By Brent Blake, President, Acendas Travel
It’s been said: “What gets measured, gets managed.”
It is a simple, yet powerful concept we can apply across a wide spectrum of our lives. From a business perspective, companies are constantly enhancing data collection to identify how they may better measure performance, thus leading to improved management of their operations.
Data Mining
In terms of travel, I do not have to tell you there has been a data explosion. With millions of people moving around the world on a daily basis, there is a mind-boggling data set being created each minute. Data is certainly part and parcel to Acendas Travel’s operations. Just when we think we’ve discovered gold by building a better mousetrap, we up our game by developing new sources of information that we can act on to improve our service that much more. It’s a continuous process.
Over the past few months, Acendas Travel has been transitioning to a new telecom platform. I realize that on the surface that probably doesn’t create much excitement. However, the new platform has allowed us to take our data, evaluate our performance, and then design and implement processes to better serve you. The result has been:
- More options to communicate with you (text, chat, phone, email – of which the data is integrated)
- More timely interaction with you (including lower to non-existent on-hold/response times)
- Multiple proactive communication resources in terms of travel alerts and schedule changes; and
- Enhanced personalization so that when you reach out to us, we know who you are, where you are going and where you have been in the past
Enhancing the Traveler Experience
This omnichannel platform also integrates with our other technologies to enhance the travel experience. Last month we rolled out Mission Control ReRoute. This alert system allows a traveler to rebook travel via text that has either been significantly delayed or canceled. The technology also offers a chat feature that establishes users as the highest of priorities for service from our team.
In just a few short weeks since implementation, we have seen the benefits of our new communications platform. We are most excited by what it has meant to the traveler. The feedback has allowed us to further fine tune our processes. We saw just how valuable this was when a recent snow and ice storm hit a major portion of the country. On one particular day, there were 1,044 client communications: Calls – 546; Callbacks – 316; Emails – 91; Chats 91. That means over the 12 hours of operations, there were 1.45 contacts per minute. Without our new communications resource, we would not have been able to deliver the high level of service that we did.
Seeing is Believing
For a more detailed explanation of this platform and how it works, I encourage you to watch this video featuring Acendas Travel SVP Joe Curtis and our Director of IT Dan DeSive. Click here.