How Travel And Hospitality Companies Can Benefit From Outsource Call Centers

In his recent article, Fred Chua discusses how inbound call centers can benefit travel agencies. The travel industry has been booming in the last few years and, while the trend within the travel and hospitality industry is to move towards self-service on the internet, Chua points out that there are people who still utilize travel agencies to coordinate their trips; 16% of people, to be exact. While it’s not a major percentage of people using travel agencies, it’s still important that those customers’ needs are being met. For travel agencies wanting to provide consistent and reliable service to those customers, Chua recommends utilizing outsourced inbound call centers to handle reservation services. He offers and expands on the following four reasons why travel agencies should outsource their inbound reservation services to call centers to increase sales:

1) Better service due to focused, specialized agents

2) Scalability to ensure every customer’s call is answered

3) Fewer mistakes due to rigorous training standards

4) Capability to provide 24/7 customer service

How Call Centers Can Help Travel And Hospitality Companies

Chua’s article covers a very important service that outsource call centers can provide travel agencies, but travel agency call centers can do more than just taking reservations. They can help many different companies in the travel and hospitality industry reduce costs from 50% up to 70% depending on whether the outsourcing location is in a domestic, nearshore, or offshore location. There are thousands of call center outsourcing locations around the world and, with the variety of options available, this means that agents are often bilingual or multilingual and can serve customers globally, which is something many travel agencies and other companies can’t do with an in-house call center.

In addition to cost reduction and multilingual customers service that comes with utilizing call centers in global locations, travel and hospitality call centers can deliver multichannel capabilities that include live chat support, email support, and social media customer service. These multichannel services help assist potential travelers who are more inclined for self-service over traditional phone service as Chua covered in his article. 16% of people may still utilize travel agencies to book their vacations and business trips, but a majority prefer making their plans online and that group size will continue to increase in the years to come. Multichannel call centers can help companies meet travel and hospitality customers online and assist them on their terms without requiring them to call the company directly.

Finally, many outsourced tourism call centers utilize software solutions such as CRMs, interactive voice response (IVR) services, and cloud-based call center software. These technologies assure personalized and consistent customer service and redundancy so that travel and hospitality companies be assured that the call center will be reliable. Organizations that can benefit from outsource call centers include hotels, airlines, rental companies, and more.

This blog post is based on an article from CustomerThink. To read the original article, please click the link below:

The Top Reasons Why Travel Agencies Should Start Outsourcing Inbound Reservation Services – Fred Chua