Humour

Can e-butlers serve you better?

T A Balasubramanian ponders over an innovation in the hospitality industry that would have self-service kiosks installed to enhance customer service

Sagar Samrat, the Founder and Chief Executive of Samrat Hotels, was overjoyed when he found this article in a magazine he was reading:

Hytek takes self-service to new heights

The hospitality industry is going through a revolution (went the article), thanks to new technology further enabling the elimination of the staffing chain, and simultaneously enhancing customer experience.

Recently, the Hytek Hotel chain proudly announced that it will be installing automated self-service helpers, or electronic butlers (e-butlers, for short) in its hotels over the course of the next year. Of course, Roboshack, the famous maker of self-service e-droids, has assured the world that no slur on the lineage of Jeeves is intended.

Hytek patrons, according to a joint media release from Hytek and Roboshack, will now be able to use the e-butlers to check into and out of more than 500 Hytek Royale and Grand Hytek hotels in the United States, Europe and Asia.

The process is simple: guests simply swipe their credit cards through a reader on the machine, which is linked to the company’s reservation system. An e-butler dispenses room keys upon check in, and prints out receipts upon check out, usually in less than a minute. E-butlers can also handle requests for room changes, and eventually make restaurant reservations for guests, possibly eliminating the need for a concierge in the future. Bellboys, too, might eventually vanish once the e-butler becomes mobile and gets robotic arms to lug luggage to guest rooms. An entire shadow business line of tipping is also bound to disappear.

If you use hotels a lot, you are bound to like these developments, especially if you are impatient and short of time. Self-check-in and self-check- out in hotels sounds like a painless way for you to avoid the long lines that materialise at perpetually understaffed reception desks. Especially in the early morning when you, the yawning, sleep-deprived, world-weary business traveller, are desperately trying to catch your 6 am flight.

Nina Yantra, Hytek’s Vice-president of product and design, said in a release that the e-butlers will allow Hytek guests “the unique opportunity to control their entire arrival and departure experience.” As customers grow increasingly accustomed to seeing and using self-service droids in airports, malls and super-bazaars, e-helpers of all vintages could soon be making impressive leaps in customer service. These cute Artoo-Detoo clones (concludes the article) will be getting you on your way faster, even adding some e-muscle to carry goods if you like.

Excited by the idea in the article, and eager to know whether it would work for Samrat Hotels, Sagar quickly printed the piece and sent it to all his key management heads. The list included Gulabi Manpowa, the soft-spoken Head of Human Resources, Fin Fina, the merciless Chief of Finance, Brando Bhatt, the firebrand Marketing Head, and Papyrus Bytewala, the cool and collected Chief Information Officer. In a few days the heads came back with their views, each displaying her or his unique cast of mind.

Here, for example, is part of Miss Gulabi’s considered response:

What about the human touch? If we introduce more technology at Samrat instead of more warm, welcoming receptionists, we would be going against the genteel nature of hospitality which is the core of our business, and which is supposed to be about warmth and comfort. Since when have droids and computers seemed warm and welcoming to you?

Then, again, what about glitches? What if lines begin forming behind the e-butlers, or the e-butlers aren’t user- friendly? Or, what if, God forbid, the operating system freezes, and you have to send mail to the e-butler at Microsoft’s help desk?

Hytek, of course attracts many busy business travellers who want to get in and get out without any hassles, and e-butlers may be the futuristic thing for them. But then, here, at Samrat, the reception desk has been designed as a place for a smiling flesh-and-blood receptionist to meet and greet a customer with a human face, thereby reassuring first-time guests, or even old-fashioned regulars like me, that I am still living on this planet.

Fin Fina had this to say, in his usual terse and blunt way:

The e-butlers are obviously a way for us to save money and increase productivity without having to add staff to the reception desk. Which is great for our shareholders and for the company.

In my experience receptionists in the ‘hospitality’ industry are rarely, if ever, hospitable. At least not to me. Not even in Samrat hotels, where they know who I am. Since this is the case most of the time, I would happily accept an e-butler any day. I want service fast, and I don’t want to be snapped at or ignored by the receptionist in the process.

On the question of, “or should hotels be spending their money on batik-printed cotton sheets and in-room broadband service?” I say yes, yes, yes. If the e-butlers save money for Samrat, that extra cash can be used for other amenities.

Bhatt came up with this brisk response:

The creation of great guest experiences is the best branding exercise for Samrat. This is the value we deliver, isn’t it? And when Nina talks about letting Hytek customers control their arrival and departure experiences, what does it mean? Is she equating guests to airplanes? She is confessing that Hytek cannot adequately control guests’ experiences by itself. Otherwise why bother installing these e-butlers?

Definitely not such a good marketing idea for Samrat. Customers need careful handling. Can computers provide that? Won’t our finicky patrons just see this strategy as yet another profiteering business chain being callous and inconsiderate on the human front?

And finally, Bytewala came up with this logical take:

This is a smart, strategic move for upscale hotels like Hytek. As for Samrat, given our customer profile and my shoestring budgets, I would automate only that which can be automated. E-helpers are not unfamiliar—our customers are already conditioned while dealing with impersonal ATM machines and breezy mechanical airport check-ins.

Swiping your card at an e-butler and having it provide your key can be much faster than waiting for a hotel desk clerk who is actually being hostile when he is ignoring you and answering another guest’s questions about dining options or where the pool is. Provide the other guy the answer to those questions, definitely, but let me swipe my card and get to my room. Leave the receptionist desk to the leisure travellers, but offer the e-butler to those, who, like me, will appreciate its cool, unemotional efficiency.

This piece is fiction based on an actual news item. A well-known international hotel chain recently announced that it would be installing self-service kiosks from NCR in its hotels in several countries over the course of this year, apparently as a means to improve customer service