With in-stay surveys, you can take action on service recovery earlier and try to ensure higher ratings on post-stay surveys and review publishing to public channels.
A well-executed guest feedback strategy will seriously transform your business. It’s more important than ever to monitor your guest feedback, respond quickly to let your guests know that you are listening, and share the feedback internally so your hotel can improve.
If you have in-stay surveys as part of your Revinate guest feedback feature suite, this article will help you get started.
In this article we will cover:
- How in-stay surveys work
- Standard Operating Procedures
- Criteria for in-stay surveys set-up
- Creating the in-stay survey
- Viewing and editing
- Assigning the survey
- Email Settings
If you would like to add in-stay surveys to your account(s), contact info@revinate.com. Specify your account name and that you would like to start the process of enabling this feature for your property or group.
How it works
The in-stay survey follows the same basic structure as the post-stay survey. One invitation email will be set to go out after the guest's status changes to 'checked-in'. This automated email will prompt the guest to provide feedback on their stay thus far.
The invitation email will direct the guest to your full in-stay survey, where they can provide more complete feedback on their experience. Create this survey following best practices for questions that provide actionable feedback.
Standard operating procedures for in-stay surveys.
To manage your survey feedback proactively, you should create a workflow to ensure everyone understands the surveys' roles and responsibilities.
In-stay Surveys:
- Guests who stay for three nights or more are sent an email on their second day at 10 am with a single question: ‘How satisfied are you with your stay so far?’ They are asked how they would like to be contacted (or can specify that they do not wish to be).
- All responses to in-stay surveys trigger the creation of a case which is sent to the relevant hotel workgroup (duty managers, heads of departments, and hotel manager). An employee in the workgroup must follow up the case within 20 minutes to prevent it from escalating to the General Manager.
- By using the Revinate mobile app the hotel teams can receive alerts, assign cases, leave case notes, or resolve cases all while on the go.
- The guest is always contacted in the manner requested at the initial touchpoint. If they do not want to be disturbed, team members will wait until they leave the room to attend to any in-room requests. The hotel leaves a small token of appreciation and thank you note to guests who respond to the survey.
Criteria for in-stay survey set-up:
Note that for this feature to work successfully with your account, we will need to ensure that you can share the “Status Code” from your PMS (in house/checked-in and checked-out). You will have the option to send this as an extra field. If your PMS can't support this, you may send it as two separate files.
Creating the in-stay survey:
From your Surveys Administration options navigate to the survey editor.
From there, click the "CREATE SURVEY BUTTON" to get started. This will generate a pop-up module.
The default setting will be to create a new post-stay survey, but under SURVEY TYPE you will select to change this to an IN_STAY survey type. Fill out the rest of the information in the add new survey pop-up according to your needs. The options will follow those used when creating a post-stay survey, so if you are familiar with these steps, you should feel comfortable with the process.
Survey Type
- For Survey Type select In-Stay
Survey Name
- Name your new survey, this is for internal reporting purposes only and your guests will not see this internal name.
Based on Survey
- Select ‘Blank In-Stay Survey’ if there is not already a previous survey you’d want to use as a starting point for your new in-stay survey. This will give you a template that you may edit as needed and will not affect any original surveys you are using to base this survey on.
Header
- Your property or corporate logo should already be populated for you, but you may also change or update the logo here by simply uploading the new image file.
Greeting Message
- The greeting message will be displayed under your logo at the top of the survey page. This greeting might include instructions on completing the survey or an estimated time to complete the survey. Eg: “Thank you for staying with us at Avertine Hotels. Please let us know how we are doing so far by filling out this quick 2 minute survey.”
Confirmation Message
- The confirmation message will display after the survey is completed. This is where you may again thank your guest for taking the time to give feedback and highlight any important contact information and more.
Once you have filled in these criteria click “ADD” button and you will now be able to start creating your survey questions.
Adding Topics
Topics will auto-populate existing topics from your post-stay survey. Note that these will only show in your In-stay survey if there are questions assigned under them. To add a topic, pull the topic button up from the bottom of the page into the topics list. To learn more about this process, see the adding topics and custom questions article
Adding Questions
To create a new question, scroll to the bottom of your page. Click and drag the button "DRAG TO ADD QUESTION" to any place in your survey just as you would have done for adding a topic.
