What is the place of customer support software in the travel industry?

Since the onset of digital transformation, there has been a consistent progression in how businesses strive to provide their customers with enhanced customer experience, and the travel industry is not an exception.

The challenge with serving customers in this industry is that they always seek prompt assistance and do not have time to scour the internet for answers.

In fact, the quality of customer support is the most compelling factor of consideration for 60% of customers choosing a travel brand, highlighting the importance of investing in efficient software to deliver streamlined support.

However, choosing customer support software for your hospitality business can be daunting, considering the number of available options. 

But do not worry.

In this article, I have reviewed and shortlisted the best customer support software for hospitality businesses in 2024 to help you unlock your team’s productive power.

If you’d like to take customer support for your retail business to the next level, check out my other review of the best customer support software for ecommerce businesses in 2024, for some great conversational AI tools.

Let’s get started.

Quick Summary

1. Glassix - Best customer support software for all-sized hospitality businesses

2. Hubspot - Best software for enhancing your marketing and sales efforts

3. Salesforce - Best all-in-one software for enhancing customer relationships

4. Zendesk - Best for monitoring your customer support agents' effectiveness

5. Zoho Desk - Best customer support software for small hospitality businesses

How to Choose a Customer Support Software for Travel and Hospitality Businesses

a) Consider the Software’s Scalability

If you plan on expanding your hospitality business in the future, one of the most critical considerations to make is the scalability of the software you settle for.

The software should be able to scale to adapt to the growing needs of your expanding business. You can check and assess the different tiers offered by the software.

b) Keep in Mind Integration Capabilities

Integration is one of the critical considerations when choosing a customer support software to ensure that the solution can seamlessly integrate with other tools.

Consider essential integrations such as customer relationship management systems and help desk platforms that are essential for your industry.

c) Go for a User-Friendly Software

A complex customer support software will only make work harder for your agents, which defeats its purpose. Remember that you are investing in support software to relieve your agents of challenging routine tasks.

When checking for ease of use, ensure that the software is easy to set up, requires minimal to no training, and is easy to navigate to increase your hospitality team’s productivity.

d) Identify your Business Requirements

Your business has unique needs different from those of other businesses. We do not recommend going for a one-size-fits-all customer support software.

Identify and evaluate your business pain points and what you want to achieve with a customer support solution. For instance, are you trying to expedite query resolution?

e) Check for Features

Since different vendors offer varying customer support features, ensure you consider the features essential to your hospitality business.

Standard features to look for include automation, ticketing management, and reporting and analytics. These features can help redefine your customer support.

1. Glassix

Glassix provides a comprehensive platform to empower your support team.

Whether you are dealing with a high volume of customer support requests or want to streamline communications with your customers, Glassix is the best software with an easy-to-use platform capable of managing all customer support operations.

Customers will always require assistance, expecting you to provide it promptly whenever needed. 

This can be challenging, but Glassix makes it a breeze with its powerful conversational AI chatbots and the live chat feature, enabling you to be there for your travel agency customers, even outside typical working hours.

The chatbot builder allows you to customize bots to fit your hospitality business’ brand and deploy the chatbots on all platforms your customers use to reach out to you to enhance their customer experience.

Additionally, Glassix’s conversation AI helps train chatbots to respond to customized prompts and analyze customer requests thanks to natural language processing. 

Your travel and hospitality business can leverage Glassix features such as chatbots to deliver conversational customer experiences by providing your guests with timely updates about reservation status, such as check-in times or room availability. 

Key features:

• Glassix’s chatbots and live chat enable you to boost customer satisfaction and deliver prompt round-the-clock customer assistance.
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• The conversational AI can build an FAQ bot based on your knowledge base.to enhance self-service and reduce the number of support requests.
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• The software offers a unified inbox from which you can engage your customers on their favorite channels to ensure timely support, foster loyalty, and enhance trust.
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Pricing:

Starting plan: $49 per user/ month.

