Guest service technologies are changing incredibly quickly. Every week we’re hearing announcements about new products designed to improve the delivery of guest services and improvements to the ones we already use.
Most of these products and improvements are based on the use of smart technologies that are able to learn from their interactions with people and improve their service, and we’re quickly reaching the tipping point where the usefulness of these products becomes great enough, and the cost low enough, for widespread use.
Smart technology and AI are extremely popular topics. However, despite the fact that so many people are talking about them, one of the most important features of these technologies (some would even argue the most important feature) is getting almost no coverage. That feature is data collection.
The coverage of smart technology — from Facebook chatbots to self-driving cars to Amazon Echo — focuses almost exclusively on the ways these technologies make people’s lives easier and ignore the second major (but far less sexy) function of these technologies: learning about people’s behavior.
Every interaction between a smart technology application and a person is a point of data collection and that data is crucial to the proper functioning of all smart technologies. It’s also key for identifying trends to predictive analytics. If, as they say, data is the new oil, then smart technologies are the new oil wells and in the economy of the future, every company is going to do its own drilling. The companies that build the most robust data banks today are positioning themselves for a competitive advantage tomorrow.
In this article, we’re going to discuss the most important guest service technologies, not only for improving the guest experience but also for generating valuable insights into your customers and their behavior.
Below is a list of the most useful guest-facing technology currently on the market with a brief discussion each technology’s benefits, drawbacks, implementation considerations, and potential for the collection of useful customer insights.
