Top 5 Reasons Travel Companies Benefit from Outsourcing Customer Care (BPO)
A travel agency’s business growth and customer satisfaction depend on quality customer service.
As the travel and hospitality industries grow, your company requires more support than ever. To help with this process, we’ve compiled a list of reasons you’d want to consider outsourcing your customer service to a business process outsourcer (BPO).
5 Reasons a Travel Company Should Outsource Customer Service
- Meet the evolving expectations of your customers
- Acquire access to top-notch travel agents
- Get travel agents with solid customer service skills
- Offer the kind of personalization that gets results
- Get access to the latest tech, delivered with a human touch
To help you make a more informed decision, we’re breaking down our top five reasons why you should be outsourcing your travel program customer service:
Reason #1: Meet the Evolving Expectations of Your Customers
The travel industry is “driven by customer demand,” the Deloitte report points out. “But customers’ values, preferences, and expectations are not fixed, nor are they universal. Changing consumer expectations will continue to force travel businesses to adapt.”
Meeting these shifting demands is no easy task, particularly when you’re focused on the more significant issue of running your business. When you engage BPO outsourcing, a provider with a proven track record in travel and technology, you’re ensuring that you have the infrastructure, expertise, and adaptability to meet these demands without investing in expensive technology or training.
Reason #2: Get Access to Top-Notch Travel Agents
Because travel customers have so many options to choose from, they are more demanding than your average consumer. They don’t want to speak to agents who don’t understand travel — and they can tell the difference a mile away. From coordinating flights to navigating last-minute itinerary changes, it’s essential for the agents you employ to have real expertise in the ins and outs of travel.
Customers don’t want to speak to agents who don’t understand travel — and they can tell the difference a mile away.
With outsourced customer care, your business will gain access to a deep bench of agents who can appreciate travel’s realities and difficulties. These skilled travel experts bring enthusiasm and experience to solving problems or mapping out a great itinerary. They can relate to travelers, offering in-depth knowledge of systems and networks and genuine empathy.
Reason #3: Travel Agents with Great Customer Service Skills
Even agents with extensive travel industry knowledge should provide exemplary customer service. They must focus on empathy, problem-solving skills, and the ability to deliver friendly, effective service to ensure customers are satisfied with the results.
For instance, the independent contractors offered by Working Solutions are trained in all aspects of effective customer care. They’re also continuously provided opportunities to upgrade that knowledge with a sophisticated agent education program unique to our outsourced customer care agents. That means they will deliver the desired results and maintain your competitive advantage.
Reason #4: Offer the Kind of Personalization that Gets Results
No longer simply a means to boost sales, personalization is now a mandatory business practice. Thanks to expectations set by companies like Amazon and Google, service must now be built around customer preferences and histories — an idea supported by research from Salesforce, showing that almost 60% of consumers find personalized messaging “very important to winning their business.”
Intriguingly, the Deloitte report states that the travel industry has fallen behind on this critical issue, pointing out that “most consumers probably do not feel that travel brands offer much personalization, at least not in the way that Amazon provides recommendations based on personal tastes.” That gives travel businesses willing to offer personalization a key competitive advantage.
Reason #5: Access to the Latest Tech, Delivered with a Human Touch
Technology is playing an increasingly important role in travel, and for good reason. From personalizing automated recommendations to better understanding why your customers prefer a specific flight or accommodation, technology is a powerful tool to help you and your customers.
Customers should also have access to automated services for basic inquiries. Travel shoppers quickly and easily ask simple questions without speaking to a live agent. Yet when those questions become more complex — as often happens in travel — they also want the option to seamlessly transition to a human agent.
Business process management services allow you to balance technology with a human touch, so your customers get the best of both worlds. Furthermore, it enables immediate access to the most cutting-edge technology without investing in hardware, software, and expertise on your own dime. And for your business, it helps reduce your operational costs.
How Can Travel Agencies Stay Competitive?
The answer isn’t as elusive as you may think. In travel, as with so many other industries, the way to gain a competitive advantage when you can’t distinguish your business based on price or product is to focus on offering the best customer experience (CX).
“Hotels are temporary homes for their guests,” the report authors explain. “Airlines fly passengers around the skies. Relationships between travel brands and their customers are heavily built on trust, and businesses which want to drive bookings should strive to do everything in their power to protect this delicately balanced relationship.”
Outsourcing customer support helps travel companies achieve their important goal of providing a great customer experience and offering the best travel management solutions at a reasonable cost.
Why Excellent Customer Service Matters
Travelers booking vacation rentals through companies such as Airbnb and VRBO have access to more information than ever through many channels, including company websites, user reviews, social media news feeds, and global marketplaces such as Groupon.
Think of a travel company offering a user-friendly, highly functional app and investing in traveler engagement campaigns to promote a fantastic product and coupon deals. A travel and hospitality company’s success depends on its customer service level. Two benefits of providing excellent customer experiences with outsourced travel managers are improved loyalty and retention. These fuel your brand’s reputation and sustain business growth.
Choosing the Travel BPO Partner, Working Solutions
Always remember: Your customer has the buying decision power. Before choosing a partner, thoroughly research and vet potential customer service outsourcers. This is vital because their customer service agents will have direct contact with your travelers and essentially be the face of your company.
Working Solutions provides customized travel service outsourcing and ensures you’ll have highly skilled agents and the right tools, technology, and processes needed to reach your goals. With over 25 years of proven experience, Working Solutions has a proven track record of providing exceptional service to our travel and hospitality industry clients. When you enlist the help of our corporate travel management customer care services, the sky-high demands of savvy travelers become an advantage, not a liability.
Interested in how to take your customer service to the next level?
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Published on January 23, 2023
Published on January 23, 2023