Verdict:

Glassix’s tiers are comprehensive, with all the tools you need to empower your customer support team. While it does not offer a free plan, there’s a free trial that allows you to explore our best features and learn how we can transform your customer support.

2. Hubspot 

Hubspot provides a suite of platforms to supercharge operations.

While providing personalized customer support is essential for hospitality businesses, it can be challenging when you have so many requests streaming in.

However, Hubspot's service hub tracks your travel business’s customers interactions and learns their behaviors to help you deliver a more personalized experience and build a good customer relationship.

One feature that makes Hubspot one of the best customer support software for travel and hospitality businesses is omnichannel customer service, which allows your agents to meet customers where they are. 

Whether on Facebook or WhatsApp, Hubspot provides context to support agents to ensure your customers feel seen and valued. 

The icing on the cake is that it all happens from a single, simple-to-use, centralized customer service platform, eliminating the need to switch between communication channels, maximizing customer support efficiency, and saving time.

Key features:

• Hubspot’s customer portal empowers your customers to see and track their service status and access knowledge base articles to reduce the number of tickets.
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• The software’s live chat feature enables your agents to provide instant and real-time responses to customer requests to enhance their experience.
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• The omnichannel customer service lets you connect with your customers on any communication platform to streamline customer support for your business.
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Pricing:

Starting plan: $18/month.

Verdict:

Hubspot is a comprehensive software, but it is relatively expensive, not to mention that all its services are purchased separately. For a small travel and hospitality business, this can incur huge costs before you are up and running.

3. Salesforce 

Salesforce analytics help travel businesses develop better strategies.

In a fast-evolving industry, hospitality businesses are under pressure to not only deliver standard service to their customers but also to anticipate and cater to individual preferences. 

Therefore, the best customer support for hospitality businesses in 2024 should provide your team with a unified view of all your customers, as Salesforce does, ensuring that you have access to up-to-date data on each guest’s likes and dislikes, offering the opportunity to customize experiences in real time.

Furthermore, Salesforce’s predictive and generative AI boosts efficiency and simplifies work for your team, allowing them to focus on the important things. 

The software’s proprietary AI, Einstein, and automation humanizes communications across all platforms and enables automation of routine tasks such as online booking and billing.

Key features:

• Omnichannel communication enables your team to deliver a seamless customer experience without asking the same questions for context, resulting in better customer support.
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• Salesforce’s AI gives you a competitive edge by providing actionable insights about your customers that can help you customize experiences for all your guests.
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• The software’s AI-powered chatbots handle common requests to expedite resolution and reduce the workload for your support team.
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Pricing:

Starting plan: $25 user/ month.

Verdict:

Salesforce’s AI can help your travel and hospitality businesses create a comprehensive knowledge base but has a steep learning curve, and it could take your team a while before they grasp all its functionality compared to Glassix, which boasts a very user-friendly interface.

4. Zendesk 

Zendesk provides service capabilities that will deliver personalized customer support.

Zendesk is one of the best customer support software for a travel agency in 2024, boasting a wide range of features, from integration and automation to ticketing and reporting, to help your travel business enhance team performance and create better customer relationships.

Managing tickets is at the epicenter of delivering excellent customer support, but you need the right tools to be able to do so. 

Zendesk offers your hospitality business a centralized platform that handles all your customer questions, requests, and concerns while giving you a complete picture of each guest so you can deliver a personalized experience. 

Additionally, you can get insight on your customers' likes and dislikes to help you provide an enhanced experience and ultimately build brand loyalty.

The software also integrates with several messaging platforms and CRM software to boost your hospitality team’s productivity and allow you to use all your favorite apps from a single platform.

Key features:

• Zendesk routing and intelligence capabilities route tickets to agents based on their expertise, workload, and availability to improve their productivity.
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• The software’s automation features enable you to set up rules and automate ticket queues to handle the most urgent tickets first.
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• Zendesk’s reporting abilities provide key information about your guests to help you customize a great experience just for them and make informed decisions.
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Pricing:

Starting plan: $55 per agent/month.

