Avaya identifies gaps in the guest experience

Avaya has announced the findings of its first annual Hospitality Industry Survey, where 72 global hotel brands identified market trends and room for improvement.

Survey respondents aligned around three particular issues as they seek to improve the guest experience: guest engagement, communication and services. Many companies, however, are seeing significant opportunities by taking advantage of mobile, multichannel communications for both guests and staff, and updating standard, in-room devices with cool new applications and capabilities.

Various gaps in the guest experience were identified through the survey:

Engaging guests - more than half (55%) of hospitality companies say they struggle to engage their guests during the booking process, while 70% say they struggle during and after the visit.

Communication between guests and staff leaves a lot to be desired - 60% of survey respondents say the inability of their staff to effectively communicate with guests is a “main factor” diminishing the guest experience at their properties.

Services - six in 10 (62%) of global respondents said the quality of the guest experience at their properties would be significantly improved by enhanced in-room and on-property guest services.

Technology to the rescue

Since most guests are on the move during their stay - as well as a large portion of the staff dedicated to serving them - respondents recognised that mobile apps offer the most compelling opportunity for improving service of any technology (48%). In fact, 81% of respondents are planning to create high-functioning apps over the next five years.

“The guest experience is more important than price when it comes to repeat customers and recommendations. The big question is how do we improve the experience at a reasonable cost, when nearly everything about a hotel has high capital and operating expenses? With Avaya, our hospitality industry customers are finding exciting new ways of engaging guests, creating efficiencies and delight that will help ensure their properties are booked to capacity,” said Frederick Sabty, VP, Hospitality Worldwide for Avaya.

Avaya provides solutions to more than 2,500 hotels worldwide and has existing relationships with nine out of 10 of the world’s luxury hotels.

Avaya IP Office ups security for cloud-based deployments

Avaya has upgraded its unified communications (UC) solution for small and midsize businesses. Avaya IP Office release 10 adds a number benefits for businesses in terms of security, resiliency and end-user experience.

With more than half a million systems shipped globally, Avaya IP Office is one of the most widely sold unified communications solutions for small and midsize businesses available in the market today. The Avaya IP Office Platform now offers built-in media encryption for endpoints and UC clients to preserve privacy and data integrity. This feature is provided at no extra cost or added complexity. Most other over-the-top, pure-cloud UC vendor offerings available today may provide encryption as an optional line item, if at all, Avaya said.

“The challenge of keeping up with growing, ever-changing cybersecurity threats is daunting - especially for small and midsize businesses with budget and resource constraints. It’s these very constraints that increase the inclination to choose cloud-based services; however, it’s also not a given fact that security is or will be provided by their cloud vendor. That’s why we believe security should be built into the solution as opposed to bolted on. It’s essential, and a core component of our Avaya IP Office Platform,” said Tak Kuen Hubert Lee, Midmarket Sales Lead, APAC, Avaya.

“In the small and midsize business sector in Asia Pacific, it’s all about speed and streamlined deployment regardless of whether cloud, on-premise, or a hybrid solution. Avaya’s IP Office promise of ease, speed and built-in encryption hits the right sweet spot in this region. In addition, the Avaya partner community in Asia Pacific - and specifically at the country level - is an important differentiator for providing the local customization needed and in addressing vertical industry nuances,” added Adrian Ho, Principal Analyst, Enterprise, Ovum, Asia Pacific.

With data becoming an important asset to businesses today and the nature of cyber attacks becoming more sophisticated, Asia Pacific businesses are setting their sights on security. Overall spending on critical infrastructure security in the region is expected to hit US$22 billion by 2020. On the back of this trend, Avaya’s increased focus in security is significant, especially to the midmarket: According to a 2015 global survey report by PwC, the number of attacks reported by midsize companies increased 64% between 2013 and 2014, from 2,581 to 4,227. This increase is partly due to cybercriminals turning to midsize businesses in hopes of easy access.

Beyond other pure cloud deployments, the latest version of IP Office takes a unique approach to resilience, providing system failover cloud-to-cloud, cloud-to-premises, premises-to-cloud and premises-to-premises. Whatever the approach, the system stays active and users maintain connectivity throughout the outage.

To meet the rising expectations of end-users for a richer, more streamlined experience, the Avaya IP Office Platform also introduces the H175 video phone, with a 7” hi-definition touchscreen display that is suitable for personal use, an executive desk or a small conference room.

For midsize companies with contact centres, Avaya announced in June a new workforce optimisation solution that provides midsize companies with the operational intelligence needed to enhance contact centre performance and drive a high-quality customer experience. Avaya Workforce Optimization Select enables a wide range of insights into the customer experience.

Interested?

The Avaya IP Office Platform is available through authorised channel partners in three deployment options: premises-based, hybrid or pure cloud solution.

StarHub launches SmartUC service for Singapore businesses, powered by Avaya

Avaya, a customer and team engagement solutions provider, and StarHub, an integrated infocommunications company in Singapore, have launched a business communications service, SmartUC, for businesses in Singapore. 

The benefits are fourfold: SmartUC can help businesses become more productive, deliver a first class experience for their customers, differentiate their products and services, and expand.

“The expectations of business users and customers have rapidly evolved in recent years, and that change will only accelerate. We now expect mobility and apps and social and cloud. We expect video and chat and flexibility and ease of use. We expect the world at our click,” observed Pamela Tham, Singapore Country Leader, Avaya.

Providing a suite of unified communications capabilities, SmartUC will be delivered in two different offerings – a Standard option for small businesses with fewer than 50 users, and a Premium option for companies with over 50 users, allowing for seamless business growth and flexibility. The SmartUC Premium option includes all the capabilities of the Standard version, plus support for Android, IOS, Windows and Mac devices, contact centre self-service and multimedia capabilities.

"With SmartUC, we bring about a cost-effective value proposition to help Singapore companies to operate more efficiently, while maintaining the fine balance to scale and grow more competitively. Through this innovative approach, we aim to partner our enterprise customers to deliver outstanding service to their businesses,” said Sebastian Tan, Vice President, Enterprise Solutions, Services and Delivery, StarHub.

For small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in particular, a cost effective and high-performance technology solution can help to deliver quicker decision making and better business results. The SmartUC solution ticks all the boxes to help Singapore businesses grow and deliver exceptional service:

· Simple to use and easy to tailor; can be deploy with managed service support

· Monthly subscription offering without the hefty upfront IT expenses or costly feature upgrades associated with traditional corporate phone systems

· Supports a handful of users all the way to 2,500 users

· Integrates easily with existing solutions

· Can work at the workplace, or in the cloud 

SmartUC is based on the Avaya IP Office platform, a solution for SMBs with over 480,000 midmarket systems installed around the world. IP Office helps connect businesses with their customers using the methods those customers prefer - including voice, SMS, web chat, video, email, or fax. IP Office also helps people work from anywhere.