Over the last two years, travel has been hugely limited due to the impact of COVID-19. Now, as the industry opens up again, demand is at an all-time high. But while this should be a welcome reprieve for an industry that was amongst the hardest hit by the pandemic, in reality, it has exposed a number of weaknesses.
The travel and tourism industry has changed irreversibly
Staff shortages, cancellations and delays, and strike action, coupled with sky-high demand, have put immense pressure across the industry — from airports and docks to airlines, travel operators and, of course, customer service operations.
And this isn’t likely to change. Emerging economic conditions, seasonal weather patterns, political realignments, and even the effects of international conflicts will continue to shape consumer demand, constantly testing the industry’s ability to anticipate, adapt, and scale.
An immediate response is needed
The last 12 months have shown that the industry can’t simply ride it out. This is not a short-term crisis — with pandemic restrictions now lifted, the travel and tourism industry is predicted to undergo year-on-year growth for the next 5 to 10 years.
Businesses risk losing out on the opportunities brought by increased demand. Companies must make permanent changes if they want to grow, win more business and retain staff. If they don’t, they’re going to get left behind.
A CX perspective
If CX provision does not increase in tandem with renewed demand, then businesses can’t deliver the level of service their customers require. They’ll be doubly exposed — to competitors that can provide, and the next wave of industry disruptors.
A number of core pain points have emerged:
- With many travel arrangements cancelled or changed at very short notice, businesses need the tools to keep customers immediately up-to-date.
- The surge in demand and backlog of bookings means teams need effective, joined up working and the ability to deliver tickets to the correct teams within agreed SLAs.
- Whether demand soars or tails off, CX teams need a product that can scale with them to deliver a consistent level of service.
- The threat of regulatory changes and staff strikes means platforms need to be customisable, changeable and equipped to empower agents as quickly as possible.
In short, CX teams need to be more efficient, more effective and empowered to do more with what they already have.
So how can you overcome these issues?
By integrating key in-house systems and third-party software with a 360° customer view, a Unified Agent Desktop creates a single source of truth for agents and managers.
Agents can focus on where they bring the most value: restoring and strengthening customer relationships with empathy, tact, and resolutions appropriate to the customer, inquiry, and business. Managers benefit from real-time analytics and real-time adjustments to resource allocation; directors need the data to track emerging trends and respond accordingly.
This is where innso comes in. Because the innso Unified Agent Desktop is made by operations leaders, for operations teams, it is the result of a keen-eyed, 40-year-strong understanding of frontline operational needs.
Applied across your team’s current hardware, innso enhances the ability of agents and operational teams to deliver more, without the increased costs of recruitment or outsourcing. Because successful change management is a key driver of operational evolution, the platform is easy to deploy and incredibly agile: it provides a very rapid return on investment, offering a short-term fix and the structure for long-term continuous improvement, empowerment, and agile adaptation.
Innso achieves this by:
- Connecting and optimising manual back office processes through automation
- Enabling seamless, cross-channel conversations with customers
- Opening up different avenues to make it easier to reach customers
- Increasing efficiency and empowering agents to get through more each day
- Supporting the organisation’s digital transformation journey.
Ultimately, innso helps organisations understand what sort of enquiries they’re getting and how to respond to them, allowing them to predict and respond to enquiry volumes, and redirect enquiries to the relevant channels more effectively.
We’ve proven it works
The results that businesses in this industry have already seen speak for themselves.
FlyBe, one of Europe’s largest regional airlines, saw a 35% decrease in average handling time after we overhauled their ticketing system, increased self-service capabilities, added more channels and reduced their customers’ reliance on voice and email for issue resolution.
Club Med, a leading operator specialising in all-inclusive holidays, used innso to empower their contact centre teams with a platform that could boost sales and enhance their digital sales funnel. They saw live chat conversion rates increase to 30%.
Ongoing support
Both innso and its solutions, implementation, and support teams are extremely well-adapted to fast, agile deployments that make a real difference to customer service operations managing challenging situations, setting them up to achieve rapid return on investment and ongoing digital transformation.
So don’t get stranded. Together, we can match innso to your specific situation, delivering the performance gains that you and your customers need today and tomorrow. Get in touch and let’s find the solution that works for you.