The Guestbook Achieves Level II Global Support Certification

This week, The Guestbook earned Hotel Tech Report’s Level II Global Customer Support Certification (GCSC) for its investment into tools, processes, and strategies to ensure the ongoing success of its customers across the four key pillars of the GCSC Rubric including: pre-emptive support, reactive support, coaching, and customer validation.

The Hotel Tech Report GCSC certification program analyzes software vendors along critical dimensions of customer support infrastructure in order to help hoteliers minimize risk and maximize positive outcomes when selecting technology partners.  In order to become certified, companies must open their internal systems to Hotel Tech Report for assessment along HTR’s rigorous 34-point GCSC Rubric.

“Despite the fact that The Guestbook team has built an intuitive and easy to use product, they made sure that all throughout the application customers can access self-service support through their knowledge base and video tutorials as well as reach their team with the click of a button should they need further assistance,” Hotel Tech Report co-founder Adam Hollander.

"As a long-time hotelier and ambassador for curating exceptional travel experiences, I can say with confidence that placing customers first is the key to business success. Bu more importantly, it provides meaning and purpose for everyone involved. Our team embraces this philosophy, and it’s why they are passionate and engaged in their work. We work shoulder to shoulder with our partners to deliver rewarding guest experiences. When challenges do arise, we focus most on listening and understanding. We then ensure a positive guest outcome and make adjustments to avoid similar situations in the future,” James Gancos, CEO at The Guestbook

The below GCSC assessment outlines the verified systems and processes that The Guestbook has in place to educate, train, retain, and support customers.

The Guestbook's GCSC Assessment Summary 

• Rubric Score: 20/34

• Certification Level: Level II

• Customer Orientation: Customer Focused

• Recommendation: Recommended

• Support Team Size: 9

• Support Team Leaders: Whitney Mulaj, VP of Partner Success

• Certification Period: December 2023 - December 2024

• Support Stack: Hubspot, Live Chat, Jira, Loom, Wordpress, Vimeo

GCSC Support Rubric Section I: Pre-Emptive Support 

The Pre-Emptive support pillar of the GSCG Scoring Rubric audits the tools and processes the vendor has in place to provide customers with easy access to self-help resources.  These self-help resources serve as a basis to offer easy troubleshooting as well as to preemptively answer product related questions before they arise, providing a more intuitive and seamless experience for clients.  The following are the rubric items that Hotel Tech Report has verified that The Guestbook has in place:

• 1.1 Online knowledge base/help center: Vendor offers a searchable help center for customers to easily find answers to common questions.

• 2.1 Online training videos: Vendor offers pre-recorded videos that clients can access 24/7 for self-teaching and deeper product knowledge.

• 3.2 Tooltips: Vendor offers helpful tips and hints when users hover over buttons and UI elements in the interface. (min of 10 in-app tooltips)

GCSC Support Rubric Section II: Reactive Support 

The Reactive Support Pillar assesses the company's responsiveness to clients and their ability to resolve issues quickly when they arise, ensuring prompt response and service.  The following are the rubric items that Hotel Tech Report has verified that The Guestbook has in place for clients:

• 1.2 Transparent process: Vendor has opened up their systems to Hotel Tech Report via screen share to verify their tools and processes in place to deliver customer support.

• 1.3 Email support or phone support: Vendor includes at least one  traditional method of customer support channels, email, or phone support (additional channels: phone, chat, email)

• 1.4 Multi-lingual support: Vendor offers support in the languages where they have active clients (Spanish, German, Dutch, French, & English)

• 1.5 Purpose built support and ticket management tool: Vendor utilizes professional customer support software that effectively manages support tickets, follow ups, escalations, and analytics.

• 2.2 Live Chat support: Vendor offers website or in-app live chat as an alternative customer support channel.

GCSC Support Rubric Section III: Customer Success & Coaching

While keeping customers happy is commonly thought of by software companies as the top priority, keeping them well informed is of equal importance. The third pillar of the GCSC Rubric identifies the key ways that vendors inform, educate, and train their customers to realize successful outcomes with their products.  The following are the rubric items that Hotel Tech Report has verified that The Guestbook has in place for clients:

• 1.7 Customer satisfaction monitoring (ex. NPS surveys, CSAT): Vendor has processes in place to regularly monitor customer satisfaction.

• 2.3 Product updates/changes (release notes/changelog): Vendor offers easily accessible robust documentation of feature updates and product improvements to educate clients on new ways to maximize product usage..

• 2.4 Quarterly success check ins: Vendor offers [at least] quarterly customer success check ins to review progress, share best practices and ensure that clients are successful and happy with the product or service.

• 3.6 Performance reporting: Vendor offers reporting and analytics to show clients the value of the product or service.

GCSC Support Rubric Section IV: Customer Validation

The GCSC’s 34-point rubric and Hotel Tech Report’s verification of internal tools and processes validate the vendor's systems in place; however, the validation of the success of these tools and processes can most significantly be validated by the unbiased perspectives of real hotelier customers.  This pillar looks at unbiased verified client reviews and satisfaction scores to validate that the processes in place are working in the eyes of customers based on their satisfaction ratings.  The following are the rubric items that Hotel Tech Report has verified that The Guestbook has in place for clients:

• 4.11 Public Feedback Validation: Vendor shows exemplary client relationships and is a top performer on Hotel Tech Report with more than 100+ verified client reviews.

• 4.12 4.9 avg. customer support rating: Vendor has outstanding customer support ratings averaging more than 4.5/5 across all client reviews.

About the Hotel Tech Report Global Customer Support Certification (GCSC)

Support is one of the most critical aspects of the vendor selection process and yet historically there has never been a way to know the quality of a company’s support, until now. Using Hotel Tech Report’s proprietary framework, companies are assessed along four key dimensions: pre-emptive support, reactive support, coaching/success, and client validation to provide hoteliers unprecedented levels of transparency to more easily identify top technology partners.

For more information please visit: https://partners.hoteltechreport.com/global-support-certification/