Streamlining Stays: How Charge Automation Delivers a Slick Guest Experience

We have this on an ongoing basis and for me, ever since I joined Charge Automation, it's been a real eye opener to how much of a, of a, of an issue this is in our industry where guests come tell the property manager like, hey, by the way, this property doesn't look at all as advertised. We don't like it, we want to leave, we want our money back. Property manager hands them a check and then a week later they see that the credit card was charged back through the credit card company. So basically they didn't just lose the booking, they also lost the money they gave them via check.

Having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf Making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely if you want my respect, you better butt direct.

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Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.

Hi, welcome back to the Boostly Podcast, the podcast that gives you the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence so you can go out there and get more direct bookings. Today we're shining the spotlight on a service which you need to know about. If you're in the short term rental industry or in the boutique hotels industry, there's this service basically is going to help you. And we do this every few episodes on the Boostly podcast where we talk about services which you in hospitality, there's a lot of different tech out there, so we want you to know what the tech is, what it does and why you should use it. So today what we've got a special guest, we've got Flo, he's the Chief Revenue Officer from Charge Automation and we're going to be diving into what Charge Automation is and how it can help you. So welcome along Flo. Thank you for joining me.

Thanks Liam. Thanks for the opportunity to present what we're doing.

Thank you. So, first question, always start with the end in mind. What do you want people to take away from this about Charge Automation? How do you want them to remember you in this episode of the Boostly Podcast?

Mostly I want them to remember that we exist. We keep joking that we are the best kept secret in the industry. So I've been in this industry for about 10 years, joined the company about two months ago and we've got several tens of thousands of properties in our portfolio. And several times now when we demoed, when I joined demos with clients or potential clients, some reactions were, hey, this is really slick, this is amazing. How come I've never heard of you guys and I think this honestly in a nutshell I just want to spread the word that we exist. We'll talk about what we do. But yeah, ideally that hey, there's a company out there called Charge Automation that could be quite helpful.

Why is the problem that Charge Automation solves important to you?

Why is it important to me? So I think it links in really well actually what Boostly focuses on and I think we've got a really interesting love hate relationship in our industry with solution providers. Everyone loves and hates their PMS, the Airbnbs and booking.com that we can't live without. But yeah, you do obviously a great job in helping people get non OTA revenue. And we focus one of our key focuses is helping property managers to generate additional revenue from upsells which I try to refer to as the cool little brother from direct bookings because it helps you to be yeah. A little bit more independent from the big OTAs and bolster your revenue. And I think that's kind of dear to my heart. This is kind of a. With a small business mindset. I want to help people that are similar situation to be successful.

What is Charge Automation and what does it do?

Yeah, okay, I'll give you, I'll actually read you the marketing spiel and then we'll do this in how actual people talk. So on our website it says vacation rental managers use Charge Automation's guest experience solution for contactless check in payment automation, security deposit collection, upselling, chargeback fraud protection and digital guidebooks. Now that's a lot. But what it means in a nutshell, and this is kind of how it helped me really understand what we do when I joined is the PMS was initially built and does a really great job to help you with your internal operations. You put your descriptions, your pictures, your pricing. It's facing you as the operator. But the PMS haven't traditionally done a great job to offer anything guest facing to help with the guest communication and guest flow from the moment they book to the moment they check out. And we help property managers to provide a really slick guest experience and then bake in a payment automation and credit cards fraud protection and upselling in this process in a really really neat way.

What does that kind of look like from the guest point of view? What is their kind of experience? If I'm a host and I've got charge automation and flow, you're my guest. How, how is your experience? How do you know? What is the difference? I guess.

