Tech stack summary
Freshdesk, Fareharbor, Active Campaign, Yonder Reviews, Microsfot 365, 3CX.
Biggest benefits of using automation in the business:
- Time saving
- Communicate consistently by having a clear process for staff and nothing falling through the gaps.
Using Sales and marketing CRM’s:
- They can do pretty much anything you want. As long as you’re getting 80% ticked off and at the right price point, rather than finding something that does everything you want. It’s too cumbersome to achieve everything.
- We’re using email remarketing so that after someone books with us in one business we then refer them to others. We are getting really great pick-up.
- We’re using automated drip re-marketing in the quoting phase: sending a follow up 3 days after a quote sent and then another follow-up. We don’t want to be too pushy.
- We have the full history of a customer in our CRM, it helps us be really personalised responding to enquiries.
- Contact forms on our website are all Active Campaign, which is a starting point into our Active Campaign deal flow.
On Booking systems:
- Moved to Fareharbor a year ago. We could then start better managing the stages pre-travel. We love the automated text messages and emails
- Still didn’t address the charter trips but we’re using Active Campaign to do this.
On customer feedback:
- Recently moved from Ask Nicely to Yonder, seamless post travel follow up reviews. Used NPS process for 4 years and found it very valuable to keep a finger on the pulse, near real-time feedback, especially before hitting things like Google and Trip Advisor reviews. Also great to see all of those on one platform.
- NPS is massive for us. Just a simple 1-10, the number of people giving us some feedback is huge. We can now track it down to which product, booking, time and even down to which staff member using Yonder.
- We look at ratings per product and will tweak the products depending on what we see, such as pricing.
- It’s helped us improve some policies by listening to customers, or to help the front line team set expectations up front. It may just be something small we need to change that has a massive impact on someone’s experience.
- Proliferation of OTA’s, need to keep an eye on feedback as if there’s something negative you’ve got to deal with it.
On Customer service/enquiries:
- We had a centralised res team, but more recently decentralised to help each other out across locations. We’ve found this to be better but having the right technology is key to be able to have shared inboxes.
- We use a phone system, 3CX that enables calls to be routed around a business without a customer having to select options, like a typical IVR system.
From FareHarbor:
- Josh explores the automations businesses can expect from their booking systems that help streamline the customer experience, meeting travelers expectations and saving your business hours of time.
- Josh also covers lots of little tips and tricks on how to increase your online sales, pointing out that these are the cheapest and easiest bookings for a business to acquire.
