Hi! 👋 Andrew here; I’m GuestJoy’s Customer Experience Manager. Today, I want to talk about the frequently asked question our potential customers have: How long does it really take to set up GuestJoy?
One of the main reasons some hotels have apprehensions about introducing a new system – any system – is the question of time. How long is this going to take? How much of my and my colleagues’ time will it occupy?
These are very common and natural concerns. None of us are sitting around, twiddling our thumbs, waiting for something to do. We’re all busy – that’s why we have jobs – there’s plenty of work to be done!
With that in mind, we thought it would be a good opportunity to give you the full picture of what to expect when setting up GuestJoy for your property; from when you sign on the dotted line, to set the system live.
First things first 👩🏫
Our customers constantly give us feedback that GuestJoy is a simple system to use, and we’re very proud of that! But the first step towards going live is to have an onboarding session – usually with me – just so you have all the information you’ll need and know how everything ticks in the GuestJoy app.
This session takes no more than an hour, so the only thing that will affect how long it takes to go live is how soon you can make the appointment!
Who should join the onboarding session? 🤔
A simple rule would be that just the people who will make decisions on how GuestJoy is configured should attend. A definite benefit of the session is that we’ll make some key decisions together about how you want GuestJoy to work, which further streamlines the whole process.
For staff whose only responsibility in the system will be, for example, fulfilling the order requests that your guests submit, then it’s very easy to show these staff what to do yourself.
If you can’t get all the necessary staff to attend the one onboarding session, then don’t worry. We’re more than happy to do additional sessions as required, and it doesn’t cost you anything either 🙂
Customizing the app 🛠
Now it’s time to start configuring GuestJoy to match your preferences.
We always recommend setting up the emails you want your guests to receive as the first task; after all, emails are the fundamental driver for everything that GuestJoy does.
Remember that you can have emails being sent to your guests pre-, during-, and post-stay for various purposes, but the minimum that we recommend having in place from day 1 is a pre-arrival upsell email, a post-stay feedback email, and a feedback reminder email to help capture those extra reviews.
Customizing emails in GuestJoy is easy, and dare we say it, fun! All you need to do is add your property’s images in place of our example ones, customize the text of the email, and decide when the email should be automatically sent to your guests. Simple!
Next up are the services, products, and upgrades you want to offer your guests. During the onboarding session, we will have discussed examples of interesting offers, and also what you feel you might be able to offer your guests. It’s also likely we will have set up one or more real offers as well, so you should be well on your way.
Naturally, when you go to add new offers, we have some templates for the most common and best-selling ones, so you don’t always need to start from scratch!
Then you will have some operational decisions to make, such as who should receive the notification emails from GuestJoy for different notification types, and adjusting some other settings to suit how you want GuestJoy to work for your property.
Final inspection 🔍
Naturally, once you feel you’re ready to go, we’ll have a look over your configuration to make sure everything looks right, and we’ll make suggestions for anything we think could be improved.
From that point, you simply need to decide when you would like to go live, and you’ll be up and running!
How long does it actually take? ⏳
Of course, there are many factors that can affect how long it takes to get things up and running.
The most significant would be the languages you want to have active; GuestJoy currently supports 20 languages, so each one that you have active will require time to add the content for it.
Beyond that, there are some human factors to consider, and these are usually due to the size of your property. For example, in a larger hotel, multiple departments might be responsible for different aspects of GuestJoy, and as we all know, sometimes they operate at different speeds!
Having said that, the actual effort is not great and will not take a lot of time; it’s more down to how long people take to make decisions.
In smaller properties, or where a single person has been put in charge of setting up the system, things usually move more quickly.
In most cases, our customers take 3 to 4 days to complete the setup, chipping away at the tasks here and there as they go about their regular routines.
We even have many customers who have set up GuestJoy for their property in less than an hour!
Definitely not a project 🎉
I suppose the main takeaway I’d like you to have from this article is that implementing GuestJoy is not the same thing as implementing a new PMS, revenue management system, or just about any other large-scale system that you find in properties of any size.
Phenomenal support whenever you need it 💪
Add to that our absolutely stellar level of support. We pride ourselves on having friendly, useful, and above all, responsive help for all our customers.
If you have any questions during the setup phase, the quickest way to get an answer is via our in-app chat. There are no bots – you’ll be talking with one of our team members right away.
If you’d prefer to send us an email, you won’t be waiting days – or even hours – for a reply.
Again, we aim to reply to emails as they come through to us; and even if we aren’t able to provide you with a resolution with that first response, we’ll still be treating your request the way we’d like our own to be!
You’ll wonder how you ever survived without it 🧐
GuestJoy is a powerful, yet simple to use platform which, without a lot of effort, will be up and running for your property in very little time.
And once the setup is done, GuestJoy doesn’t take up any of your time days to day. It will happily run in the background, automatically; when a guest requests something, then it will be up to you and your staff to do what they do best – providing the human side of the guest experience!