For corporate and leisure agencies, success depends on the quality of customer-facing services. To give customers the best deals and the widest possible range of travel content, it’s crucial that search, sales, and after-sales processes be fast, efficient and consistent.
To improve service for its customers, leading corporate and leisure agency Fox World Travel uses its deep understanding of customer needs to drive technology and operational efficiencies. The family-owned company, which serves both business and leisure travelers, employs 250 people — 140 of whom are frontline sales agents.
One major challenge faced by the travel industry is recruiting and training customer-focused agents.
“There are plenty of strong candidates who are committed to delivering excellent service, but very few with travel agency experience. As they are onboarding and learning the cryptic commands, they aren’t able to focus on the needs of the customer.”
— Fox World Travel leadership team
Adding value for corporate and leisure customers
Fox World Travel is using Travelport Smartpoint to simplify staff onboarding and training, and better meet customer needs. Travelport Smartpoint replaces ‘green-screen’ systems and cryptic controls with an intuitive graphical user interface and interactive, point-and-click booking tools, making customer reservations, bookings and payments faster and simpler.
Easier fare comparison
With Travelport Smartpoint, Fox World Travel agents can compare fares from 400 traditional airlines and low-cost carriers quickly and easily, reducing the need to visit airline sites to ensure customers get the best deals every time. Agents can also access content from approximately 650,000 hotel properties and 38,000 car-rental locations from within the same workflow, making the end-to-end booking experience faster and more convenient for customers.
Enhancing traveler experiences
Fox World Travel is also using a number of additional Travelport Smartpoint features to enhance the traveler experience provided by agents.
“We can access TripAdvisor reviews and ratings directly in Travelport Smartpoint, which allows us to provide informed advice on hotels very quickly. Quick command keys speed up access to supplier websites, commonly used applications and the corporate intranet from within the workflow. We also use Trip Quote frequently to put needed information in the hands of our customers.”
Internal adoption
To drive internal adoption of Travelport Smartpoint, Fox World Travel and the travel technology team publish weekly ‘Travelport Smartpoint tips of the week’.
“Travelport Smartpoint is a big change for our agents, and this is one way to help make it easier for them. One week, the tip was about the Travelport Smartpoint queuing functionality, for example, and one week it was on Trip Quote. We look at a different feature each time and it’s proved very successful and very popular.”
Focusing on service, not cryptic commands
With Travelport Smartpoint, Fox World Travel can focus on the traveler’s needs, rather than deciphering cryptic commands.
“We no longer have to spend hours on technical training. It’s a great fit for our customer-centric culture and reduces traveler friction.”
Streamlining agent onboarding and training
With its graphic user interface and point-and-click commands, Travelport Smartpoint also reduces new agent training time by up to two weeks, delivering significant efficiency gains for the company.
“In the days before Travelport Smartpoint, it took at least a week just to teach new staff the cryptic commands, and several more weeks until they were confident working with the system.
Now, we can train new agents much more quickly, empowering them to focus on the customer from day one.”
Driving process efficiency and agent productivity
By creating an end-to-end workflow for agents in Travelport Smartpoint, Fox World Travel is improving process efficiency and staff productivity.
“With Travelport Smartpoint, every customer interaction is much faster and more efficient. As well as helping us improve the customer experience, agents can serve more customers, which contributes directly to our bottom line.”
— Fox World Travel leadership team
Building strong customer relationships based on trust
Fast, efficient, consistent customer service is also helping Fox World Travel to achieve a new competitive advantage.
