A Member Speaks: Customer Care in the Hospitality Industry
Chris Zoloth is the Director, Global Customer Care for InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). Chris has been absent from SOCAP for a few years as he focused on repositioning IHG’s overall customer care strategy to better support guests and hotels. We caught up with Chris and asked him a few questions about how things have changed in his world. Here is what he had to say:
SOCAP: Tell us about InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) and your role there.
IHG is an international hotel company whose goal is to create Great Hotels Guests Love. The big picture is 7 hotel brands, over 146 million room nights per year, more than 640,000 rooms and over 4,400 hotels in 100 countries and territories around the world. Our Brands include: Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental, Staybridge, Candlewood and Indigo. And let’s not forget about Priority Club Rewards, it is the world’s first and largest loyalty program with over 56 million members worldwide.
As for me, I’ve been with IHG for just over 18 years and my current responsibilities include directing IHG’s global Service Recovery Teams and Priority Club Rewards operational support. These teams are responsible for protecting the integrity of IHG’s brands and driving guest loyalty. My teams handle 4+ million guest interactions and transactions per year; answering questions related to Priority Club Rewards as well as pre and post stay support for our guests.
SOCAP: You have been away for a few years, what enticed you to come back to SOCAP?
I came from Hotel Operations and Franchise Support, so I originally joined SOCAP as a way of ramping up my customer care contact center knowledge by networking and attending webinars, symposium and conferences. After gaining additional insight from colleagues, I took an internal deep dive and completely restructured IHG’s service recovery processes globally. I introduced One Contact Resolution to reduce guest effort and a hotel fee based support system that financially rewarded high performing hotels and eased the burden on IHG system funding of Service Recovery. We went from an answering service function to a fully empowered customer care service recovery team.
IHG‘s business model focuses on managing and franchising hotels and has over 3,000 owners around the world that are passionate about their property and protective of their investment. The goal was to deliver contact center service recovery solution that would drive guest preference, increase the owner value proposition and guarantee long term sustainability of a corporate Customer Care Operation.
Our new processes have been in place for 2 years and it’s time to start reaching out to the industry to benchmark our success, share best practices and learn from other successful companies. SOCAP is a great way to do this.
SOCAP: SOCAP has several industry communities including the Hospitality, Travel, Tourism Community. How do you intend to use this community?
I’m looking forward to engaging in the Hospitality, Travel, Tourism Community Discussion Board by posting questions related to current challenges and hearing what other companies are doing.
SOCAP: You are attending the SOCAP Symposium in Las Vegas, what do you hope gain there that you can use when you return home?
Yes, there will be a few of us attending and we are really looking forward to the networking and having face to face discussions with experienced customer care professionals. Also I am interested in the online engagement session. As contact volume continues to shift to online channels, I’m interested in hearing what other companies are doing to better communicate with customers through these channels but also how to better manage the people resources that manage these channels.
SOCAP: Your offices are located in Utah, which makes it difficult to attend a local SOCAP meeting. How will that influence your continued membership?
That’s a great question and we did struggle with this in the past. I’m going to re-evaluate the chapters, to see if we can participate in one based on who is in the chapter rather than the location and try to attend a few meetings throughout the year. I know Hyatt is involved in the Heartland chapter which is only a few hours away. Starwood is involved in the New York Chapter, so we will just have to see which is best for us.
SOCAP: Anything else you want to say about SOCAP?
IHG Global Customer Care is looking forward to active membership and taking advantage of the tools and relationships available from SOCAP.
