If employees fail at customer service and are not helpful, knowledgeable, or are unpleasant, your travel business not only could lose clients and lose future sales, but you also risk the chance of getting virally slammed on social media.
How would you rate your company’s customer service? An A or an F? Do you train your employees or do you just wing-it when it comes to customer service?
More business is lost due to poor service and poor treatment than poor product. Travel companies spends millions of marketing dollars trying to convince us to fly their airlines, stay at their resort or rent a car, but if customer contact is not handled just right in person or over the phone, all that money is wasted. You have one chance to make a first impression and gain a repeat customer. Poor customer service can kill a sale, create negative social media reaction and ruin a brand.
If employees fail at customer service and are not helpful, knowledgeable, or are unpleasant, your travel business not only could lose clients and lose future sales, but you also risk the chance of getting virally slammed on social media.
So, what can travel executives and managers do to encourage excellent customer service? Here are five tips that will help your travel company up its game and provide customer service that will generate new sales and repeat business:
- Start some sort of training now! If you have some customer service training in place, review it with your employees. If you don’t have a customer service plan, hire an experienced expert to spend a day training your staff. And if you have no time to train, remind your employees that “thank you for your business” goes a long way, costs nothing, and leaves a positive lasting impression.
- Meet with your staff at the end of each day. Discuss what went wrong and what went right? Make sure any customer service travel concerns are addressed immediately and solutions are made so customers are always satisfied.
- Prepare your employees with a “mental” suit of armor. Make sure they’re aware all customers won’t be so nice and some will be difficult. Your employees will be on the front lines of occasional customer abuse. Warn them in advance and make sure that when those incidents happen that your employees will still treat the customer with politeness and respect. We all know the customer isn’t always right. But they remain the customer.
- Your employees need to care. While knowledge of travel is important, it’s just as vital that your salespeople show they care and want to help the customer with their trip. Greet each customer as if they were bringing a million dollars of business to your company.
- The most important customer service win: smile! Don’t let your employees greet customers without a smile. From entering a hotel, to boarding an airplane to reception at a car rental, a smile leaves a positive, friendly first impression.
Remember that if you don’t provide excellent customer service and leave a pleasant experience with your customers, you’ll lose an opportunity to gain and retain valued customers forever.
Nancy Friedman is president of Telephone Doctor Customer Service Training www.nancyfriedman.com in St. Louis and a featured customer service trainer and speaker at travel meetings around the world.
