Concierge

After staying at the Park Hyatt in Tokyo recently during my honeymoon I can say that I’ve never experienced customer service quite so efficient and personal. 

I’m interested to see if this translates to digital channels. 

Notice the above tweets don’t carry direct @mentions. These are clearly loyal customers just generally talking about the company. Hyatt Concierge was monitoring Twitter for mentions and engaged directly with them.

It certainly puts Hyatt foremost in the customer’s mind and is a neat little surprise for the follower. There are a huge amount of examples just like the above on Hyatt’s Twitter feed.

Complaints are dealt with quickly and are followed up personally by the customer care operator. 

There are plenty of examples where a brand on Twitter has merely apologised to the disgruntled customer. Here we can actually see action being taken. I’d be more than happy with this response.

Speed definitely seems to be high on the agenda. This reply came within five minutes. Hopefully it made a difference to the customer.

Most replies arrive under 10 minutes, which is the optimal time for social customer care. I also love that Hyatt has the grace to engage with customers who don’t get the Twitter handle right…

‘Tweet if we can be of assistance’ with the customer service agent’s initials is a lovely way to make guests feel welcome.

My only criticism would be that even though the service seems to run 24 hours a day, Hyatt could do with stating that fact in its profile description. 

Mobile app

First of all let’s take a look at how the Hyatt app looked last year…

 

 

It’s difficult to read, fairly old fashioned and certainly clunky.

Here’s the 2014 version…

The homepage is very attractive with a modern flat design. 

Finding a hotel is a lot easier, with a geolocation tool to find my nearest hotel straight away, and predictive text search.

The calendar for choosing arrival and departure dates is easy to use, clear and classy looking.

Locations are shown with clear pricing and easily navigable detail.

You can also choose to view on a map, which is a very handy touch.

One of my only criticisms is that the text within the respective hotel details page could definitely be larger and easier to read.

Although I am happy to see click-to-call functionality enabled along with Google Maps, a current temperature reading and an impressively comprehensive collection of large images.

When it comes to reserving a room, the speed and efficiency of the task is greatly approved with guest checkout

Then filling in your personal information is all done on a single screen, with nice large text fields.

All in all this is a very fluid experience that took very little time to navigate and successfully book a room.  

Mobile site

As for the mobile site itself, this is how it looked last year.

  

A perfectly usable site, where the biggest crime was in looking a little out-dated.

Here’s how the new mobile site looks…

Well, apart from a slightly different homepage, the mobile site is identical to the app.

This provides a consistent experience for all of its users, whichever channel they are using. 

Whatever you think about the value of providing an app, whether there is an actual need for it or not, Hyatt has the done the right thing here and given its customers a choice, rather then forcing them to use the brand’s preferred channel.

Hyatt has also introduced other new features such as Uber integration, the ability to add your reservation details to your Passbook and you can now redeem your Hyatt Gold Passport points via mobile. 

In fact there are even incentives offered for those using mobile to book a room, such is Hyatt’s desire to push its mobile channels. 

For more from the blog on the travel industry check out Ryanair’s new mobile app: reviewed and how the travel industry uses email marketing.