Fourteen IP to exhibit at HITEC 2024 Charlotte

The Fourteen IP team will be exhibiting at the HITEC 2024 event, this year in the Charlotte Convention Center, Charlotte on June 24th-27th.

Once again, the Fourteen IP team will be showcasing the AI powered virtual agent service – EVA, that is transforming hotel guest interactions.

Evolution Virtual Agent (EVA) manages voice and text-based interactions with hotel guests on premises and calling externally, in a completely human-like way. It effortlessly understands multiple intent questions, rather than the typical one question – one answer voice bot that you may have experienced previously.

EVA is reducing service calls to our current customer front desks by as much as 75%, freeing up hotel staff to manage essential face-to-face interactions and handling repeat questions and room service requests.

Visit us on Booth #1656 at HITEC to hear EVA in action for yourselves and to learn how EVA is transforming guest engagement for hotels.

Naturally we will be happy to talk to you about our hospitality focused SIP Trunks and Cloud Telephony Services to future-proof your essential hotel telephony too, particularly with the withdrawal of T1/PRI services next year.

About HITEC

Billed as the largest and oldest hospitality, technology conference and exhibition and celebrating over 50 years of successful events, the Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC®) is an event that brings together a unique combination of top-notch education, the brightest minds and the hottest technologies from across the globe to one place.

Produced by Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP®), a global non-profit hospitality association, the unparalleled event offers attendees essential education, access to top hospitality technology industry experts and the resources to find cost-effective ways to improve company bottom lines.

Hope to see you there!

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Reflecting the bold, adventurous spirit of California, Moxy Downtown Los Angeles is a haven for modern nomads in LA’s creative epicenter. The location on Figueroa Street is steps away from the LA Convention Center and Crypto.com Arena, formerly Staples Center. Brought to life by an all-star team of architecture and interior design firms, the 380-room hotel channels the neighborhood’s forward-thinking energy and multicultural heritage. The hotel’s 12 dining and entertainment options include Level 8, a collection of restaurants, bars, and lounges that highlight DTLA’s diverse cultures and cuisines, and a rooftop bar on the 34th floor with views that sweep all the way to the Hollywood Hills.

Deploying our Evolution Virtual Agent (AI) across the property has enhanced staff productivity by freeing up the front of house to carry out other duties which in turn increased guest satisfaction.

To find out more about EVA and listen to how human like EVA is click here.

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As hotel guest service expectations continue to rise, delivering seamless customer experiences has become paramount.

Online review sites wield significant influence over potential guests, especially as review sites for any hotel will be one of the first things customers see when researching a hotel’s name. This makes it crucial for hotels to ensure satisfaction at every stage of their customers’ journey, from bookings to check-out.

Voice-based interactions increasingly commonplace

The increasing prevalence of voice-based interactions in everyday life has led to a rising demand for similar convenience during travel.

While popular home voice assistants like Alexa and mobile voice assistants like Apple’s Siri have gained popularity, integrating consumer-grade technologies directly into the hotel experience raises concerns about guest privacy and maintaining control over the customer relationship.

However, there is a solution in the form of a new generation of customer-led voice assistants. Unlike their robotic predecessors, these intelligent voice assistants such as our own EVA (Evolution Virtual Agent), can revolutionise the hotel guest experience, providing new opportunities for self-service and personalisation worldwide.

Let’s explore five compelling use cases for voice assistants in hotels:

Resolving billing enquiries

Many guests call with questions about their bills during their stay or in the weeks following their visit. Most are calling to get a copy of their invoice or to authorise a credit card – tasks that generally need to be handled by an off-site team. Voice assistants can take these calls immediately and route callers to the correct department.

Voice assistants can promptly address guests’ questions about their bills, guiding them to the correct department or providing alternative methods to handle inquiries, such as sending an SMS or email.

Initiating housekeeping requests

Guests frequently contact housekeeping on their in-room phones for items like towels, blankets or toiletries during their stay.

Voice assistants can accurately understand the requested item(s) and how many are required, regardless of factors such as accents or background noise. Integrations with telephony systems also capture a caller’s room number, enabling voice assistants to initiate workflows without human intervention.

Personalising guest experiences

By integrating with property management systems, voice assistants can differentiate the experience by addressing guests with personalised messages and recognising loyalty status.

With the option to offer CSAT surveys over the phone or via SMS, hotels can capture feedback in the moment to improve the guest experience or hotel operations. Just a small percentage of guests taking part in surveys can deliver vital marketing information.

