Santa Fe, New Mexico (April 2022): Travel Outlook Premium Hotel Call Center® today announced that Kimberly Berry has been promoted to Director of Digital Business Development at Travel Outlook, overseeing sales and implementation of Annette™, The Virtual Hotel Agent™.
Kimberly Berry joined Travel Outlook in 2020 from Hilton Hotels, where she worked as General Manager for three years. Kimberly Berry brings her experience in sales and guest relations in the hospitality industry to Travel Outlook to further improve Annette™ and its practical customer service applications for the hospitality industry.
In addition, while working in Hyatt locations throughout the United States, Kimberly won Hyatt’s Director of Sales of the Year award. Her broad range of knowledge in every aspect of hotel operations has been a tremendous asset for Travel Outlook, and positions her perfectly to see the myriad benefits Annette can offer for hotels.
Annette can help hotels immediately address staffing issues and reduce fixed labor expense. Personalized in a human voice the hotel chooses, Annette can answer most of the calls now being handled by the front desk. Annette can route calls and send follow-up texts, but her true value lies in her ability to answer the frequently asked questions (FAQ’s) unique to each hotel. Studies have shown that this can be up to 60% of a front desk’s call volume, and in initial implementations, Annette has offered sterling performance.
Kimberly says, “As a former hotel General Manager, I knew how difficult it was to have guests at the front desk, checking in or out, while you work to provide the best possible customer service while also trying to take care of guests on the phone.”
Kimberly goes on to say “Annette’s ability to assist hotel guests on the phone by answering FAQ’s is groundbreaking. This way, guests don’t become frustrated with long wait times, or simply hang up while staff are assisting guests at the front desk. This reduces labor costs associated with staffing the front desk, and reduces the risk of missing an important reservations call.”
Annette can also replace traditional, mechanical IVR answer points for the hotel. Rather than hearing, “press one for reservations”, the caller hears, in a pleasant voice, “thank you for calling our hotel. How can I help?” Annette can answer many of the questions asked without any involvement from hotel staff, always offering immediate transfer-to-human option.
John Smallwood, President of Travel Outlook says, “Travel Outlook has decades of experience operating and improving voice channel communications for hospitality-based business around the world, setting the industry standard for effective and profitable voice channel communication. Now we’re raising the bar again, with the introduction of Annette. Annette’s ability to help to control fixed labor costs and address the challenges hoteliers are experiencing in hiring customer service staff have been apparent to our clients immediately. We’re excited to have Kimberly lead the way in showcasing this groundbreaking product to current and future clients.”
About Annette™, The Virtual Hotel Agent™: Annette (formerly “Bella” by Travel Outlook) is an AI-powered virtual call center agent that represents the next generation of voice assistants, and she is designed specifically for the Hospitality industry. Annette has been programmed using a breakthrough approach to digital voice assistants, a system built from human conversations. Using social media, chat forums, and movie dialogue, Annette learns from billions of casual human conversations to understand human inflections and multi-turn queries. This revolutionary approach means Annette understands callers no matter what they say, when they say it, or how they speak. Annette can answer FAQs specific to your property, understand multiple languages, route calls, send follow up texts, and more.
