How Guest Satisfaction Scorecards Will Change Your Business

Give Your Customers a Voice—and Empower Your Team—with Guest Satisfaction Scorecards

In hospitality, knowing how your guests feel about you is important, and guest satisfaction is always worth improving upon. A Cornell study found that “a 1-point increase in a hotel’s 100-point Global Review Index™ (GRI) leads up to . . . a 1.42% increase in Revenue per Available Room.” That adds up quickly!

One great way to increase guest satisfaction (and revenue) is to send out guest satisfaction scorecards. After engaging with HelpSquad chats, a Live Chat Service for Hotels Websites, guests are automatically presented with a quick, customized survey. We’ve found that these surveys not only give our hospitality clients a better connection to their guests, but they also improve our clients’ businesses.

Guest satisfaction scorecards should be short, relevant, and convenient. That’s why we also send an email with a link to the scorecard to those we chat with as soon as they leave the conversation—so they can access it easily. When done right, guest satisfaction scorecards strengthen your relationship with your guests, increase customer lifetime value, and create a proactive work culture.

Strengthen Relationships with Guests

In hospitality, understanding your guests is crucial: they interact closely with every detail of their experience. Customer satisfaction scorecards are an excellent tool because they give you both quantitative and qualitative feedback. For example, one question might be “How friendly was our staff?” with the option to select a rating from one to five, which you can then average to see how well you’re doing in that area overall. Another question might be “Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about our service?” This open-ended question gives guests the chance to give you qualitative information about their experience.

“When you understand . . . how and when [your guests] are interacting with your brand, you can harness that information to engage customers when and where doing so will be most effective,” says Carolyn Murphy, a customer experience specialist.

Increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

When customers choose not to return to a business, 68 percent of them do so because of treatment they received. In a hotel or restaurant, treatment can include everything from how accommodating a waiter is about dietary preferences to how long it takes a bellhop to exit the elevator—but each place where something could go wrong is also an opportunity to impress a guest with how well you treat them.

Guest satisfaction scorecards show guests that you care about them and their opinions. If they’ve already had a great experience, they’ll be even more appreciative that you want to hear about it. If they haven’t had a great experience, their opinions may soften at the chance to let you know how they feel! When guests feel valued, they’re more likely to return the next time they’re in your area, which increases their lifetime value for you.

Create a Proactive Work Culture

“Customer surveys help create a proactive culture,” says Jana Barrett, a content marketing manager. “When feedback is visible at every corner of the business, departments can align on objectives that lead to better decisions for their customers. And when customer satisfaction is a priority for the entire company, each team member sees how their role impacts customer loyalty.”

That sounds like an ideal team, doesn’t it? Working in hospitality can be stressful, but imagine what a difference it would make if each member of your staff was armed with the up-close-and-personal knowledge that guest satisfaction scorecards provide. They would be motivated to go the extra mile because they would understand how important their role is to the organization overall.

Guest satisfaction scorecards can improve your business by strengthening guest–company relationships, increasing customer lifetime value, and creating a proactive work culture. And they’re so easy to use because your guests do most of the heavy lifting! Take advantage of this powerful tool and see what a difference it makes.