Topic 1, Alpine SKi House Case Study
Background
Alpine SKi House is a boutique mountain resort that offers year-round spa and outdoor activities such as snow sports, hiking, mountain biking, and more. The resort has been family owned and operated for more than 50 years. The company has been able to remain profitable while not needing to adopt new technologies.
General
Booking at the resort have decreased. The company has decided to focus on creating a tailored, first-class experience for guest. The company also plans to target corporate meetings and events.
The company recently purchased a chatbot named FAQbot from AppSoure. The chatbot uses the resort's existing FAQS Communication
* Communication between staff members is primarily conducted through email and SMS text messages.
* Conversations between staff members and guest often lost.
* Conference calls are used for all group meeting
Event Registration
* Corporate customers can reserve a meeting room at the resort to host meetings. The meetings will include lunch and choice of either an inside-spa experience or a seasonally appropriate outdoor activity.
* Event registration is conducted three weeks prior to start of the event. It is assumed that all event attendees will attend the meeting Check-in process
* Guests wait in lines to check in and obtain name badges. At this time, guests can specify any dietary restrictions and select their activity preference. This can result in long wait times and crowding at the front desk.
* For health and compliance reasons, guests must answer a series of questions with a yes or no answer during check-in. The front desk will ask and record these answers for the resort's records.
Marketing
At the check-in counter, the guests can drop their business cards into a bowl for a chance to win an all-inclusive weekend stay at the resort. The resort uses the business card information to send announcements about promotions and upcoming events.
Resort policies and event inquiries
* A guest can call or send an email to the event coordinator at the resort to get information about hotel policies, snow conditions, or to pre-select their after-meeting event;
* Guests can also go to the website to view the extensive list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) compiled over the years. Many of the answers to the FAQ's are out of date.
General
Alpine Ski House does not employ technical staff and does not have the budget to hire an external firm to develop solutions. There are two team members who are proficient at Microsoft Excel formulas. Any solution created must use the capabilities of current team members.
All solutions must be simple to use, easy to maintain, and represent the brand of the resort.
You must implement the following solutions:
* a centrally managed communication solution
* a customer service solution
* a resort portal
* a chat solution
* a check-in solution
Communication
* Communication between team members must be centrally managed and unified in Microsoft Teams.
* When the company confirms an event they, must provide a list of guest's names and email addresses.
* You must send guests a welcome email that includes a unique registration number for authentication with the resort's portal.
* Guests must receive a separate email to verify proof of ownership for their registration.
Event attendance
* Guests must create an account and sign into a resort portal to confirm their attendance to an event and pre-select an after-meeting event
* Prior to the event, guests must be able to identify any personal dietary restrictions.
Check-in processes
* Check-in processes must be self-service. Each screen must ask for specific data from the guest. The check-in solution will use some data that is stored in Microsoft Excel.
* The check-in solution must continue to function if there are internet issues. If the self-service kiosks are not available, staff must be able to use the check-in solution from within their communication solution.
* The check-in solution must have a screen where the guest will select either yes or no to health and wellness questions.
* Guests must physically interact with each answer before proceeding to the next screen. Guests must be able to confirm any dietary restrictions they may have entered from the portal or add new ones at this time.
* Data must be entered in each screen before users move on to the next screen.
Marketing
* To eliminate the handling of business cards, the check-in solution must be able to translate the contents of the business cards into Alpine Ski House's marketing system.
* The solution must not require any effort or manual entry from the guest to prevent any mistyped information and to make it more appealing to the guest to participate.
Hotel policies and event inquiries
The portal must allow the guest to ask questions about hotel policies, event information, weather reports, and current weather condition at the resort.
Chat solution
The chat solution must specifically address the following key words. No additional key words will be added until a later implementation phase:
* Snow reports
* Weather conditions
* Start time
* End time
* Event date
* Outdoor activities
* Indoor activities
* Most popular
The chat solution must be available always and not require staff to answer all of the questions. If a question does require a staff member's attention, the solution must determine which staff member is best to assist the customer with the question.
The information in the FAQ on the legacy website must be used in the chat solution but retyping all the data from the website should not be required. If quests ask about topics that are not listed in the FAQ, the chat solution must identify the issue and escalate to a staff member.
Team members must be able to ask their own questions through a centrally managed communication solution instead of using the guest portal. Team members must be able to access the same FAQ across multiple solutions.
Issue
Guest1 inquires about snow conditions several times each day of their stay.