Messaging platforms are fast becoming the new way for businesses to interact with customers. When communicating with brands, 54% of US social media users say they prefer messaging platforms to email, phone, and online chat.
Much of this comes down to ubiquity. Millions of people use chat apps on a daily basis to talk with friends and family. By extension, this familiarity makes them a preferred way to communicate with their favorite brands and businesses. Including hotels.
From making booking queries, to ordering room service, to firing off a question about the local dining scene, chat apps offer a streamlined way for guests to communicate with a hotel before, during, and after their stay. But as the global market expands, how do you know which platform is the best one for your hotel?
In the following post, we’ll look at the most important chat apps to consider in order to super-serve your guests with enhanced levels of service and interaction.
WhatsApp continues to hit new milestones, recently reaching 1.5 billion users and announcing that its users now send a dizzying 60 billion messages a day. The growth of the platform has been nothing short of startling, rocketing from 450 million monthly active users since being acquired by Facebook back in 2014.
For hotels looking to connect with guests, the global ubiquity of WhatsApp is its biggest strength. And now, there are opportunities for marketers to capitalize further thanks to the recent launch of an app designed specifically for business profiles.
Aimed at small and medium-sized companies, the app allows marketers to create a business-specific WhatsApp profile that includes handy information, such as a business’s email address, physical address, website and company description.
The app also makes it easier to communicate with customers through a new smart messaging tool, which facilitates fast replies to commonly asked questions, sends greeting messages, and features away messages that tell customers know when a business is busy.
