HiJiffy helps USSIM Vacances reduce 100+ weekly calls while improving customer service quality
March 2023 – November 2023
3.9K
conversations
97%
automation rate
83%
CSAT score
90%
check-in campaigns open rate
Introduction
HiJiffy’s mission is to develop the most advanced conversational AI for the hotel industry. Today, more than 1,800 hotels in over 50 countries worldwide have placed their trust in the solution that reimagines how hotels communicate with their guests.
This success story highlights the impact HiJiffy’s Guest Communications Hub has had on the entire customer experience of the French hotel group USSIM Vacances. The group’s success is based on its willingness to embrace conversational AI-powered automation and its confidence in the solution, as demonstrated by a remarkable 97% automation rate.
How has USSIM Vacances managed to significantly lighten its teams’ workload while improving its service’s efficiency and quality? This will be examined here, initially describing the challenges faced by USSIM and then looking at the results achieved. Finally, testimonials from hotel staff offer an in-depth perspective on their experience.
The Client: USSIM Vacances
About USSIM
Founded in 1945, USSIM Vacances is France’s oldest tourism association. The group currently has five carefully chosen properties that offer travellers authentic holidays.
With a history spanning more than 75 years, USSIM has remained true to its values of authenticity, conviviality and pleasure. Whether by the sea or in the mountains, a holiday with USSIM is an immersive experience of a region, enhanced with a local product or a vintage wine.
The beginning of USSIM Vacances’ collaboration with HiJiffy
At the beginning of 2023, USSIM crossed paths with HiJiffy at a trade fair. Their objective was clear. The hotel brand wanted to redefine the guest experience of their long-established hotel group using HiJiffy’s innovative solution based on conversational AI. The willingness to embrace technology and the confidence in the solution from day one laid the foundations for this success story.
In March of the same year, USSIM implemented the Guest Communication Hub. Initially, its application was limited to the period preceding the stay, enabling travellers’ questions to be answered more quickly. The exceptional initial results confirmed the relevance of this approach, prompting the hotel group to upgrade their plan to cover the entire customer journey in November 2023.
Challenges
USSIM was looking for a centralised, reliable, all-in-one solution to automate communications with its guests to meet two main challenges:
- To reduce the workload of customer relations teams
The hotel group wanted to automate the handling of questions from travellers before their stay to reduce the workload of reception staff by minimising the number of emails and calls received.
- To improve the guest experience
USSIM wanted to optimise its communication channels, offering immediate responses to most of the questions received 24 hours a day all week, freeing up its teams to intervene if necessary.
What were your objectives?
“We were looking to improve the guest experience and make it more user-friendly for our teams. The aim was to save time while responding quickly to guests.”
Solutions
Having chosen Guest Communications Hub, describing it as “comprehensive, easy to use and state-of-the-art,” the French hotel group has placed its total trust in HiJiffy’s expertise by deploying the AI-powered solution across all five of their properties.
Guided by our Customer Success team, USSIM mapped out its interactions with guests, starting with integrating our conversational AI exclusively into the pre-stay phase. Automated tasks included:
- Answers to FAQs
HiJiffy’s conversational AI, which specialises in more than 200 topics specific to the hospitality industry, handles travellers’ questions instantly and automatically. It provides a 24/7 service all week through channels like a chat on their website, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
- Assistance with bookings
HiJiffy’s conversational AI integrated into the hotel brand’s booking engine guides guests through the booking process, ensuring a seamless experience.
More recently, less than a year after the initial implementation, USSIM extended the usage of the solution to the entire customer journey. In November 2023, the hotel group launched a number of automated WhatsApp campaigns, including:
- Check-in campaigns
These automated messages are scheduled to be sent 30 days before the check-in date, by WhatsApp or SMS. The aim is to direct guests to the questionnaire they have already received by email, encouraging them to provide all their personal information. This simplifies the check-in process and helps reduce queues at reception when customers arrive.
- Guest review campaigns
These automated messages are programmed to be sent on the day of the guest’s departure to encourage them to share their opinion of their stay.
Results
With a 97% automation rate, the implementation of the HiJiffy solution demonstrated its ability to overcome the two initial challenges, reducing the workload of customer relations teams while improving efficiency and quality of service for an enhanced guest experience.
What specific results have USSIM achieved in the nine months of using HiJiffy’s conversational AI? Let’s take a closer look at the key achievements:
- Considerable reduction in telephone calls
- More than 3,900 conversations were handled by the HiJiffy virtual assistant, 3,783 of them fully automated (without human intervention).
- This means that the virtual assistant has efficiently handled over 100 customer requests each week, preventing these enquiries from turning into calls to reception.
- Reduced workload for customer relations teams
- Given that, on average, a telephone call in the hotel sector takes 3.11 minutes, the HiJiffy solution has considerably lightened the workload of the USSIM teams by reducing the time spent on telephone calls by more than 5 hours each week – or around 200 hours since its installation.
- The ability to delegate repetitive tasks to the virtual assistant saves significant time, freeing up teams to focus on higher added-value tasks.
- Improved efficiency and quality of service
- Classifying and distributing customer requests has considerably improved the efficiency and quality of the service.
- Automating and reducing calls requesting information means that staff have more time available to deal with specific requests internally and, therefore, to offer a more personalised service for guests.
“Typically, answers to customer queries are given quickly between tasks, but with HiJiffy, there’s a real time to think about how to deal with a query in a clear and organised way.” – Nathan Soetaert (Web-marketing and Communications Manager)
- Increase in direct bookings and sales
- Since installing the HiJiffy solution, USSIM has seen an increase in direct bookings, generating additional sales of over €27,500.
- Improved guest satisfaction thanks to check-in and guest review campaigns
- Although WhatsApp campaigns have only recently been introduced by the hotel brand, the initial results are very encouraging, with an open rate of over 90% for check-in campaigns. These campaigns help to increase guest satisfaction.
Testimonials
“The kindness and availability of Elodie, our CSM, who demonstrated remarkable patience, availability and responsiveness. The flexibility and educational approach of Alizé, the French Manager. The formidable efficiency of a duo at the service of guest satisfaction. Ultimately, it’s the human behind the AI that makes HiJiffy so enjoyable!“
Brieuc Raynaud-Gastineau, Assistant to the Managing Director – USSIM Vacances
“Once you’ve used it, you can’t do without it. The HiJiffy tool provides real working comfort and optimum usability.“
Nathan Soetaert, Web-marketing and Communications Manager – USSIM Vacances
“Working with USSIM Vacances is an extremely rewarding experience. This hotel group is taking an innovative approach by actively integrating technology into a sector that is often on the back foot. Technology is at the heart of their strategy, and they are open to exploring new initiatives. Working with such a curiosity-driven team, fully exploiting the solution’s capabilities, is a great pleasure. What’s more, their many ideas create a real partnership dynamic.“
Élodie Soares, Senior Customer Success Manager – HiJiffy
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