A new pop-up module will open. Select to "ADD A NEW SURVEY QUESTION" if you do not already have one created in your post-stay survey that you would like to use here. You may also choose an already created survey question for reporting purposes.
In the new window, you have the option of organizing this question under a topic. If you have previously created questions that are not currently part of your survey, you will see them on this menu. Fill in the module criteria for the survey question.
- Draft your question as your guests will view it.
- Name the questions for internal reporting purposes.
- Select your question type. Learn more about questions types in our related article.
- (Optional) Make the question “not applicable” or required.
- Double check that the question falls under its correct topic.
- Assign Departments if you have set up your departments for reporting. For more information on Department Scores and assigning departments see our related articles
To finish, click on the “ADD TO SURVEY” button.
Viewing and editing the in-stay survey
In-Stay surveys will be available to view and edit through the “SURVEY EDITOR” page. From the “EDIT SURVEY” tab select the drop-down menu. Here you can view all created or drafted surveys. Your default survey will have an asterisk (*) next to it for easy reference. If you do not have an In-Stay Survey created you will see a link prompting you to “CREATE NEW SURVEY” and set one up following the steps outlined above.
Assigning the in-stay survey
Only at the corporate level will you be able to set up assignments. At the property level the in-stay survey created will be the default option.
From the SURVEY EDITOR page, click the ASSIGN SURVEY tab.
- Select the property or group
- Select the in-stay survey from your surveys list
- Select MAKE ASSIGNMENT
Current Assignments will show properties or groups, the assigned survey will be identified by its internal reporting name and what type of survey it is (in-stay or post-stay).
Under the actions heading, you can delete an assignment or preview the survey assigned.
Email settings
Set up or edit your in-stay invitation email by going to the Administration tab in the “SURVEYS” menu and selecting “EMAIL CENTER”.
Unlike Post-Stay Surveys, In-Stay Surveys will only have an invitation email. There will be no reminder or thank you emails as this is a quick survey to take the pulse of your guest’s stay. From this page you can "TURN ON/OFF" your invitation email as well as EDIT, PREVIEW and create TRANSLATIONS.
Select “EDIT” to open the module for drafting and editing the invitation email.
Complete all module sections to have your survey invitation email sent out. Follow best practices for the invitation email.
- Name the invitation email, this will be for internal reporting purposes and your guest will not see this name.
- Create the email subject line.
- Draft the email text.
- Set scheduling criteria with send time, short stays, and repeat guest parameters.
- Click "SAVE" to complete the email setup.
Drafting the invitation email
Create your invitation email to entice guests to give feedback. You can then use this to take the pulse of your business and make operational changes where necessary or take action for service recovery before the guest is off-property.
Scheduling the in-stay invitation email
Set the criteria for send times and parameters for sending the invitation email in the settings section of the invitation email module. Follow best practices as outlined in Revinate's standard operating procedures for in-stay surveys and schedule your survey to go out mid-stay for guests staying at least 3 days.
In this section, we will give question suggestions and send time definitions for sending after check-in, mid-stay, and before check-out.
Send time
The recommended best time to ask for feedback while a guest is on-property is mid-stay at 10 am, but depending on your preferences, you may want to use the below suggestions on the questions to include in your survey and when to send.
After check-in
Questions to ask:
- How was your check-in? (Type: 1-5 Rating)
- Anything else you want to share? (Type: Open Comment)
Email Timing Suggestion:
- Must have a 2 day stay
- 1 day after check-in at 10:00 AM
- Best for properties with an API connection or a frequent check-in event send
Mid stay
Questions to ask:
- How is your experience so far? (Type: 1-5 Rating)
- Have you experienced any issues so far with your stay? (Type: Yes/No)
- Please share any additional comments. (Type: Open Comment)
Email Timing Suggestion:
- Must have a 2 day stay
- Mid-stay at 10:00AM is best
- This survey would be sent half way between check-in and check-out time
Before check-out
Questions to ask:
- How is your experience so far? (Type: 1-5 Rating)
- Before you check out is there anything else we could do?(Type: Open Comment)
Email Timing Suggestion:
- 1 day before check-out
- Must have a 2 day stay
Short Stays
It is recommended that parameters are set for guests with short stays. Guests with stays 3 days or longer will be best able to provide good actionable feedback on your operations.
Repeat Guests
You may not want to fatigue your repeat guests with too many email communications, so set rules for how often repeat guests will receive your in-stay survey.