Hotel Complaint and Safety Handover to the Duty Manager
This recipe makes sure that when a guest complains, feels unsafe or is unwell, a person takes over straight away. AeroChat apologises, collects the room number and what happened, hands the conversation to the duty manager and tells the guest someone is on the way. Set it up before any other hotel workflow goes live. Part of the hotel workflows.
What happens today
At 1am a guest messages “the room next door is very noisy, we cannot sleep” and then, an hour later, “someone tried to open our door”. The messages sit unread until the morning shift. The guest checks out angry, and the first the manager hears of it is the online review.
The guest used the channel you gave them. The problem is that nothing told a person.
The flow that works
- AeroChat recognises a complaint, a safety or security concern, or a guest who is unwell, in any language and in any conversation.
- For safety, security or health, it hands over immediately and tells the guest who to call.
- For a complaint, it apologises, asks for the room number and what happened, and does not argue or explain.
- It hands the conversation to the duty manager, tags it, and notifies them on the AeroChat mobile app.
- It tells the guest a manager has it and when to expect contact.
AeroChat never offers compensation, a refund or an upgrade. Those are the duty manager’s decision.
The recipe
Copy this into AeroChat
In every conversation, watch for these and follow these steps.
- If a guest mentions a safety or security concern, such as someone at their door, a fire, smoke, a gas smell or a threat, or says they or someone with them is unwell or injured, tell them to call the front desk on extension 0 (example) or the hotel number in our fact sheet now. If it is an emergency, tell them to call local emergency services. Hand the conversation to the duty manager and tag it “urgent”.
- If a guest complains, for example about noise, cleanliness, the room, a staff member, a charge or a broken facility, apologise once in plain words. Do not explain or defend.
- Ask for their room number if they have not given it, and what happened, if it is not already clear.
- Hand the conversation to the duty manager with the room number, guest name and a one-line summary. Tag it “complaint”.
- Tell the guest: “I have passed this to our duty manager, who will contact you within 15 minutes (example).”
Never offer a refund, compensation, a discount or an upgrade. Never say a problem is fixed unless a team member has confirmed it. Pause any other workflow in the conversation until the duty manager has replied. Reply in the guest’s language.
Change the phone numbers, extension and response time to your own before you paste it.
What to connect
- AeroChat’s handover and tags. Set up a duty manager team in AeroChat and make sure whoever is on duty has the AeroChat mobile app with notifications on, including at night.
- Your emergency contacts in the knowledge base: front desk extension, hotel number and the local emergency number.
- Your property management system. Cloudbeds, Mews or Oracle OPERA Cloud connect through their APIs: create an API key, approve the connection, or register an application, as each system asks, and paste the details in when AeroChat asks. AeroChat then looks up the guest name from the room number for the handover note.
This workflow needs no payment or calendar connection.
Using a different system? If it has a public API, it connects to AeroChat the same way: describe what you want, paste in its key, and it runs.
Can’t find your tool? Message us in the chat on this page and we’ll tell you how it connects.
What you still decide
- Who is on duty to receive handovers at each hour, including overnight.
- The response time you promise, and whether you can keep it at 3am.
- What the duty manager can offer to put things right.
- Which complaints you want to review weekly, using the “complaint” tag.
The result to expect
Complaints reach a person while the guest is still in the building, which is when they can still be put right. Safety messages are never left unread. The “complaint” tag gives you a weekly list of what went wrong, by room and by topic.
Measure it with your own numbers: time from complaint to first reply from a person, and complaints that later appear in reviews, for a month before and after you start.
Next: facility and policy questions. See also live chat handover.
Set up the handover first
Paste the recipe, set up your duty manager team and send your own number a noise complaint at night to check the notification arrives.
Start your 7-day free trial. No credit card needed.
On Shopify? Install AeroChat from the Shopify App Store.