What Hoteliers Need to Know About PBX and SIP Trunking
It’s no secret that the success of your hotel thrives on its relationships with its guests. Achieving this in today’s digital age, however, can be challenging.
Customers expect a lot from your hotel staff. For example, they want to easily modify reservations through multiple channels, call and speak with an agent who can answer their questions, and make payments through an automated phone system. In addition to all of this– they expect personalized attention when they contact you.
With these ever-growing expectations, a sure way to lose customers is to have an insufficient hotel phone system that drops calls, has lackluster security and doesn’t integrate with your other business tools.
That’s where SIP trunking becomes a quick and affordable solution. Below, we’re going to break down how your hotel PBX and SIP trunking work together to provide benefits for your staff and customer experience alike.
What is a Hotel PBX?
We’re going to start at the basics to help you understand the hotel PBX chain of command and where SIP trunking fits.
Let’s start with your PBX. A Private Branch Exchange (PBX) is a private business phone network that allows users to connect with your hotel both internally and externally. Its rich features like call routing, hold queues and self-help automation makes it a critical tool for your brand’s sales, reservations and customer service operations.
Here are a few examples of how your PBX works within your hotel’s ecosystem:
- Booking reservations: When a customer calls to book a reservation, your PBX can be set up with an automated voice to direct them to your reservations department. The voice might say something like “Press 1 for reservations.”
- Guest services: Your PBX may also be used for internal communications with guests currently visiting your hotel. Through your PBX, they can request wake-up calls, contact your front desk or order room service, all from the convenience of their rooms phones and mobile devices.
What is SIP Trunking?
Next, let’s talk about SIP trunking. SIP stands for Session Initiation Protocol. SIP trunking is the process many hotels take to connect a PBX phone system to the internet through a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service provider.
SIP trunking provides your hotel with a modern, efficient and cost-effective alternative to traditional phone systems. SIP trunking makes it possible for your hotel to enhance its customer experience and keep up with growing digital expectations. We will cover the full benefits of SIP trunking below.
How Do a Hotel PBX and SIP Trunking Work Together?
So, how do SIP trunking and your hotel’s PBX work together to give your current and future guests an enhanced experience? SIP trunking moves your inbound and outbound phone calls over the internet to connect to headquarters, regional offices, hotel branches and customers.
What this means in layman's terms is that if you have an internet connection, you can reap the benefits of SIP trunking. SIP trunks integrate seamlessly with your existing hardware and systems- making the setup quick and initial investment low.
How Do Hotels Benefit From SIP Trunking?
Hoteliers are under tight pressure to deliver incredible customer service across a variety of channels, whether it be from their global call center or within their hotel lobby. Keeping your communications connected is possible through SIP trunking integrations, providing a multitude of benefits.
1. Streamlined reservations, and booking modifications/cancellations
When integrated with your hotel’s interactive voice response (IVR), SIP trunking can help streamline and personalize booking and cancellation interactions with guests. A few ways SIP trunking can do this includes:
- Routing your guests’ calls to the right staff member, the first time
- Setting up self-help options that allow your guests to modify their reservations quickly, without needing to speak to an agent
- Integrating with your CRM, skills-based routing can be enabled to determine if a customer is VIP or a loyalty rewards member and transfer them to the front of the call queue
Easily set up customizable distribution flows that forward incoming calls from guests to specific users, queues, virtual attendants or voicemails based on their needs
2. Make payments
SIP trunking also enables your guests to make payments quickly and more securely. With just a few clicks of a button, you can adjust your IVR to provide guests the option to make payments through touch-tone or voice-activated technology.
3. Consolidated, cost-effective communications system
With SIP trunking, your hotel can integrate and consolidate its voice and messaging tools all under one roof. Not only does this help you bypass traditionally high telephone charges, but you no longer need separate subscriptions for multiple communications services.
4. Reliable phone service
SIP trunking provides sufficient bandwidth for all calls– providing your customers with superior call quality, every time. Additionally, you can deploy multiple SIP trunks to reduce downtime and support concurrent calls, making it a wonderful option for your call continuity plan and sales operation.
5. Provides local presence
One thing that holds true across the hospitality industry is that people like to do business with people they trust. And nothing sets the tone for trust like local familiarity. SIP trunking allows your hotel call centers and staff members to display a local phone number on caller ID through local presence dialing. Not only does this establish trust with your guests, but it may also increase the frequency with which your guests answer the phone.
6. Tight network security
When using a quality SIP trunking provider, your hotel can ensure its network security is in good hands. In addition to following SIP security best practices, your provider proactively monitors your calls for suspicious activity. They will also encrypt communications through transport layer protocols to ensure secure connections.
7. Mobility feature
With traditional phone systems, you’d have to physically be at the hotel to answer customer inquiries. But with SIP trunking, this work model is a thing of the past. SIP trunking can route your customers' calls to your mobile device or office phone, allowing you to serve your guests from anywhere with an internet connection.
Level Up Your Hotel’s Communications with PBX SIP Trunking
For many hoteliers, 2023 is a year focused on elevating the guest experience by investing in trends that focus on convenience and comfort. SIP trunking helps you do this by streamlining the reservation process and giving your entire hotel a reliable phone system.
The AVOXI Platform helps travel and hospitality brands connect with their guests worldwide with our feature-rich communications platform. Think of us as your very own communications concierge.
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