I was in a hotel in London recently and was taken by surprise by the maid vacuum-cleaning the corridor carpet. Except it wasn’t a maid. It was a robot cleaner that looked a little like R2D2. Very cool, I thought. I took a video clip to post on Facebook. I got comments about how R2D2 had fallen on hard times and fallen a long way from his Star Wars heights.
I saw the same sort of thing at Heathrow Airport T5, and I’m sure I’ve seen a robot delivering plates of food in a pub or restaurant somewhere, not particularly successfully, as I recall. Must have been a gimmick.
The carpet cleaning is likely very much not a gimmick. A combination of Covid and Brexit has made it really difficult for the hospitality industry to hire staff.
As an aside, our Service Provider business, Timico, had many customers in the hotel business by virtue of dealing with a company that provided streaming movies, broadband and telephony services to hotel rooms. The name escapes me. I was once staying at the Hyatt Grand Regency Churchill in London. I must have got a great deal because my normal pied a terre in London at the time was a Travelodge. We were a start-up!
The problem was the in-room broadband was £25 a night. You got a bundle of other services with which I had no interest. The point was that the hotel’s broadband provider was no other than my own company, and I didn’t have a magic key to gain access. I did without, and I invested in a wifi hotspot when I got home. These days, we use our phones.
Back to the subject of automation, the whole hotel industry provisioning process is totally automated. Mostly, that is, except for the Bed and Breakfast we turned up to in Cape Town, only to find our room had been double booked despite the fact that we had paid in advance and had a confirmation email. It turns out there was a manual intervention required in the B&B booking process, and that manual process went wrong somewhere. Oh.
Fortunately, I could whip out my phone and use an app to book a room in a Marriott Hotel elsewhere in Cape Town, which is quite serendipitously nearer the airport. We thus avoided the huge traffic jams we would have encountered travelling from our original place, which we didn’t know about in advance. Moreover, by using the phone, we were able to find a reasonably priced hotel and one that had availability, unlike the ripoffs, which seemed to be the only places with space near our original beachside accommodation.
We hopped in an Uber, booked using their automated App, and when we arrived at the hotel forty-five minutes later, the front desk staff were expecting us; the room was ready, and my Uncle’s name was Bob.
It’s about automation, automation, automation, stupid. Netaxis emerges as a pivotal player for service providers, offering meticulously developed solutions and platforms that enhance network transparency, streamline operations, and pave the way for advanced automation. At its core, Netaxis aims to liberate valuable time, allowing employees and engineers to concentrate on what truly matters: enhancing customer experiences by making life seamless and empowering users through superior services.
I know for a fact that this is a lesson currently being learnt by many telcos whose processes still involve a lot of manual steps. Automate where you can is clearly a mantra folks. We have to keep R2D2 on the job.
I invite you to explore how we can support your journey toward operational excellence and customer satisfaction. Reach out to discover the multitude of ways Netaxis can assist you in making a significant impact.
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