There are roughly 133,000 hotels in the U.S. alone.
On average, hotels collect anywhere between 20 to 200 found items per month. In this blog, I’m going to break down the time-sunk economics that Lost & Found brings to a fast-paced hotel staff that is trying their best to wow customers at every touchpoint while running a profitable business.
Think about it this way:
Every Lost & Found phone call takes about 3-5 minutes to log the item description and last seen details, and oftentimes, listen to the customer’s long-winded story about how they lost it. When the customer sends you lengthy emails, it costs you 3-5 minutes to read and another 2-3 minutes to reply. So, if you collect 50 items on property a month, receiving the lost item details alone costs your team 4+ hours per month on the phone to take in these claims.
But remember, this is a property that collects only 50 items per month. Just imagine the hotels that receive hundreds of lost items: ones in colder cities where guests pack more layers. Family-oriented hotels where guests bring more items for the kids. Hotels in fast-paced locations where people are buzzing in and out so fast that they mindlessly forget items before departure.
Once an item claim is matched to your Lost & Found box, you must then call back the customer again and ask for shipping and payment details, taking another 3-5 minutes of your time per found item. Let’s assume a 50% match-rate for simple math: 25 (matched items) x 3 minutes = 75 more minutes. Now, we’re over 5 hours per month devoted to L&F calls and emails. Multiply that by the hourly rate or salary of the staff overseeing Lost & Found, and you can quickly see how expensive and inefficient Lost & Found is for you, your team, and your business.
And when the item doesn’t turn up quickly? Your customers may have tracking questions which drag your team back into Lost & Found once again to check the shipping status. When this happens, you then spend 5-10 minutes contacting your shipping partner to help troubleshoot.
That was a lot!
So, why are you doing all of this? Because going above and beyond is the name of the game for hospitality. Happy customers = returning customers.
But many hotels struggle with getting it right.
Boomerang’s self-serve Lost & Found platform has reinvented the Lost & Found customer experience and increased operational efficiency for hotels managing found items on property.
By partnering with Boomerang, Lost & Found claims can now be taken in via your website or app with a click of a button. For every call that comes in, simply route the customer to your site’s Lost & Found section.
How about shipping, tracking, and payment collection? Boomerang handles this entire process on your behalf.
With every item found, your team can now internally upload the image and details into their Boomerang portal, which contains all the customer claims and inventory. Shazam does the matching of music as Boomerang does the matching of claims to inventory for your team. No more cross-referencing emails and call logs to your Lost & Found closet box, ever.
So, if you’re a hotel General Manager looking for new ways to wow your customers and become more operationally efficient, let’s partner up – we’d love to work with you to help you shine in this unique customer touchpoint.
Skyler Logsdon
CEO, Boomerang
