How to Provide Better Service

For all intents and purposes, the key to successful sales can be found in one word: service.

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Cynthia Reese has gone so far as to put the word “service” in her agency’s name, Amazing Travel and Service, a Travel Leaders agency in Festus, Mo. — a move that has helped to differentiate her business from online travel agencies. “Knowing what I am up against with the Internet, I put the word ‘service’ in my name because I think that’s where we have [an advantage] over the online travel agencies,” she says.

For her part, Erica Gindele of Minneapolis-based Forever Honeymoons, also a Travel Leaders agency, believes that service is the very reason why she is successful. “By building relationships and being friendly, you can stand out from everybody else.”

Here are 10 ways travel agents can provide better service for their clients.

Keep your clients engaged. Candie Steinman, a CruiseOne franchise owner in Fort Myers, Fla., believes it is important to keep clients interested and excited about their vacations prior to departure, and so she sends them emails every couple of weeks prior to the day the leave.

In January, she booked a group of eight couples on an AmaWaterways river cruise, which departs in late November. “Every two to three weeks, I have been sending them a quite detailed email on the different ports of call and life on board a river cruise ship, because none of them has ever done this type of trip before,” she says. “It’s not only kept them interested in this trip, but now they’re coming back to me and saying, ‘Okay, now what’s our next trip? What are we going to do next time?’”

Later in the fall, Steinman plans to meet with the group in person, at the group leader’s home, to provide clients with their travel documents. “It will be quite a fun little party,” she says.

Develop a referral system. Steinman has forged a partnership with a group of wedding planners who refer their cruise business to her. It all began when a client became a wedding planner and, preferring to maintain her focus on weddings, referred cruise clients to Steinman. Steinman then asked the wedding planner to refer other planners within her network. “Now, I’m working with eight different wedding planners around the country,” she says, adding that she provides them with nominal referral fees and higher onboard credits when she books their own personal cruises for them.

“It was just going that one step further from just having the one person sending me people to saying, ‘You work with a lot of other gals, do they need the same service?’” Steinman says the referral system brings in a couple of prospective clients each week. “We don’t sell everybody, but I’ve sold quite a few of them, so that’s good extra business for me.”

Thank clients for the business. Reese routinely sends clients an email welcoming them home and asking how the trip went — before she sends a thank-you note. “I want to hear their response before I send them a thank-you note because, if there was a problem, I want to readdress the issue in that note and talk about how it could have been handled and what we could have done if they had contacted me [at the time the problem came up],” she says. “It lets them know that’s what I’m there for,” she says.

Reese includes business cards in the thank-you note and tells clients that if they refer business to her, she’ll send them a $25 cash referral check. She includes an asterisk saying that the cash referral is not redeemable for cruises and trips less than five days long.

Reiterate your commitment to service. Two weeks before her customers are scheduled to depart on their trips, Reese copies clients on documents that she has sent to the resort or hotel with any special requests that may have been made – even though those requests were made during the booking process. “That way, they know I’m out there with their best interests at heart,” she says.

Reese also sends clients a travel reminder email that includes such travel advice as making copies of credit cards, birth certificates, passports and insurance policies and how to prepare their homes before they travel.

In some cases, tour operators feature instructional videos on how to get through gateway airports and find transfers. “I’ll send them that a week or few days before they travel so they can watch it,” says Reese.

Reese also sends clients little gifts about two weeks prior to departure. “These gifts are things that I’ve picked up at tradeshows,” she says, including eco-friendly bags and luggage tags.

Contact clients on the phone rather than by email. “One of the things that we just started implementing is going back to phone calls versus emails for communicating with our clients to try to build relationships with them,” says Gindele of Forever Honeymoons.

She has also begun to send out paper documents rather than e-documents. “What I’ve found is that people no longer pay attention to email,” Gindele says, adding that this practice differentiates her from online travel agencies.

Create a questionnaire. Gindele has created a questionnaire that includes clients’ must-haves and can’t-stands. “So with the must-haves and can’t-stands, the clients tell me what they want,” she says. “And then we ask what their budget is, what they want to spend and that way, when we build them their quotes, we can build their ideal vacation,” she says.

Join networking groups. Gindele highly recommends joining Business Network International (BNI), which she says has provided her with myriad referrals — and virtually ever community has one.

“There’s 25 people in our local group and they were unsure how to work with a travel agent and what we can do for them versus an online travel agent,” she says, adding that she has educated group members on all the services she provides. “I get so many referrals from that group,” she says. “They believe in me.”

BNI requires that members attend chapter meetings every week. “It gets you engaged with local professionals who see you every single week and, when they think of travel, they only think of you because now they have become your friends,” says Gindele. “You’ve spent so much time with them, they don’t think of calling anybody else.”

View everyone as a potential client. “Every single person I come into contact with in my life I view as a potential client,” says Judy Nidetz of Travel Experts in Chicago. “So the most important thing that I do is talk about what I do,” Nidetz says.

She also asks these prospective clients myriad questions about where they’ve traveled to and where they’ve stayed.

Recently, Nidetz was talking to a woman in her golf league about Florida and the woman mentioned the name of her favorite Floridian resort. The resort also happened to be a favorite of Nidetz’s, and she explained how, as a member of Virtuoso, she’d be able to get the prospective clients such added amenities as complimentary breakfast and free valet parking. “I said, ‘I’d be happy to give you one of my business cards and, if you’d like to call me next time, I’d be happy to help you book your vacation,”’ says Nidetz, adding that she never leaves home without a supply of business cards for just these kinds of moments. “Most of the time if I explain I’m offering a better value I give them a reason why it makes sense to call me — and they do.”

Ask a lot of questions. That’s the best way to get to know clients, says Nidetz. “If you ask the right questions you can get to know them pretty easily.” Key questions to ask are where they stayed the last time they traveled, what they liked about it, and what they didn’t like, she says. “That gives me a better idea of where they want to stay or what would fit for them.”

Be creative with your promotional events. Peggy Morgan, a Nexion agent with The Travel Connoisseur in Hinsdale, Ill., was approached by a group leader about creating an Ireland tour. “After speaking with the leader and a number of people in the group, and really seeing what their needs were and what they were looking for, I was able to pick out a great tour for them,” she says.

She introduced the tour by bringing the group together at a local arts center. The idea, she notes, was to bring the group a vision of Ireland as seen through Morgan’s eyes, one that also incorporated elements of their own vision of the destination.

“Anybody can read a brochure,” she says, “but people can really feel and see your passion if you’ve actually experienced the destination yourself.”