Relay Wows Houston Hotel with Exceptional Customer Service

Courtyard Houston Medical Center/NRG Park is located just minutes away from some of the top medical centers in Texas, including MD Anderson, Memorial Hermann, and Texas Children’s Hospital. Its proximity to NRG stadium also makes the Marriott property an ideal place to stay for travelers in town to attend a game or explore Houston’s top destinations. The 197-room hotel with 20+ staff members has got everything you need for a clean and comfortable stay, whether you’re traveling for work or for play. 

For Courtyard Houston Medical Center/NRG Park, creating a safe and memorable experience for guests starts with reliable staff communication. We sat down with the hotel’s Chief Engineer, Albert Santos, who has been with the hotel since it opened 14 years ago, to discuss how the team’s communications have evolved.

Two-Way Radios: Too Unreliable for Busy Team

Before discovering Relay, the hotel’s staff was using traditional two-way radios to communicate. Unfortunately, these ended up being fairly unreliable. “They would never work properly and people couldn’t hear you and you couldn’t hear them,” shared Albert. Messages were not coming through on other staff members’ radios, and people didn’t know they were missing messages. Staff also had to deal with battery issues and devices breaking down completely.

In addition to dealing with these missing messages, the hotel’s housekeeping staff were not equipped with their own devices, only supervisors. As a fundamental part of the hotel’s operations, not having their own devices meant that it took longer for room issues and guest requests to be reported. 

Team Communications Now Faster and Easier than Ever

When Marriott encouraged the property to explore Relay due to its worker safety-focused panic solution, staff were beyond ready to try something new. And now, every employee has a device, making communications faster and easier than ever. Albert shared that his fellow employees have found Relay to be a simpler, more reliable solution. Its size is more convenient to carry and connectivity is no longer an issue. 

Sometimes we couldn’t get a hold of the main maintenance person and we had to wait until we finally saw him come around,” said Albert. “Now you just call him and can talk to him instantly.

– Albert Santos, Chief Engineer at Courtyard Houston Medical Center/NRG Park

Even from home, Albert can stay in touch with his team using the Relay app. “It’s very easy to get a hold of employees,” he shared. Albert continued, “Before, we had to call them on the phone because we didn’t have a radio at home. You would call them on their cell phone and sometimes they didn’t answer because they didn’t have it with them. But now, I can use my cell phone to call their Relay, and if they’re working, they have it on.”

Feeling Confident and Impressed by Relay’s Customer Service

While the hotel has been lucky enough not to have any real emergencies where Relay’s panic feature would come into play, its housekeepers definitely feel more confident that help will come if they need it from seeing how managers have responded to a false alarm. “As managers, we immediately go up to the housekeeper because Relay lets us know where the person is when a panic is triggered,” said Albert. He continues, “Even though it was just a false alarm, the staff got to see how we responded to it.”

Above all, Albert has been really impressed with Relay’s customer service. “The customer service is my biggest thing with Relay, he shared. “I mean, any kind of question you have, anything at all, all it takes is one phone call and right away everybody’s willing to help you and they stay on with you until you get the answer or you’re satisfied,” said Albert.