Maple Hospitality Group uses 8x8 Contact Center for all calls. The phones are handled by a team of 10 reservationists, or agents, across the country answering site-specific questions for their guests, such as menus, dress codes, policies, and hours. The reservations team aims to provide the best experience possible for every caller.
The Challenge: Siloed, inconsistent customer service
Prior to adopting 8x8, Maple Hospitality Group’s business communications were siloed. Due to the popularity of the restaurants, hundreds of calls, event requests, and emails pour in each day, making it unmanageable for the host teams during dinner service, and not offering a great experience for their guests. As the restaurants continued to grow, it needed scalability and greater control over its customer service operations.
Establishing a formal call routing system was the right approach to effectively manage it all and provide a consistent, high-quality experience for customers across restaurants.
8x8 offered the company a centralized, scalable solution that could improve its reservation operations, provide oversight of and transparency into customer conversations, and deliver the best possible service to every caller.
The Solution: A centralized, cloud-based contact center
Maple Hospitality Group set up a team of agents available before and during restaurant hours to handle all inquiries, and implemented 8x8 Contact Center along with call queues for each restaurant and ring groups for routing incoming calls. This allows a high volume of calls to flow into the system, while enabling agents to deliver the right information for each restaurant inquiry.
Polly Ho, the company’s Director of Reservations, says, “Our setup on 8x8 Contact Center is so seamless that we rarely miss an opportunity to speak with a guest.”
Guest experience is key when it comes to agent training and issue resolution. 8x8’s call recording feature has been a useful tool for the contact center team. “We record all of our calls,” says Polly, “and it’s very helpful when we need to monitor for quality and consistency. It’s also important when occasionally guests misinterpret what they hear from our agents.”
Going back to a recording can help Polly coach or train agents, as well as resolve customer issues faster. “8x8 makes it easy for us to keep a record of our calls and quickly access them whenever we need to reference a past conversation between our agents and guests.”
The Benefits: Greater transparency and control
With 8x8, Maple Hospitality Group has a powerful tool for driving a critical function in their service-oriented business. The company is now better able to manage customer service operations across all its properties, and deliver a consistent, quality experience for all restaurant customers.
With access to call recordings, the customer service team can resolve issues more quickly—which often impacts the bottom line. Polly says, “Whenever a guest says that they were told something over the phone, I know it comes from my team. It can either be a learning experience for the agent, or we’re able to determine that the guest is incorrect. In the latter situation, it saves us money because we’re not having to absorb the costs of lost business or issue gift cards or refunds inadvertently.”
Overall, 8x8’s system reliability and call handling features enable the group to maintain business continuity across restaurants. And as Maple Hospitality Group launches new ventures going forward, its customer service operations are ready when the doors open.