Handling seasonal peaks in call volume

Call volumes can spike for a whole host of reasons. Hotels near national landmarks might experience particularly busy periods during public holidays, and resort-style hotel properties may implement special offers as part of a seasonal calendar.

At the same time unpredictable events like severe weather can require hotels to address concerns of existing and incoming guests efficiently and with little warning.

Customer-led voice assistants are trained to accurately understanding caller intent and resolve common, repetitive questions while allowing hotel staff to focus on the most urgent and pressing concerns.

Taking reservations

Front-of-house hotel staff are often tasked with managing face-to-face interactions and taking inbound calls. During busy periods, guests at the front desk take precedence, leading to missed calls, which equates to missed revenue opportunities.

When guests have complex requirements that need to be handled by a staff member, a voice assistant can gather basic information such as the guest’s name, date of birth, or party size while they wait to be served.

In Conclusion

In conclusion, integrating voice assistants into the hotel customer experience benefits both guests and hotel staff. By automating FAQs and guest requests, these customer-led voice assistants empower hotel staff to provide an elevated level of in-house service without compromising the quality of service delivered over the phone.

With such enhancements, hotels can excel in meeting the growing expectations of their in-house guests without sacrificing the quality-of-service customers receive on the phone.

Click here, to hear examples of how voice assistants improve the guest experience for Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and Choice Hotels.

To increase bookings, boost sales, and exceed guest expectations with a voice assistant, get in touch.

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The Fourteen IP team is pleased to be attending and exhibiting at the Hilton EMEA Technology Conference 2023 this week.

Taking place between the 22nd – 25th May 2023 at the Hilton Cairo Heliopolis in Egypt. The conference offers a great opportunity to network with Hilton Technology Managers from across the EMEA region, as well as catching up with existing customers in the vendors fair.

Our Business Development Manager David Webb and CEO Neil Tolley will be available at booth 16, for meetings and demonstrations of our hospitality communication solutions.

As well as introducing our SIP Trunking Services and our Evolution Voice Cloud Telephony Service for Hotels, David and Neil will be showcasing our AI Powered Virtual Agent Services EVA. EVA or Evolution Virtual Agent is transforming the way hotels manage guest voice interactions, pre, during and post stay. Reducing calls to guest services or front desks by managing guest enquiries and services request, with human like AI powered voice assistants.

Deployed in growing numbers of hotels worldwide and in multiple languages, EVA has successfully answered more the 10 million calls for our customers.

Visit Mark and Neil on stand 16 and hear EVA for yourself and enter our quiz to win some amazing prizes.

Fourteen IP is a Hilton Hotels approved vendor for cloud PBX, SIP trunks, and AI systems.

Founded in 2011, Fourteen IP has established itself as the global carrier for the hospitality industry with its Evolution Voice services.  Deployed in over 300,000 hotel rooms across 24 countries, supporting leading hotels and groups worldwide.

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The Fourteen IP team will be exhibiting at the HITEC 2023 event, this year in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Toronto on June 26th-29th.

Once again, the Fourteen IP team will be showcasing the AI powered virtual agent service – EVA, that is transforming hotel guest interactions. Now powered by a large language model platform similar to the much talked about ChatGPT open AI service, Evolution Virtual Agent (EVA) manages voice interactions with hotel guests on premises and calling externally, in a completely human-like way. It effortlessly understands multiple intent questions rather than the typical one question – one answer voice bot that you may have experienced previously.

EVA is reducing service calls to our current customer front desks by as much as 75%, freeing up hotel staff to manage essential face-to-face interactions and handling repeat questions and room service requests.

Visit us on Booth 636 at HITEC to hear EVA in action for yourselves and to learn how EVA is transforming guest engagement for hotels.

Naturally we will be happy to talk to you about our hospitality focused SIP Trunks and Cloud Telephony Services to future proof your essential hotel communications too.

Ask us about our
post show event at the CN Tower

About HITEC

Billed as the largest and oldest hospitality, technology conference and exhibition and celebrating over 50 years of successful events, the Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC®) is an event that brings together a unique combination of top-notch education, the brightest minds and the hottest technologies from across the globe to one place.

Produced by Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP®), a global non-profit hospitality association, the unparalleled event offers attendees essential education, access to top hospitality technology industry experts and the resources to find cost-effective ways to improve company bottom lines.

Hope to see you there!

The post Fourteen IP to exhibit at HITEC 2023 Toronto appeared first on Fourteen IP.

