Customer Success Story: National Assemblers
The Challenge
When teams of up to 50 people are on location for anywhere from six to 25 weeks, it’s a big task for National Assemblers’ administrative team to get them set up with comfortable and convenient lodging. According to Merchandising Onboarding Specialist Nancy Collins, it takes significant time to compare prices, locations and reviews for hotels near a job site — then once a property is selected, further effort is required to submit request forms, book rooms, manage reservation changes and reconcile costs at the end of the project.
Additionally, by relying on online booking tools like Expedia, National Assemblers wasn’t getting negotiated rates, and experienced complications with the booking process. The company was losing money on nonrefundable canceled rooms — plus, the hotels department was losing sleep from being on call at all hours for travelers.
“In the past, we’ve had no one to contact, so I’d have to call the hotel myself at 2am,” Nancy said. “It’s usually the late arrivals that had problems. Everyone has my number, so I’m usually the contact in the middle of the night.”
The Solution
Since implementing Engine in 2020, National Assemblers’ team is saving significant time on booking and managing large hotel reservations. In addition to using Engine’s intuitive platform for booking smaller stays, Nancy and her colleagues can hand off large reservations to the Engine Groups team to source hotels and manage bookings on their behalf.
“Having Engine helps a lot,” Nancy said. “We really try not to do direct bookings because it’s a lot more work for us. It’s a difference of several days’ worth of work.”
When a new project kicks off, Nancy starts by looking up local hotel options on Engine to get a sense of what’s available. Then, she submits a form on the Engine platform with some information about the team’s needs. The Groups team gets to work on sourcing properties that meet the criteria — including good reviews, a convenient location to the job site, free parking and in-room food preparation amenities — then provides Nancy with a vetted list of hotel options.
Once Nancy selects a property to move forward with, she provides the team with a roster of travelers, and it’s off her plate. The Groups team books the rooms and forwards the reservation details. If workers need to leave a job early or move around, the team helps with that too. And best of all for Nancy, they remain on call for any issues that may arise, at any time — even 2am.
Having round-the-clock support is a huge help for Nancy. “I just called in about a week ago with an issue,” she said. “I talked to someone who was super awesome. Great service, he fixed it for me and we were all good... When I heard that the customer service was going to be available 24/7, it just made my day.”
In addition to saving Nancy stress and sleepless nights, Engine is also saving the company money. On top of great rates, Engine is able to provide refunds on unused rooms, even when the hotel won’t. National Assemblers is also collecting Engine Rewards on their bookings, which can be redeemed toward free stays.
Above all, Nancy is impressed with the relationships she’s built with the Engine team and their willingness to continually find better, more efficient ways of working together — like integrating an Airtable application that automatically generates emails to the Engine team when team rosters need to change.
“I feel like Engine, from the time I started working with them to now, has improved drastically,” said Nancy. “With everything that we’ve put into place and that [Engine] put into place, it’s made it easier on all parties.”
