Empower your personnel and improve efficiency by utilizing the functionality tools of DerbySoft’s enhanced Customer Portal.
Since its origin, DerbySoft has sought to build bridges that promote efficient communication and productivity between suppliers and distributors. Through our innovative software solutions, we afford partners more time to focus on other aspects of their business. A good bridge has one essential purpose: to facilitate the crossing between two points. Our innovative Customer Portal offers clients complete transparency to view DerbySoft’s bridge-building expertise.
To help clients follow the data crossing these partner-to-partner bridges, DerbySoft began creating customer portal tools in December of 2014, offering suppliers greater visibility.
According to Cody Kiker, a product manager and developer of DerbySoft’s Customer Portal, the goal of the service was to empower customers by providing them with complete transparency.
“Customers were very curious about the number of transactions we were processing for them, so naturally, they were asking those types of questions,” Cody said. “Since Ted [DerbySoft CEO] has always preached transparency, I thought it made sense to give them easy access to the data, so they could see for themselves the value that DerbySoft was providing.”
Best Western Hotels & Resorts recently evaluated the benefits of our Customer Portal. The hotel group wanted to improve overall visibility, empower their technology personnel, manage data-flow more efficiently, and troubleshoot issues as they arose.
Featured enhancements:
According to representatives, Best Western personnel enjoyed increased access to the following by utilizing the Customer Portal:
- Reservation Log Details – provides complete booking information and the reasons for reservation failures.
- ARI Push Log Details – shows what’s been pushed to distributors with timestamps, helping to resolve overbooking issues and rate discrepancies.
- Partner-to-Partner Mapping Details – allows personnel to monitor corresponding room and rate codes, occupancy settings, and more.
Results:
Through the enhanced Customer Portal, the team at Best Western is now a more empowered, active participant in all partner-to-partner data transactions. DerbySoft asked Heather Griffin, Director of Business Technology with Best Western Hotels & Resorts, for her thoughts on the portal enhancements’ effects on productivity and efficiency within her team.
By utilizing the Customer Portal, Griffin’s team is able to retrieve and investigate logs themselves, rather than channeling log requests through DerbySoft and waiting for responses. This is particularly useful in answering property or consumer inquiries in overbooking situations.
In relation to increased log detail visibility, Griffin feels her team has been strengthened to troubleshoot both failed reservations and failed ARI messages, which resulting in over-bookings and rate disparity with partners in the past. “The ability to search through push ARI logs has been an enormous win for us, as it is clear when updates made from our system out to DerbySoft are now traceable all the way out to the partner” Griffin said. “Prior to having this information available in the portal, a typical turnaround time to address these concerns was a total of two to five business days between all parties to gather the needed information.” Griffin added. “We are now able to address these concerns immediately and have the necessary information to escalate to the partner if additional help is needed.”
In addition to log details, visibility of mapping and room/rate errors in the connection management tool also expedites answers and solutions. Griffin attests that this tool “provides clear insight into mappings or data-related set-up per partner, which allows our team to easily identify any mapping issues that may need to be corrected to ensure proper delivery of ARI.” and improves resolution time regarding mapping issues. Multiple threads of emails or various tickets are cut down to one or two.
What Others Are Saying About the Customer Portal Enhancements
“Since the addition of log details, we have been able to more efficiently troubleshoot reservation message failures and ARI issues without having to reach out to our partners support desk as to why a message may or may not have been delivered. This allows us to better serve our members by quickly addressing their concerns.”
Robert Phillips, Senior Manager of eBusiness, Best Western Hotel & Resorts
“The enhanced Customer Portal empowers my customers to be more engaged with their partners by putting technology directly into their hands that is relevant to their needs.Customers use the portal to capture immediate feedback such as reservation logs, transaction summaries and look-to-book ratios. In addition to day-to-day reporting, the portal can also assist customers if issues arise.”
“They can determine if there are specific mapping or ARI issues that need to be addressed. Having this information at their fingertips greatly increases the speed to resolve issues. The portal enables my customers to be more self-sufficient on daily tasks, which provides me the opportunity to better assist them on their overall business strategies and goals.”
Martin Elek, Client Manager, DerbySoft
“Once Best Western started using the enhanced Customer Portal, I noticed that I was being copied much more often, rather than being directly addressed in email traffic from them. A few months ago, they would have emailed me to initiate investigation by requesting a log, but now they already have dates, times, and codes ready and are reaching-out directly to their partners.”
Jerri Cole, Customer Support, DerbySoft
Conclusion:
Empowering our supply partners with an enhanced Customer Portal will save time and personnel resources, helping to control costs for all partners. Although DerbySoft will remain “in the middle” as a technology service provider, the improved independence provided by our new Customer Portals means we no longer need to serve as the “middle man.”
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To learn more about DerbySoft’s innovative hotel software solutions, browse our website for suite and module overviews. Or, contact us! We are happy to answer any questions.
