be able to implement a phased marketing deployment and then respond more quickly to customer needs and demands. Six Continents claims it will offer customers a more personalized user experience based on the individual’s travel and buying preferences. But even the most sophisticated and technologically advanced CRM system is useless if hotel employees are not trained well in customer service, according to Dianne Durkin, president of Loyalty Factor, an employee training firm. “Proper training on how to deal with customers goes hand-in-hand with technology,” Durkin said. “All companies have different software systems that they are using. But that is just the beginning. The real power is to teach them the soft skills that make it work. People buy from people and that is never going to change,” she said. For instance, a CRM system cannot stop a front desk clerk from staring down into his/her terminal and never looking a guest in the eye upon check in. Changing that behavior is a business strategy and philosophy that needs to be incorporated into every facet of a hotel’s organization, from management to lower-level employees, Durkin said. “If you are in the service business and you have someone standing in front of you, you had bett
