Red Roof Inn prides itself on not only listening effectively to its customers, but also by responding to those requests to deliver a great customer experience.
Focusing on guest comments and turning them into actionable insights has proven to be a key driver in Red Roof Inn’s brand loyalty.
Sarah Kessler, Marketing Communications Specialist, Red Roof Inn participated in an engaging interview with Loyalty360 to discuss the company’s approach to Customer Experience.
Has there been an “ah-ha” moment in this Customer Experience journey?
Our passion with guest comments extends into social media as well. We opened the lines through Twitter initially to just extend conversation, but found, “ah-ha,” that this channel allowed us to better meet guest needs. A guest tweeting he or she would like more towels results in towels being delivered to that room. Guests will tweet us for anything and are encouraged to do so with prompt responses.
Learning that we can help our guests and get feedback fast and directly through social media has helped shape how we 
approach our customer experience strategy.
Who is the champion of Customer Experience at Red Roof Inns?
Our president, Andrew Alexander, truly sets high expectations for all Red Roof employees to be champions of customer experience. Andrew continues to be very involved with the guest experience by receiving every guest review on TripAdvisor to his personal email.
His passion for customer experience extends through to the hotels’ general managers, who respond to all TripAdvisor reviews, good or bad, within 48 hours.
How do you define CX?
The primary goal at Red Roof is to provide customers a savings without sacrificing comfort. In the past few years, we completed a large renovation upgrading our properties with modern designs and comfortable furniture. We have continued to keep our rates low allowing guests to travel more often in better and upgraded hotel rooms.
Our guests appreciate saving money so their travel experience does not have to stop at the hotel. They have the extra money in their travel budget to travel more often and visit more attractions while they travel.
How do you measure the effectiveness/efficacy of the program?
We are constantly looking at our TripAdvisor reviews to evaluate our guests’ experience. After being voted the Best Budget Hotel Brand by USA TODAY’s readers and earning the highest customer satisfaction score in 2013 among economy lodging brand according to ReviewMetrix™ Consumer Satisfaction Index for the fourth consecutive year, we feel our guests are having a great experience at our inns.
How does the “Voice of the Customer feedback” impact your customer experiences?
The “Voice of our Customer feedback” is a staple in improving our customer experience. We have used our customer feedback to implement changes within our brand and our hotel rooms. Red Roof recently leveraged our customer feedback to implement renovations at properties around the country. The property renovations led to the creation of a brand extension, Red Roof Plus+.
We feel that guest reviews are key in keeping Red Roof in touch with our customers. Therefore, we provide access to all TripAdvisor reviews on our property pages on redroof.com. Not only are the guests able to see previous guest’s reviews they will see that every review is responded to by the general manager.
Is the basis of you CX strategy short-term, medium, longer-term, or all three?
Our customer experience strategy includes all three. Short term, making sure our guests have a great stay every stay. Medium and longer term, continually improving our booking processes, adapting to technologies, customer demands and making upgrades to the rooms are all important. At Red Roof, we look at every guest as a long-term relationship. We strive to make every guest’s stay better than their last.
Is the measurement process for efficacy different based on the term?
We measure our process by simply talking to our guests. With constant communication with our guests, we use our guest’s feedback to measure our success based on the term. From our Front Desk Guest Service Representatives to our online reviews, we are able to judge if the changes we are making are better evolving the customer experience.