I recently visited a five star restaurant in Liverpool. The food was great and the service was attentive and warm. But unfortunately, the first few minutes on arrival felt flat, impersonal, and slightly chaotic. No sincere welcome, or sense of being expected. Despite everything that followed being excellent, that moment stuck with me.
That’s the reality of guest experience: people remember the full package. In hospitality, service isn’t a single moment at check-in. It’s the sum of every interaction. Increasingly, this happens across multiple channels: in person, on the phone, via email and now through AI. This guide is a practical playbook for improving the experience across every conversation, with expert call answering at the heart of a wider, modern service approach.
Quick definition: Guest service touchpoints are every moment a customer can contact you or you contact them, including phone calls, live chat, messaging, and automated support like online booking and AI voice agents. Guests judge you on the whole experience.
Why it matters: The biggest review drivers are rarely the grand gestures. They’re the small moments that feel effortless, genuine, and professional.
Quick navigation
Key takeaways
Even in a digital-first world, guests still pick up the phone when the stakes feel high. It might be a last minute change, a sensitive request, confusion about check-in, or a complaint that needs empathy. Calls are often “make or break” moments because they carry emotion, and emotion is what guests remember when they write reviews.
That doesn’t mean every enquiry needs to land on a human phone line 24/7. It means voice is a core part of trust, and it needs to be supported by the right mix of people and technology so it stays warm, responsive, and consistent, even during peak times.
Most hospitality businesses now operate in a blended reality: some guests want a quick answer via chat, others want the reassurance of a call, and many will switch between channels in the same journey. The win is not choosing one channel. The win is making it easy for guests to get what they need, when they need it, without repeating themselves.
A simple way to think about it is intent. Guests choose channels based on what they’re trying to do, not what you prefer them to do.
Match the channel to guest intent
When reviews dip, it’s rarely because the business doesn’t care. It’s usually because the operating model makes it hard to deliver consistency. In hospitality, the most common breakdowns show up in predictable places.
The goal is not to eliminate these challenges overnight. It’s to design around them so your best service can happen even when you’re stretched.
Five star service has a sound to it. It’s calm. It’s confident. It’s specific. And it makes guests feel looked after, not processed. The good news is you don’t need scripts to achieve that. You need principles.
Four principles that lift guest satisfaction fast
A quick reality check: guests don’t reward you for being “busy”. They reward you for being responsive. If responsiveness is hard with your current setup, that’s a design issue, not a motivation issue.
The easiest way to exceed expectations is to stop treating each channel as a separate thing to manage. Instead, treat guest communication as one experience delivered through different routes. That mindset shift is where consistency comes from.
Decide what your brand should feel like in every conversation. Warm and unhurried? Professional and discreet? Friendly and upbeat? Write it down in plain English and make it usable. This becomes the anchor for your phone team, chat team, and AI configuration.
Most reputational damage comes from inconsistency, not mistakes. Standardise high risk topics like cancellations, accessibility, check-in rules, deposits, parking, late arrivals, and group bookings. You’ll reduce friction and protect reviews.
If a guest starts in chat and needs a call, or starts with AI and needs a person, that switch should feel smooth. Simple steps like shared notes, clear escalation rules, and consistent phrasing can make handoffs feel like one experience rather than a reset.
Used well, an AI receptionist (or AI voice agent) can expand availability and protect your team from repetitive queries and during peak periods. Used poorly, it frustrates guests and can damage trust. The difference is being clear about what AI should handle confidently, and what should move to a human smoothly.
A simple rule for hospitality
Let AI handle speed and coverage, and let people handle nuance and care. The best guest experience is usually a blend, not a replacement.
If you want improvements that stick, track the signals that show whether guests feel heard. Review scores matter, but they lag behind the day to day reality. Conversation metrics help you act earlier.
If you’re building a simple measurement approach, start with CSAT after key interactions like calls, live chat conversations, and booking changes, then review results weekly with one action you’ll take based on what you’ve learned.
Want a simple, practical guide to CSAT?
Understand what CSAT is, how to measure it, and how to turn guest feedback into improvements that show up in your reviews.
Curious how AI is changing UK hospitality service?
See real world ways hospitality teams are using AI to answer more enquiries, protect staff time, and deliver smoother guest experiences.
If you want better reviews, you need stand-out, seamless moments. Here’s a practical way to improve guest experience across calls, live chat, and AI without overwhelming your team.
If you’re exploring ways to strengthen responsiveness and consistency without adding pressure to your on site team, Moneypenny supports hospitality businesses across the UK with a blend of brilliant people and smart technology across call answering and digital touchpoints.
Core services (UK)
Calls often happen at high emotion moments: changes, uncertainty, complaints, special requests. Handle those moments with warmth, clarity and speed, and guests feel cared for. Miss them or rush them, and guests carry that frustration into reviews.
Live chat is a strong fit for quick, low effort questions that otherwise clog phone lines. It can also support conversion by helping guests make decisions in the moment, especially for bookings, upgrades and event enquiries.
AI voice agents work best for routine questions and out of hours coverage, where speed and availability matter most. The experience improves when guests can switch quickly to a person for nuance, emotion, or complex cases.
Reduce guest effort. Make it easier to reach you, get a clear answer, and complete the task without repeating information. Start by fixing the top friction topics and covering peak call times.
Exceptional hospitality isn’t just what happens on site. It’s the feeling you create every time a guest reaches out. When call answering, live chat, and AI work together, you protect responsiveness, keep service human, and give guests fewer reasons to complain and more reasons to leave five star reviews.
If you want to stand out in a competitive market, start with the simplest question: how does it feel to contact us right now, across every touchpoint?
Your own PA to look after calls, qualify leads, book appointments, and lots more.
Discover >Our team of PAs capturing every new enquiry and qualifying them during the call.
Discover >
