With competition ever increasing within a rapidly growing travel and tourism industry, it has become crucial for companies to provide levels of customer service that surpass all previous standards in order to gain the upper hand when securing business from potential holiday makers and travellers. Along with increasing competition, the number of customers booking online has seen sharp growth over the last decade leading to the need to devise strategies in which these increasing demands can be managed.
Holidaymakers are no longer required to take a trip to their local travel agent to book their long-awaited breaks, and have access to a broad range of companies and travel options at the click of a mouse online.
As a result of this, customer contact centres are becoming more and more stifled with vast volumes of customer queries, be it a pre-sale or post-sale enquiry requiring agents to possess unprecedented levels of travel knowledge. Therefore, additional tools must be implemented for agents to achieve their full productivity potential.
Knowledge Management – Moving with the Times
The solution for managing these continually rising demands is Knowledge Management software, enabling the customer to self-serve and empowering the agent with fast access to an extensive resource of accurate knowledge.
Knowledge Management software is an ideal solution to not only decreasing the volume of customer calls to contact centres, but also as an answer for reducing call escalations by significantly improving first-call resolution rates. This allows your agents the time to address more complex customer queries and provide the levels of customer service that are paramount to your company’s reputation.
The above resolutions to modern day travel and tourism challenges not only provide cost-saving measures to your travel company, but also add an abundant value to improving customer satisfaction and experience, by greatly reducing the time taken to find accurate answers, as well as providing exceptionally customer friendly self-service channels.
Knowledge at your Agent’s Fingertips
A quick to deploy Knowledge Management system removes the need for timewasting by flicking through large numbers of company documents and PDF files.
In place of this time-consuming process, customer service agents can effortlessly span a whole library of documents using a natural language search feature, providing results almost instantaneously.
Giving the People what they want
A poor online experience can easily direct a customer away from one travel company and into the hands of a key competitor. Therefore, an online self-service platform that serves the customer effectively and in the quickest way possible is becoming a major player in obtaining business.
Customers are becoming progressively more expectant of any organisation in the modern day, to provide an online self-service platform that meets their needs, without having to pick the phone up and call a contact centre.
A a recent report from the technology research organisation a Software Advice Software Advice, showed that 91% of customers would use an online knowledgebase if it met their needs, revealing that self-service alone is not enough to swoon the customer.
Traditionally self-service platforms are frequently and sometimes very arduously maintained. These are most commonly FAQ sections where recurrent questions are listed with answers, and keyword searches that are repeatedly found to display irrelevant answers, or worse no answers.
By coupling self-service with a Knowledge Management system that is self-learning with a Natural Language Search capability, customers have access to answers that not only self-maintain but are also highly relevant to their question. What’s more this information can be accessed through asking a question naturally, providing a more usable and customer friendly self-service platform.
Intuitive Self-Service in Action
It is very possible that holiday makers will find the need to use a self-service portal before buying a holiday through a travel agent, but just as importantly they will also find a use for it once their holiday is booked. For example, young parents Sarah and John are embarking on their first holiday with their 18-month-old child Thomas, when two days before their travel they realise they have not checked whether or not their room will have a cot and baby changing facilities.
They made their booking through thetravelsale.com and need to find out quickly as they may need to make a last-minute call to the hotel to arrange a room with a cot. Luckily thetravelsale.com recently deployed a Knowledge Management system that integrates with their CRM, so John used their online knowledge base to self-serve their own question. This avoided a potentially long wait on the phone to speak to a contact agent.
Whilst on the site John entered his booking details and asked his question: “Will there be a cot in the room?” The system accessed all details of his stay to give him an exact answer as well as providing information on who he should call in the case that this arrangement had not been made. John was able to find the answer to his query in seconds using his own words, and was subsequently guided to their hotel’s cot request form.
What are the benefits of a Knowledge Management system to the travel and tourism industry?
Knowledge Management can benefit travel agents in a number of ways with key improvements seen in:
- Productivity of contact centre agents (less common call handling = more training)
- Business operational costs – fewer contact agents are needed leading to a reduction in employment costs
- Sales and company reputation – customers can buy with the confidence that they will receive all the help they may need, and will be sure to book their next trip with your travel agency.
Customers are also able to reap the benefits of a Knowledge Management solution. Reducing the customer’s waiting time and the empowerment of taking control of their customer journey are just two aspects that are sure to enrich the customer journey.
To learn more about how deploying Knowledge Management software can benefit your travel company, download our free whitepaper: