Today, Cruise Holidays International announced new enhancements to its proprietary system, AgentMate, designed to make its agencies more efficient and more productive and agile in handling leads. Major, recent enhancements involve the formal roll-out of AgentMate’s new Lead Management System and updates to its existing Groups Module, including new group analysis reporting, online group registration and improvements to how inventory is managed. AgentMate is Cruise Holidays’ fully-integrated customer relationship management system, agent-facing booking tool and back-office system.

“AgentMate’s new Lead Management System is meant for agencies of all sizes. Our franchise owners with larger staffs and independent contractors can use the tool to easily assign leads to agents based on experience for a particular destination, cruise line or current workload and also monitor follow-up,” said Kevin Weisner, senior vice president, Cruise Holidays International. “Our more modest Cruise Holidays franchisees can also make great use of the system by setting reminders for follow-up calls and even automating final payment reminders, as just a couple of examples.

“Perhaps most important, it’s helping our owners and agents change the way they think about client management. AgentMate is more than a booking and accounting tool – now instead of entering client information when a sale is made, they can place leads directly into the system and immediately begin marketing to those prospects,” added Weisner. “When clients or prospects are entered into AgentMate, our Cruise Holidays agents can select vendor or destination preferences, items typically notated only when booking. Because of this, we foresee more opportunities to convert inquiries into bookings now that agents realize how simple it is to enter the client data. In turn, they’ll make customers for life based on their travel preferences, right from the start.”

“The new lead management system helps keep me organized and on top of my leads; plus, I can easily convert leads into reservations in the AgentMate system,” said Muffett Grubb, a Cruise Holidays home-based franchise owner in Knoxville, Tennessee. “It has eliminated a duplication of work and I can easily access leads, see how I’m progressing with them and follow up with clients as necessary. It is a great tool that has helped me develop leads more efficiently.”

Another major enhancement publicly unveiled today involves AgentMate’s Groups Module, already heavily used by the vast majority of franchise owners in the management of their cruise groups. The updates to the Groups Module include:

•          New group analysis reporting, which provides improved visibility of potential Tour Conductor (TC) credit earnings on group sailings, as well as assists in making sure all bookings are associated to a group if they are permissible by the supplier. A new pricing advantage query provides an at-a-glance comparison of the lowest available fare to contracted group pricing.
•          Online group registration – this enhancement allows the publishing of a group registration page directly on the franchisee’s Cruise Holidays website, whereby clients can sign up to be part of a group, and the reservation auto-creates in AgentMate.
•          Enhancements to help agents with inventory management.

“The new improvements to the Group Module will make us so much more profitable,” said Mimi Comfort, President and Owner, Cruise Holidays of Kansas City. “Being able to see exactly what the best use of GAP points is and easily knowing how many cabins we need to earn a TC will greatly improve our bottom line. Plus, having the group registration module will free up our agents to handle other aspects of the group and allow the clients to register for a group when it is convenient. This will be such an advantage.”

“Through Cruise Holidays’AgentMate and our ongoing enhancements to this proprietary tool, we are able to automate many of the routine tasks that are part of running a highly-successful agency, which provides our cruise experts more time to do what they do best – counsel and advise their clients on the best vacation options for that individual traveler or group – resulting in bottom line success for Cruise Holidays agency owners,” said Weisner.

Those interested in learning more about how they can put Cruise Holidays programs and services to use in their agency can contact Anne Lawler at 800-824-1481, email alawler@cruiseholidays.com, or visit www.joincruiseholidays.com in the United States or www.joincruiseholidays.ca in Canada.

SOURCE: Cruise Holidays press release