Lamington Group’s gradual rollout of HiJiffy's conversational AI towards a 93% automation and 87% CSAT score

GUEST EXPERIENCE

This case study illustrates the success Lamington Group had rolling out HiJiffy’s solution across their four room2 hometels, as well as serviced apartments. The brand initially started with a hybrid model (partial automation) at one of their properties. With the team quickly gaining trust in the efficiency and accuracy of the conversational AI, they decided to switch to full automation and use the solution across all their properties.

Why it matters: The Lamington Group were looking at how the conversational AI can benefit each touchpoint with the guest, having a clear understanding of how the technology would support their strategy. They implemented HiJiffy's AI to: answer FAQs, convert direct bookings, send online check-in and check-out campaigns on WhatsApp, increase revenue from cross-selling, and boost loyalty programme subscriptions.

The Lamington Group decided to stagger the rollout of HiJiffy’s conversational AI solution. First, they implemented it to enhance guest experience in the smallest property as it was unmanned. The solution was rolled out to other properties in the following six months.

Top 3 Core Objectives: The brand was looking for innovative ways to enhance the guest experience, as well as to streamline and reduce the team’s workload. One of the key objectives was to automate responding to the incoming everyday repetitive queries as they were taking a lot of time from the staff to perform important tasks that could bring more value to the guests.

Enhance guest experience: Optimising communication channels beyond the website environment, as well as introducing an automated guide to their properties and services, in order to increase the reach as well as the ease of booking directly.
Automate guest communications: Looking for reliable and smooth automation of guest communications, from answering pre-stay questions about amenities and services to driving more direct bookings and processing in-stay requests.
Optimise procedures: Aiming to further improve the guest experience and reduce the workload for the team, the group looked to automate promoting the online check-in and check-out processes.

Innovators Mentioned

Lamington Group

HiJiffy

Alicia van Wyk

Marketing Project Manager

Lamington Group

"Our journey with the implementation was fantastic. While we're still navigating our way through the solution, each step brings us closer to mastery. Engaging our entire operations team in the setup was instrumental in achieving a remarkable CSAT score. Beyond witnessing tangible results, building trust and confidence stems from understanding the broader advantages of AI in enhancing the guest experience."

Alicia van Wyk

Marketing Project Manager

👍 Marketing Project Manager Alicia van Wyk said that Gaining the team's trust in conversational AI's capacity to support them was fundamental in successfully adopting the solution.:

"Our journey with the implementation was fantastic. While we're still navigating our way through the solution, each step brings us closer to mastery. Engaging our entire operations team in the setup was instrumental in achieving a remarkable CSAT score. Beyond witnessing tangible results, building trust and confidence stems from understanding the broader advantages of AI in enhancing the guest experience."

⚖️ The selection process: During their research process, Alicia van Wyk evaluated HiJiffy's product differentiators, customer support, and holistic value as a strategic partner and ultimately decided that HiJiffy was the best fit solution:

Marketing Project Manager Alicia van Wyk said, about their decision: "There will always be a bit of fear of how any new technology can affect the guest experience. (...) We addressed that by including the team in setting up the Q&As of the chatbot, as they would usually respond to these types of questions. With that initial involvement from the team, they gradually develop confidence in the technology to support them rather than working against them. While implementing the (HiJiffy) hybrid model, the staff could also monitor the conversations being had, which led to the team becoming comfortable enough with the solution to go fully automated."

📈 The results: This summary of the key achievements related to using HiJiffy’s Guest Communications Hub is directly related to the challenges indicated in the earlier section. The results are based on HiJiffy’s data (visible to the client in the dashboards and reports section of the platform), as well as the Lamington Group’s own data insights and observations they contributed to this case study.

Over 93% automation rate of conversations. In the initial months of rolling out the solution, 9.3% of direct bookings on the website were facilitated by conversational AI in the webchat.
Efficient WhatsApp campaigns with an 87% open rate. Although still in the early phase of using HiJiffy’s solution, the Lamington Group noticed a positive impact of the automated WhatsApp campaigns on the number of online check-ins or loyalty programme sign-ups.
Relieving the team from repetitive tasks while achieving an 87% CSAT score. Having fed the AI the specific information about the services and amenities at the Lamington Group properties, the team switched from a hybrid to a fully automated solution model. This saved time and reduced the workload of answering FAQs while achieving and maintaining a high satisfaction score amongst the guests.