Today, in the era of digitalization and automatization, a large number of travel companies still operate on outdated (usually manual) systems, without even knowing there are ways in which they can upgrade their workflow, and therefore increase their efficiency and reduce time-loss.
Whether we’re talking about customers or suppliers, communication presents a crucial step in building a strong relationship for both sides. The topic of today’s blog post will be to explain in a precise and detailed manner how travel companies could centralize their entire communication process.
From the employee perspective
When someone would ask a person working in a travel agency what is their typical day revolved around, what do you think their answer would be? Sadly, for most employees the answer would sound something like this: “I hate when my colleague goes on vacation and I have to take over her communication with clients because it’s hard to continue where they left since all the communication took place in her mailbox that I don’t have access to.”
Here’s the real question – what about the needs of the staff? While employees in tourist agencies are focused on providing the best service for their clients, Lemax is focused on resolving all ongoing issues that travel businesses have for them to grow their businesses even more, including the communication processes.
Problem awareness
The problem lies in the fact that a high number of travel agencies is not even aware that their current communication process presents an issue. Even more, they’re not aware that a simple solution can increase their entire process, workflow and even generate more sales.
What’s the solution, then? And how can it provide value for travel agencies? You’ve probably heard about our complete software solution for travel agencies and tour operators, but do you know all the features that we’ve created to help transform travel businesses around the world?
Powerful solution
On the matter of centralizing the communication process, we have developed a powerful 2-way email communication module, designed for our clients to successfully communicate with their customers and suppliers. This module enables you to browse the whole centralized mail communication history of each reservation or customer.
What does this mean, actually?
Let’s say, for example, you’re a staff member of the reservations department in a medium-sized travel agency. You receive about 50-100 requests daily that you need to process. These requests are made by your clients, and they often include various changes that need to be made: a hotel change, a flight date moved up, a package tour redesigned, etc.
This is a lot of information to handle, especially if all the communication history is spread around. This often happens when an employee leaves on vacation or on a sick-leave and must delegate his own clients to another staff member, and give them insight information on each specific client as well.
This is a huge waste of time, and in various cases results with the fact that the employee who’s received the delegated clients doesn’t know how to communicate with them efficiently, and in the end, can’t complete their needs and requirements.
On the other side, there is the communication process that travel companies have with their suppliers. So, if one of the clients requires some changes to be made in their itinerary, travel agency must contact all the suppliers that are directly involved in these changes. Again, the same problems with tracking communication we mentioned earlier with customers applies here as well.
Benefits of the two-way communication module
These two types of communication can be easily organized and centralized with our 2-way communication module. Lemax’ back-office can easily be connected with the email system a travel company is currently using, which means that all the email communication with clients and suppliers automatically ends in the back-office under a certain reservation/client number. This huge benefit allows other employees as well as department managers to have the insight into the entire communication history.
Using this module will provide high value for travel agency staff, especially when it comes to tracking delegated tasks. Knowing completely what type of communication was provided by the previous employee, what were clients requirements, how can a staff member execute those tasks, all while being able to browse through the entire communication history of each customer or supplier generates a time-saving and efficient environment for the employees.
Could you even imagine having both communication processes centralized in your travel business’s core system, making them highly manageable? On what scale could you benefit from having that type of solution? Since communication from your standard mail application can be synced in Lemax, there is no need to look in different directions when trying to manage a client efficiently!
Interested in seeing how it works?
Learn more about our two-way communication module
