Automated upselling and cross-selling are two of the best ways to drive ancillary revenue at your hotel. However, the operational aspect can be quite challenging.
If multiple requests come in, how do you ensure that you handle them all? And what is the best way to delegate tasks?
After all, the more upselling you do, the more you need to communicate with your staff.
The key is to do this efficiently and effectively, so you avoid stressing your team while providing your guests with amazing upselling and cross-selling experiences.
Find out how you can do that below.
Put all your information in one place
Start by bundling tasks where possible. If you review, approve and forward your upselling requests manually, do this in one go. Take the time for this once or twice a day, depending on how many requests you get. Then, send all the details to the right department in one shot. Of course, enquiries coming in on short notice deserve an exception and should be forwarded right away.
Now your team can get a good overview of all upcoming tasks. This helps them get their mise-en-place in order and schedule in any extra prep time for more elaborate requests. As a result, your staff can also batch their work which makes them more efficient.
Here’s an example: sending your housekeeping manager a list of all the birthday set-up requests will help them plan their inventory and schedule their workforce accordingly. Once it’s time to bring the set-ups to the rooms, everything is ready to go and there are no surprises.
Lastly, ask your team when and how they prefer to get the information. The start or end of the shift is usually a good time since the department head often goes through other admin tasks then.
Operate on a need-to-know basis
That’s common sense, right? After all, as a head chef, you don’t need to know about a guest pre-ordering a rental bike. Avoid these unnecessary pings by updating your upselling tool’s notification settings from the get-go.
Here are two things you could do:
- Send all notifications to a dedicated email address. The team member in charge will review and forward the details to the relevant departments.
- Set up a hotel operations tool to inform the concerned teams directly. This means nobody has to go through and assign steps manually anymore.
Let’s look at a real-life example:
A guest books two rental bikes and a picnic basket via the hotel’s upselling platform. Instead of a general email blast, the notifications go only to the four relevant departments.
- Concierge: set reminder for the bellman to prepare two bicycles
- F&B:
- Kitchen: prepare picnic lunch for two guests
- Room service: pack and deliver the picnic basket to the concierge desk
- Front office: add the request for rental bikes and the picnic basket to the guest’s profile and be ready to guide them to the concierge desk to pick up the bikes and food
Housekeeping, for example, doesn’t need to be notified about this deal. Woohoo – one less email in their inbox!
By using an all-in-one hotel operations platform, requests from your upselling system will immediately flow through to the right team at your hotel. And you can forget about sifting through emails and always risking overlooking guest requests in an overcrowded inbox.
Trim down your communication
Many tech tools send frequent browser notifications or email updates. All to keep you informed about everything as it happens, so you never miss a thing.
However, always being distracted by these messages and having to sign in and check all your tools’ interfaces, tabs or windows can make your team much less productive.
With communication, less is usually more. Don’t overwhelm people with endless calls, emails and notifications. Instead, take advantage of modern operations and communication tools to become more efficient.
This makes it much easier for you to:
- Keep an eye on all current and future tasks
- Assign work, give feedback, answer questions and follow up when needed
- Avoid unnecessary back and forth or miscommunication
- Cut back on distractions and get more done
There are plenty of benefits this would have for you and your team. Here are some of them:
- Save your staff time and energy
- More peace of mind because nobody worries about missing important tasks anymore
- Upsells, cross-sells and other requests are handled perfectly, and your guests will be thrilled
Implement checklists and SOPs
Apart from having to know what to do, your team also needs to know how to do it. Checklists and SOPs (standard operating procedures) create the perfect framework for this.
A quick question for you: Have you already created SOPs for handling upselling requests? If not, now’s the time to do it!
Start by deciding which deals need an SOP. Simple things like an early check-in probably don’t. The more complex offers like the bike rental with a picnic basket or an in-room movie theatre set-up are better candidates.
Write your SOP like you would for any other service or task. Provide necessary information, outline important steps, highlight who is in charge and provide example photos if needed.
Your checklist can be a summarised version of the SOP. It should outline the key steps your team must take to ensure everything is done properly. With its help, everyone can handle cross-sell and upsell requests independently and to your guest’s satisfaction. Your long-standing staff can also use the checklists to train new team members more quickly and ensure they know and follow company standards.
Adopting smart hotel technology you can free up your time and dedicate more of your efforts to what matters most: making your guests happy by creating an unforgettable stay. Learn more about hotel tech connectivity in our blog.
