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Well, it’s hard to believe that we are now in the second third of the year. Wow how time has flown! However that’s not really the subject of today’s podcast. Today’s podcast is all about an experience I had with a hotel booking recently. Very positive experience it was as well and I thought “Wow, there are some great lessons here in how to engage with your customers even after they have said yes.” So that’s the subject today’s podcast.
So hi there everyone! This is Denise from superfastrecruitment.co.uk and this is our podcast and today we are talking all about the link between booking a hotel room and the follow-up process that I went through with this particular organisation company and how it taught me a few lessons. Well, when I say taught me a few lessons, it made me appreciate what a slick process they had and just thinking about how you as recruiters might be able to use a similar process because you’re in a similar position.
So you might be listening to this on iTunes or on our superfastrecruitment.co.uk website whichever is fine. Of course remember you can always get the transcription and can download the podcast anyway on the website so head over there.
So third of the way through the year. We decided to have a little bit of a break away for the next third and we’re always busy and what seemed lovely was to have a few days away in a nice hotel, a bit of relaxation, nice food, nice wine, massage and very important as I am a girl, shops within a close vicinity where I can go and spend some money.
So that was all the criteria and it just so happens that we tend to use one particular site to book I think nearly all our accommodation – that’s booking.com… love booking.com… biggest online retailer on the planet as they now inform us and the one of the things I like about booking.com is that you can reserve your room and I particularly like their follow up sequence as well.
I wanted to share that with you today but also if you haven’t used them, head over there because they have a whole range of hotels available and they have this amazing deal where you can reserve your room but you don’t have to pay for it until you arrive so it does not come off your credit card which is even better when you’re looking at cash flow and profit and various other things. Anyway, I digress.
So what was the great lesson here? So booked, great hotel, good deal and added in the old credit card and everything was fine and what was really good is that straightaway I got an email back confirming exactly what had happened, that we were registered and what would happen next and should we want to cancel, if something cropped up, it was very transparent and very easy to do. Here’s a link save this email in whatever folder you want to and you can always come back to it and you can always click here to cancel your booking. So very very transparent.
Great, got an email, everything was wonderful then a few days later just before we were heading off to Aldwark Manor in York, we got another email and there’s an image of it and hopefully in the blog that you’ll be able to see. And in this second communication it was great because they were helping to possibly make sure that we turned up anyway but also giving us some added value stuff. And it was talking to was about “Hi Denise! Hope you’re looking forward to your time away in Aldwark. Here are some things that you might find interesting.”
Now I know that booking.com are very very slick, very smart organisation. They probably have an idea of the sort of things I might be interested in because obviously I’m probably tagged on their database and computer system and they’ll probably see what other things I like.
But you know what they did do is they gave me a range of options from some medieval type of things that I might want to because obviously that is something that happens around the York area, through to nice restaurants, through to days out. So you know, there’s a lovely nice little image to sort of engage me. Maybe I want to go out for a walks or whatever. So really really positive engagement sent to me a few days before the event.
Now that doesn’t happen a lot. That happens rarely when it comes to hotel booking companies. They are usually just glad that you booked with them. They’re just going to hope that you turn up. And with a company like booking.com very very slick marketeers is always really useful to look at them and think about “Well, how might that work for us as an organisation? How could we build this into our process?”
And it is quite interesting isn’t it because with this particular organisation booking.com, they take no money from you. All they’ve got is an agreement that you booked something with them and hopefully you’re going to turn up on time and you’re going to pay when you arrive there and then they obviously get their fee from the hotel.
Now how might that work for you as recruiters? Because in a lot of recruitment companies, it depends on whether you’re a preferred supplier, how that works, whether you’ve got some form of agreement where there is a percentage fee upfront or whether you are just with a… and I say this with respect, a pack of other recruiters just hoping that you can find the right candidate at the right time. Just as we are a pack of other marketing companies vying for your business.
So how might that work? Well how about having your own process so once you’ve had a conversation with somebody, whether they sign a contract or not, it may not always happen that way. How about having an auto responder series that starts to work for you straightaway so that you know that company X has decided to work with you or candidate Y has decided to work with you. What about having some engagement emails that you can send out to people?
You know we always encourage our clients to do this and on a consistent basis and we tell them the type of things that they need to be sending out as well. Imagine if the first email was a lovely welcome email to say “Great that you’re going to be working with us. Here’s what you can expect. Here’s our terms of service and how we are going to interact with you in the next few weeks and days. A) You will have your own recruitment consultant. This is their contact details. They will be in regular communication with you and look out for the next email where we are going to tell you about XYZed.”
The next email could be a case study and it could be for instance a testimony or a case study about how you’ve managed to place somebody very similar to them, to their scenario and what the results might be. So you can see where this is going. The power of being able to utilise this as a methodology for how you then continue to engage clients. Because I think one of the things that is a downside, lots of people say “Okay, I’ve signed up with such a body but then I’ve not heard from them and I really don’t know quite what happens next.”
So it’s something that often happens to us when we talk to our potential clients they say “So if they say yes what’s the process?” And because we’ve been in marketing a while, we have a defined process, we have a specific thing that happens and you know, it’s all mapped out so people can get a nice client experience, a nice client journey. Because what do we want people to do? We want our clients to refer us to other people. Just like you guys, you would hopefully want your candidates and your clients to refer you to other people within their wider network and you can do this by giving people an amazing experience.
So over the years, booking.com has become our preferred hotel booking company. A) Because they follow us up and what we also like is that now we get lots of emails about great deals and they are all targeted to areas that I might have searched on because they’ve got my contact details they know where I am on the website so I like that about them, that they are always thinking ahead about what I might want.
And you know, you can get incredibly sophisticated and I’m sure we’ll talk about that more in other podcasts but that is something that you guys can do as well… you know, you’ve got a client on board, how do you blow them away with the customer experience and the customer service that they get you as a company and what you can deliver for them over a time period.
So this is Denise with a little story about Aldwark Manor and very nice few days it was and I spent rather a lot of money and as I worked out later we probably could have afforded to go abroad and spend probably less but there you go, great experience and great marketing lesson as well, so this is Denise from superfastrecruitment.co.uk saying bye for now.
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This podcast was hosted by Denise Oyston. Follow us on Google+
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