According to a recent article by analysts McKinsey and Company, “AI-enabled customer service is now the quickest and most effective route for institutions to deliver personaliSed, proactive experiences that drive customer engagement.”

The article talks about how customers are getting harder to please, with two-thirds of millennials expecting real-time customer service and three-quarters of all customers expecting consistent cross-channel service experience. It goes on to say that cost pressures rising at least as quickly as service expectations, the obvious response—adding more well-trained employees to deliver great customer service – simply isn’t a viable option.

The article then describes how companies are therefore turning to AI to deliver the proactive, personalised service customers want, when and how they want it—sometimes even before they know they want it. For transformed organisations, AI-enabled customer service can increase customer engagement, resulting in increased cross-sell and upsell opportunities while reducing cost-to-serve.

The article talks about some of the challenges some industries face, such as the integration of AI into legacy technologies but how when done well, an AI-enabled customer service transformation can unlock significant value for businesses—creating a virtuous circle of better service, higher satisfaction, and increasing customer engagement. It cites multiple factors which strengthen the case for AI-based customer service, not least of which is an increased customer acceptance of (and even preference for) machine-led conversational AI interactions.

It’s almost like they have written the article with our EVA AI-powered virtual agent in mind.

Here at Fourteen IP, we have long believed that we can help our hospitality clients enhance guest engagement with our AI solution and we have been investing in the development of our guest led solution. See how our solution has reached level four maturity.

We understand the potential integration challenges that can arise with legacy platforms and have solutions in place to overcome those limitations with our EVA Connect solution or by migrating customers to our fully featured, flexible, scalable and reliable cloud-based telephony service for hotels.

Click here to download our Guide to Unlocking EVA.

We recommend reading the entire article by McKinsey and Company and then contacting us to learn how we can help your hotel deliver better service, higher satisfaction and increasing customer engagement.

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According to a recently published article by analysts McKinsey and Company, on the “AI-enabled customer service”, our AI-powered virtual agent solution EVA, has achieved level four on a five-level scale, describing the maturity of a company’s AI-driven customer service.

The article describes how a few leading institutions have reached level four on the scale but from the McKinsey scale shown below, it is easy to see how our AI IVR system has achieved level four maturity when it is successfully managing 70-80 percent of interactions and can support most requests and transactions. In some aspects EVA (Evolution Virtual Agent) is beginning to approach level five with our recognition of guest loyalty status and subsequent responses and recommendations befitting that status.

AI-Driven Customer Maturity Scale

Level 1: Manual and high-touch, based on paper forms and offered largely via assisted channels.

• Reactive service, with the majority of interactions on human-assisted channels
• Paper use is still prevalent

Level 2: Partly automated and basic digital channels, with digitisation and automation of servicing in assisted channels.

• Reactive service, with limited self-servicing opportunities
• Lower adoption of available self-service channels
• Lower availability of digital or straight-through-processing (STP)

Level 3: Accessible and speedy service via digital channels, with self-servicing on select channels and a focus on enabling end-to-end resolution.

• Somewhat proactive, but limited engagement
• Self-service channels such as mobile apps, interactive voice response (IVR) systems, and internet sites handle half of all interactions, and can support STP.

Level 4: Proactive and efficient engagement deploying AI-enabled tech, with self-servicing enabled by proactive customer interactions and conversational user experience (UX).

• Proactive, with high customer engagement on digital channels
• Self-service channels such as mobile apps, IVR systems, and internet sites handle 70-80 percent of interactions and can support most requests and transactions

Level 5: Personalised, digitally enabled engagement, bringing back the human touch via predictive intent recognition.

• Engagement via service interactions that are personalised and proactive at the individual customer level
• Digital touch points drive service-based engagement, for example via enhanced cross-selling and upselling
• More than 95 percent of service interactions and requests can be solved via digital and STP channels

* Maturity metrics achieved by EVA in red

Click here to read the McKinsey article in full or get in touch to find out how EVA can successfully manage 70-80% of your guest calls.

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Chances are you’ve read a lot about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in recent years – but what is AI and why should you consider deploying in the hospitality sector.

Download our free guide on “Ten Reasons You Should be Adopting AI in Your Hotel” to discover the impact that AI can have on costs, guest interactions and guest satisfaction.

Find out how you can:

• Reduce costs
• Improve guest interactions
• Manage external inbound and outbound calls
• Manage internal guest calls
• Reduce calls to guests services

Find out how intelligent, conversational virtual agents take and make calls or send and receive chat messages to guests and staff, to provide answers to regularly asked questions and help manage busy front of house periods.

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