Increasing mobile key usage on your property is not only dependent upon guest awareness but on motivating your front desk staff to offer mobile keys as well. OpenKey has developed a list of best practices that can help make sure your front desk is doing everything they can to maximize the number of guests using mobile keys at your property.
Set Team Goals
Every hotel has times when it’s busier than normal and it can be very easy for front desk staff to fall back into old habits of offering plastic keycards to guests when traffic increases and the front desk gets hectic. As the saying goes, old habits die hard. To that point, feedback we have received from hotels that are maximizing their return on investment from OpenKey emphatically says maximizing mobile key usage is a team effort.
To emphasize that needed sense of teamwork, use the S.M.A.R.T. framework (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely) to establish goals for issuing keyless entry to guests. Goals will help re-train the front desk team to adopt a ‘mobile-first’ mindset. Examples used by mobile-first hotels today include goals such as 50 mobile keys issues weekly for each staff member or a certain number issued daily depending on staff scheduling. Providing an incentive to exceed the digital key goal is always a great idea to help inspire the team.
Gradually raise goals as your staff becomes more accustomed to offering mobile key as a first option, maybe a 3% increase in mobile key usage week-over-week. As your team achieves these goals, make certain to celebrate as a team as well, emphasizing the resources they are saving your hotel. When this mobile alternative becomes a habit rather than a novelty, both the guests and the hotel win in the end.
Track Individual Performance
As another old saying goes, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Hotels that actively monitor and measure how many mobile keys are issued by individual front staff members realize a 35% increase in front desk performance in terms of user adoption rates. Creating a sense of friendly competition amongst team members by offering recognition and prizes to the individuals that issue the most mobile keys can be a great driver to increased usage rates.
Collect Monthly Savings
Talking about how much money your hotel saves when guests use digital keys is different than actually quantifying how much of an impact the technology has on your bottom line. Try getting your accounting department involved to tell you just how much is being saved every month by guests using keyless entry. When actual figures are introduced, the positive impact team members are having on the organization by emphasizing mobile keys suddenly becomes tangible and much more emphatic.
Regular Training Keeps Numbers Up
According to recent data from the SAVO Group, the average employee will have forgotten 65% of the material covered just seven days after a training session. Even more foreboding, that figure jumps to 90% after six months. Obviously, frequent training sessions are necessary to constantly remind your team members of the importance in consistently offering this mobile option to your guests. Otherwise, they will likely fall back on old habits.
Encourage Employees To Learn By Doing
Lastly, OpenKey has found that an involved staff is one that is most capable of establishing long-term success. Hotels that exhibit the highest mobile key usage rates are those that test the app on a regular basis. Not only does this give them an all-important sense of familiarity on how the app works, but also provides indispensable insights into what customers are doing when using OpenKey to get into their rooms. Having your employees test the app at least once a week will make sure that they are fully capable of assisting your guests in using it at all times.