Verdict:

While Zendesk features many service capabilities, from automation to bots that provide 24/7 support to improve customer satisfaction, it is not niche-specific. It also costs more than Glassix, which delivers similar benefits at an affordable price.

5. Zoho Desk 

Zoho Desk does all the heavy lifting for your support team.

Travel and hospitality businesses can be quite demanding when it comes to customer support, as customers are constantly looking for answers. 

With Zoho, you can provide your customers with a great customer experience by empowering them with FAQ pages where they can find answers on their own to common questions such as “How can I make a reservation.”

Similarly, Zoho’s ASAP, an embeddable help desk, gives your guests access to a comprehensive knowledge base and a platform to raise tickets without leaving your website. 

If customers have to speak to your team, the software’s AI-powered assistant, Zia, provides a first line of defense, answering questions based on content from your knowledge base.

All this helps to reduce resolution time while relieving your hospitality team, allowing them to focus on more pressing issues.

Additionally, Zoho consolidates communications from all platforms into one platform to streamline customer support.

Key features: 

• Zoho Desk enables you to build a knowledge base with helpful articles that empower your customers, eliminating the need to contact support.
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• The software provides live chats that enable you to deliver instant real-time responses, automate customer support, and reduce wait time.
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• Zoho Desk is omnichannel, enabling you to communicate with your guests from their preferred channels without leaving the platform - talk about efficiency.
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Pricing:

Starting plan: $18/user/month.

Verdict

Zoho Desk has everything you need to manage all your customer questions and enhance customer experience from booking to check-out. However, unlike Glassix, its lower tiers lack features like analytics and automation that can help improve the quality of customer support.

Conclusion

Customer support is critical to the success of travel and hospitality businesses.

Besides ensuring that your customers are happy, excellent customer support boosts revenue and builds loyalty for hospitality businesses.

Actually, research by Gartner found that two-thirds of companies compete on customer experience, up from just 36% in 2010, indicating that it is not just about delivering quality products and services, but also quality customer experience. 

Customer support software streamlines your customer service operations, providing instant communication tools, integration capabilities, and automation features.

If you are looking for excellent customer support software for your travel or hospitality, consider any of these five solutions for their amazing features and customer service capabilities.

However, for a more niche-specific solution, Glassix is the best customer support software for hospitality, featuring tools such as omnichannel communication, automation, and shared inboxes.

All these work in collaboration to help your hospitality team deliver an enhanced experience to your customers.

Sign up for Glassix's 30-day free trial to learn how it can boost productivity, supercharge customer support, and increase ROI for your hospitality business.

FAQs

What is hospitality customer support software?

A hospitality customer support software refers to essential tools that can help you manage customer interaction tickets and redefine customer support in order to boost your hospitality business’s profit margin and retain your customers.

The software streamlines all customer support operations to make your customers happy, thereby boosting your team’s productivity.

Which is the best hospitality customer support software?

The customer support software we’ve reviewed are some of the best in the market, with essential features such as automation and ticket management.

However, Glassix stands out from the lot for its comprehensive platform designed to help hospitality businesses meet their customers' expectations.

What are the benefits of hospitality customer support software?

Customer support software has many benefits for travel and hospitality businesses, all geared towards delivering the best customer experience.

Some benefits include integrated unified communication, easy tracking and management of support requests, and reduced resolution time, ensuring supercharge customer support operations.

What are the main features of hospitality customer support software?

While customer support software come in many sizes and shapes, standard features you should look for include automation, ticketing management, and integration capabilities, to name a few.

However, you can consider additional features that can boost your customer support, such as generative AI chatbots and omnichannel communication.

How can I choose the best customer support software?

When choosing a customer support software for your travel business ensure you first identify and evaluate your hospitality business requirements and needs. For instance, are you trying to improve communication for your small team or reduce resolution time?

You can also consider other factors such as price, features, and ease of use to help you make an informed decision. Make sure you compare different vendors before you make a final decision.