by John Smallwood
If you have 60 seconds, I have 500 words that might help at the NOI line.
What is the right way to choose your call center?
The same hotel manager who would take time to find just the right in-room amenities, taste several brews to find the perfect coffee, or painstakingly interview front desk staff to find the best and the brightest to greet guests, will without much consideration simply use the call center provided by the company providing its CRS software. Doesn’t it make sense to take the time to choose best call center, too?
Start by asking a lot of direct questions.
How quickly does the call center answer calls for its clients, that is, what is its overall SLA (service level agreement)? A common target here is to answer 80% of the calls within 20 seconds. Actually, this should be close to the minimum performance level.
What is the center’s overall abandoned call percentage? A solid percentage would be less than 5% abandonment.
What documentation does the center provide to demonstrate call conversion? This can be tricky, but with a little patience you can develop a true picture of the sales performance of the center.
What kind of reporting does the call center provide to help you understand how your marketing is performing?
What kind of sales process does the center use to train its agents to take control of calls to move them quickly and firmly to a revenue conclusion?
Given that voice reservations are the second most profitable revenue channel, and that there is only one chance to make a first impression, it makes tremendous sense to spend as much time choosing the right call center as you do to choose the right CRS provider. And they don’t have to be the same.
This is one in a series of short essays by John Smallwood, CEO of Travel Outlook Premium Reservations Call Center about voice reservations, the second most profitable revenue channel. Travel Outlook is a hospitality company that takes voice reservations calls for its clients.
www.traveloutlook.com 844-TRAVELOUTLOOK