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Performance Management and Coaching Techniques Reawaken Brand Loyalty in the Travel and Hospitality Industry

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TMCnews Featured Article


June 15, 2011

Performance Management and Coaching Techniques Reawaken Brand Loyalty in the Travel and Hospitality Industry

By Linda Dobel, TMCnet Contributor


Brand loyalty, no matter what the industry is, is one of many casualties of the country’s recession and economic downturn. Although they may not like it, consumers in many cases have been forced to choose between their allegiances to brands they love and the lower costs. The travel and hospitality industry, once the pinnacle of brand loyalty, has been particularly hard hit by this trend.


As one of the most customer-interactive aspects of the travel and hospitality business, the call center is a critical area where those in this industry can act to re-instill brand loyalty. The key is the implementation of call center software solutions that enable better administration of performance management and coaching techniques.

One company that has found this concept to be true is a leading tourism company in Europe called L'TUR. The company partnered with an expert in providing solutions that can improve the call center, Envision, and deployed a seamless solution that it found substantially improved its contact center’s efficiency and effectiveness through performance and coaching techniques.

One of the ways this happened was that large, group-based training was replaced by individual coaching based objectively on each agent’s specific needs. L’TUR reported that using Envision’s Click2Coach enabled it to achieve a shorter average conversation time per phone call, lessen data entry mistakes and reduce call backs.

In addition, it found that with targeted training and coaching, agent performance and self-image improved because self-image, many believe, is influenced by outside perception of performance. L'TUR reported that with Click2Coach, its training process improved because agents were allowed to “listen to their own behavior and learn from both positive and negative experiences.”

Another company, Northwest Airlines, the world’s fourth-largest airline, also adopted Envision’s Click2Coach and its Envision Quality Monitoring and Envision eLearning in its reservations sales and service group at in an effort to improve its agents' skills. The airline company reports that its agents now follow approved sales strategies more consistently, which has translated to “significant revenue increases”, as well as reduced call handle times. The airline said by using Click2Coach it has also been able to navigate agents to peak performance through coaching.

Like L’TUR, Northwest took advantage of the Click2Coach feature that allows agents to listen to their recorded calls. The company says this is “a technique that makes it easy to understand where they can improve.” Dal DeWolf, director of planning and operations at Northwest airlines, explained, “If an APM (News - Alert) (assistant performance manager) hands you an evaluation form, you can disregard it. But if you hear yourself on a call, it's very convincing."

Lee Gemlich, director of reservations sales and training at Northwest Airlines, said, "When agents are able to listen to their own calls, the coaching and performance review process becomes less confrontational. Instead, it's a two-way conversation between APM and agent."

As both of these travel and hospitality industry businesses demonstrate, a key to tackling the decline in brand loyalty clearly is to deploy call center software solutions that improve performance management and coaching techniques to help contact center agents provide the kind of high-quality, personalized service that not only inspires loyalty, but ultimately results in repeat business.

In other news, TMCnet reported, that “Coaching can be a lot less daunting when call center managers are knowledgeable about call center agent coaching best practices.”


Linda Dobel is a TMCnet Contributor. She has been an editor in the contact center space for more than 25 years, and has the distinction of being the founding editor of Customer Inter@ction Solutions (CIS) magazine. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jamie Epstein







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