Vinodh Balaraman, Principal & Senior Partner · Map customer sentiment by stage of journey to hone...
Transcript of Vinodh Balaraman, Principal & Senior Partner · Map customer sentiment by stage of journey to hone...
Maximizing the Impact of Customer Reviews &
Ratings Sentiment Analysis for Hoteliers
Vinodh Balaraman, Principal & Senior Partner June 2016
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Why does electronic word of mouth (eWOM) matter more than ever?
Share 1 story on what happened when
hoteliers ignored or under-utilized
these reviews.
Create a collage of feedback, text come in,
Reviews are everywhere !!
What are hoteliers
most focused on?
Review / rating sentiment drives hotel choice and RevPAR!
“Online reviews influence customers’ choice of hotel and drive RevPAR. However, the quality of reviews has a greater effect on luxury hotels’ RevPAR, while the volume of reviews has a greater effect on lower-tier hotels.” – Cornell Study
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What can sentiment analysis do?
Provide insights at individual customer
level to drive personalized
offers/experiences
Target audience: Marketing
Ask audiences what areas (i.e.. Revenue,
customer services, etc) of the industry they work
in.
Brief mention of who you are and what you do.
Now, link yourself with your audiences. Why are
you speaking? Why sentiment analysis? Why
now?
Provide insights to
pricing/revenue
management to drive
decisions on ADR
Target audience:
Pricing/revenue
management
Provide insights at
company/regional/
brand/property level
to inform and shape
the customer
experience
Target audience:
Marketing/brand
leaders/
franchisees
Specific marketing strategies
Customer interactions
response and recovery
Revenue management
– price premium
eWOM
Quality control and
new procedures
Online reputation
comparison
Generating loyalty
Focus on target
communi-cation
Effectively engage, respond and address
individual customer concerns / questions
(social listening command center)
Target audience: Customer service
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Typical challenges with sentiment analysis
Delivering synthesized actionable insights
from extremely large volumes of unstructured
data to the right stakeholders at the right time
Getting the right context & tone from
customer comments leveraging company /
industry knowledge
Getting the taxonomy right
Making it a repeatable process
Doing it all without spending too much
money and time!
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Four step approach – hotelier reviews & ratings sentiment analysis
Dashboards & KPIs Step 3:
Insights on Key
Business Questions Step 4:
“The dirtiest hotel in the
world…bugs, roaches
and other insects.”
“Exoskeleton of the
bed bug found in
our bed!!”
Data Acquisition
& Integration Step 1:
Text Analytics Step 2: ROOM
LOCATION
ROOM
SERVICE
REVENUE INFLUENCE
HARNESS CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE DATA
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Let’s look at the art of the possible
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Opportunity for improvement
lies in the low sentiment score
(0.3) and ~27% negative area
Global performance summary
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Identify brands to look at by taking into consideration review volume
and sentiment at brand level
Clover Inn
Are these customer perceptions of
your brand consistent with your brand
positioning intent? Which brands are
reviewing poorly?
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Look at the brand analysis dashboard that provides insights on
strengths/weaknesses of a brand
Keywords like Location, Stay and Bedroom have a strong, positive sentiment attached to them
(shades of green), while Microwave and Lobby need to be looked into (shades of red)
Clover Inn
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Identify customer experience ‘outlier’ properties for the brand based
on the property list dashboard
Clover Inn Fort Lauderdale has a high volume of reviews with an alarmingly high
negative review count and a low overall rating
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Drive impactful pricing decisions based on the strong correlation with
customer sentiment
Leverage recent sentiment score/rating movements and comparables set (competitors, like
company properties) assessment for future pricing decisions
Sentiment score
A
D
R Clover Inn FL Clover Inn FL
COMP SET
ADR vs Sentiment Score by
Property
ADR Index vs Sentiment Score Index
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Map customer sentiment by stage of journey to hone in on issues at
the property level
Customer journey view of feedback can help you pinpoint and address issues. For example, “Room
Stay” with a more negative sentiment score and a higher keyword count can be a focus area
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Drill down from journey stage to sub-categories to identify specific
areas of focus at the property level
Relate the count of keywords and sentiment to identify the areas of focus – in this example,
“Bathroom” and “Insects”
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Drill-down from sub categories to view top positive and negative
keywords to ID specific actionable insights
Drill-down from sub-categories to specific negative keywords and associated reviews can allow
property owners/managers to identify specific actions to improve customer experience
Bed Bugs Bed Bugs Bugs Roaches Dead Roaches Dirty Bugs
Insects
“The dirtiest hotel in
the world…bugs,
roaches and other
insects.” “Exoskeleton of the
Bed Bug found in
our bed!!”
“I want to warn that we only
stayed one night, and got a full
refund for our stay due to BED
BUGS! It was unfortunate
because we were having such a
nice time…”
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Reviews/ratings are important but insights can also be derived by
combining these with other sources
Hoteliers’ internal sources of customer feedback
Internally collected customer feedback survey data
Internal call center data
Internal customer service email data
Travel journey and hotel stay experience reviews and ratings
From popular review-focused sites like TripAdvisor
From hoteliers’ own websites (publicly available)
From OTA websites like Expedia & Orbitz
Popular social media channels where the hotelier is mentioned
Facebook b Online blogs
Travel review forums
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An effective approach to address eWOM can be extremely impactful
1% increase in the hotel’s
“online reputation score”
can boost RevPAR by
almost 1%.
Addressing eWOM is critical to gain a competitive advantage by driving brand loyalty
and optimizing pricing strategy. Source : Cornell Hospitality Research
A one-point increase in a
hotel’s average user rating on
a 5-point scale makes potential
customers 13.5% more likely
to book that hotel.
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What can you do?
Assess your current approach – reactive vs. proactive
Break organization silos – business/IT sponsors and cross-functional stakeholders
Have strategic roadmap but focus on tactical execution
approach to achieve incremental ROI
Decide on the platform-custom/SaaS/hybrid and
data management accelerators
Consider engaging a partner, to accelerate time
to market, by leveraging their platforms and
domain/company knowledge
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Thank you!
Any questions?
Vinodh Balaraman
Principal
+1 609 419 4501