Yeah, the difference that's exactly what, what I think I want to point at. So at the moment it's fairly established that a guest makes a booking and then in the PMS there's kind of a series of messages scheduled where first you have the welcome, the thanks for booking confirmation, then hey, here's a link to how to get to the property. Maybe you send out some recommendations in regards to what can be done close by to the property, recommend some restaurants, some activities, then close to the check in you'll provide the guest with a message with the door code and so on and so forth. But now if you put yourself in the guest shoes, that means that from the moment you book to the point you check in, you have somewhere between five to 10 or even more messages with pieces of information. And if you've just been on a 12 hour flight or I had this in Mexico, flew around halfway of the world, I arrive, pull up my phone, try to find the messages on to talk to the taxi driver, where to go, show him on my, my phone with. It's just kind of not an ideal way to communicate. So taking this, this situation, what we've done is so first of all we integrate with the pms and then in this very first message where the property manager says thanks Mr. Mrs. Guest for booking with us, we bake in a link that brings the guest to a digital journey where they can verify themselves so they can upload. So hold on, first of all they see booking information, that's me, that's my name, the dates we pulled this from the pms. Then they can upload an ID to verify themselves, which is good for the property manager to protect them from fraud. Then they see the payment details, when what will be charged, that they will be put a hold on the security deposit, everything very transparent, very visual, really slick and easy for them to understand. On a web app, no download required, captures the screen size, understands the language setting on the device so they don't have to change anything there. And in that process we bacon as mentioned a protection from credit card fraud, which means that guests will have to verify payments, which then brings also the burden of proof away from property manager in case there's a chargeback claim. And once they kind of went through this kind of verification process which is just a couple of clicks and, and can be very much tailored to the booking source or the property itself. They justify basically getting access then to what we call the guest portal where you then have access to the door code, the WI fi details, further information on how to, yeah, make the best out of Your stay in the property. And what's really slick, and this is, I think one of my favorite features here is because we tap into the payment process of our clients so we don't take the money, we just automate processes. Here we have the Cardon file and very much like an Amazon experience, the guest can be presented with a catalog of products. Early check in, midstate cleaning, late checkout, airport pickup, welcome basket, whatever you can reasonably provide to your guests. And the guest just has this similar to an impulse buy where they can just select this from a catalog and continue and it will be charged on the fly. There's no messaging going back and forth. Very, very convenient from the guests. And they can do this in this pre author, pre authentication phase all throughout their stay. Sit on their sofa, say, you know what, this looks a bit messy around here. How about we order midstay clean while we go to the beach and then we'll come back back and the place is nice and tidy and you just click on your web app and purchase this super easy, nice.

So it's super, super slick from the guest point of view. How does that work then for the owner, for the host, Would they just get an email, a notification saying this person's purchased late checkout?

Exactly. So you could have for example a product that, when you always know that you can provide this, like it may be a welcome basket, it's just instant pay. If it's an early check in and you might want to check with the operations team or you're not entirely sure if you can provide this, it would be by request meaning exactly like you said, you'll get notified. As a property manager, Lisa inquired about an early check in. You look at your calendar. Do you have an orphan day? You talk with the cleaning team? Maybe. Can I, can I not offer this? And then you accept it or decline it. If you accept it gets immediately charged to their credit card. And if you decline it, the guest will be notified that unfortunately we can't provide that or they can't provide the service.

Yeah, that's really cool. I mean it seems pretty, pretty good that it communicates in the way it needs to needs to communicate. One question I'd like to dive into is actually from one of our members within Boostly. Kimberly has actually spoken to me today about a situation where she's with Stripe. Her PMS links directly into into Stripe, but she's had the unfortunate case of some, some credit card fraud. So I explained to her that it would need to be two factor authorized in most situations is that the kind of thing that Charge Automation could help to protect against is it, is that that kind of ballpark?

Exactly. So we have a special agreement with Stripe which allows you, allows us to do several things. One of them is yes, this fraud protection where the credit card holder will be triggered to use a pin, meaning this no chance for stolen credit cards to be used. Same situation for example. And this is, we have this on an ongoing basis. And for me, ever since I joined Charge Automation, it's been a real eye opener to how much of a, of a, of an issue this is in our industry where guests come tell the property manager like hey, by the way, this property doesn't look at all as advertised. We don't like it, we want to leave, we want our money back. Property manager hands them a check and then a week later they see that the credit card was charged back through the credit card company. So basically they didn't just lose the booking, they also lost the money they, they gave them via check. Damage on the property where the guest says I never stayed here. No idea who these people are. And with, with this two factor factor authentication, what now happens based on the financial institutions rules is as mentioned earlier, the burden of proof lies with the guests. They have to show that there was some fraudulent activity. And then you as a property manager, you have the credit card, you have the id, you have a signed rental agreement, you have the name and so on and so forth. So fraudulent charges will be reduced to zero. And then it gets narrowed down to, and there's really, really then, then it's going to be tricky. If they smoked in your property and there's a no smoking policy to send a picture of smell is fairly tricky. So there's still cases where you will go through a claims process and you might lose this process. But for like I said, when it's clear fraud or when it's someone breaking your rental agreements, like the cancellation policy, which is also anecdotes which we hear from clients that a guest books and then two or three days before the check in their plan changes, they decide they don't need the property anymore. Send a message saying like hey, I'm canceling. Property manager says okay, get it. But due to our cancellation policy, unfortunately there won't be, we won't return the money on your booking. And then guests are trying to claim the money back through their credit card company saying there was some, something fishy going on and they never made the booking. And these are kind of situations that we can remove entirely. And when we talk to clients, large organizations and they tell you we had 30, 40, $50,000 worth of chargebacks last year and if you can reduce this to half or third by paying a small monthly fee then that's it's an absolute no brainer.

Thank you so much for spending your time with us. And yeah, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of people reaching out as if you do want to reach out and you've enjoyed this podcast, the show Notes will have the links in so you'll be able to go and check out charge automation and the cool things there. And if you've got value from this podcast just share it like and share it and send it to somebody else who will get some value from it as well. Thank you very much. That's it for me. And thank you very much Flo Having.

A blast Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee cuz it's so hard on the T is loose leaf making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely.