Resort telephones aren’t necessarily doing their job just because they have a dial tone, says Chris Siragusa.
“Possibly the most neglected IT asset in a casino-hotel is the phone system,” adds the senior vice president for Allied Communications, a business communications company based in West Haven, Connecticut. “It’s like a light switch. How often do you worry about it as long as the bulb comes on?”
The integrated resort and casino innovation lab at Black Fire Innovation in Las Vegas demonstrates the capabilities of an internet-based phone system. Black Fire, a collaboration between the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Caesars Entertainment, opened in January at the Harry Reid Research and Technology Park.
Allied, among the largest providers of unified communications and call center systems in the gaming hospitality industry, donated its private cloud service to Black Fire.
A touchscreen phone in each of the lab’s guestrooms offers several apps, including placing a room service order, making a reservation at the spa or other attractions, or purchasing tickets to events.
In addition, guests have the option of duplicating the in-room apps on their mobile phones.
“They’ve got the same apps in their room and on their mobile device. They have the same property-wide application on their phone as they roam about the campus,” Siragusa says.
The app even can be set up to respond to voice commands.
“We’ve got this device in the room (and ask) ‘what can we do with it?’” Siragusa says. “It’s an awful lot.
“The limit is our imagination.”
Allied promises free replacement of room phones damaged for any reason, including guest negligence.
“At some larger properties, it costs $350,000 to replace all the guest room phones, and you’re doing that every 10 to 15 years,” Siragusa says. “By replacing them as we go and giving unlimited access to that, (hotels) should be able to keep the phones longer. Nobody else does that.”
Siragusa says Allied buys and deploys all the equipment needed for a system and then charges a monthly fee. One resort got a $1 million-plus phone system with a down payment of about $60,000, he says.
From a business viewpoint, a cloud-based system not only gives new options to customize but also makes staffers more efficient and provides data on performance. For example:
When a top-tier player calls in, whether from the property or from offsite with a number the casino has on file, “VIP routing” can automatically send the call to a specific agent group. “This gives you more cross-sell, up-sell opportunities,” he says.
Hosts can have their desk phone work as an app on their mobile device, allowing them to transfer a call, set up a conference call with another staffer, or do any of the other tasks normally reserved for an office line.
Integration to customer relationship management systems speeds up outbound player development calls and shows how well a promotion works. The setup displays a customer profile, dials each person automatically, and allows agents to enter notes about each call. Supervisors can see how many calls were made and the success rate. “They really measure player development performance,” he says.
Although business contracts prevent him from identifying specific customers, Siragusa says a major casino was the first on the Strip to install Allied’s Private Cloud System, and two Atlantic City casinos also chose the company’s cloud-based unified communications system. Allied, certified by Connecticut as a woman-owned enterprise, boasts installations at more than a third of Las Vegas Strip properties and nearly half the casinos in Atlantic City.
While the gaming and hospitality sector is the biggest market for Allied’s private cloud service, the company also serves nonprofit organizations and assisted-living facilities. In April, the Army Corps of Engineers enlisted Allied to provide an internet-based communications system for the Miami Convention Center as it was being set up as an overflow hospital in response to the COVID-19 epidemic. The contract called for a 200-phone setup with the potential to handle as many as 2,000 stations if needed. Siragusa says the system, designed to patients to keep in touch with loved ones while enabling onsite and remote staff to collaborate, was completed in 10 days.
