Quick answers help holiday company to boost sales
HAVEN, best known for its 35 holiday parks, says it has freed agents to increase sales conversions by five per cent through the use of software to handle most routine queries.
Based in Hemel Hempstead, the company has four contact centre teams: 65-plus holiday advisors; customer care, with 25 agents; guest relations (four agents); and a small internet team.
Sean Power, sales manager, said: “During one of our peak periods last year we were receiving one call or email for every three bookings. Considering we can book up to 15,000 holidays a week, that is a lot of inbound contact to deal with.
“Using self-service to reduce that by 46 per cent has not only enabled us to dramatically decrease our handling times, it improves the online customer experience. Our customers can now easily find the answer to straightforward questions on our website without always having to make direct contact.”
Haven installed the software, supplied by Eptica, in two stages: first an email management package and then web self service. Eptica says that the number of inbound emails to Haven has halved to 12,000 a year, despite an increase in sales.
The text of each incoming email is now automatically analysed – using a self-learning knowledge base – and agents are offered a “best response”. It means, says Eptica, that response times are down by two-thirds, to 1min 40secs.
Mr Power said that previously the high volume of routine, frequently asked questions hindered sales conversions; now agents were able to spend more time helping customers which had in turn increased conversions by five per cent.
Haven has reduced its internet team of six to two-and-a-half, redeploying staff to the contact centre. In addition, it will be able to avoid hiring 10-12 extra agents during the summer when enquiries peak.
Founded 40 years ago, Haven reports a big increase in traffic to its web site and enquiries to its contact centre because more people wish to holiday in the UK. During peak times – such as school and bank holidays – 60pc of bookings are made less than two weeks before departure, including an average of 350 bookings for next day departure and 300 actually on the day.
Mr Power said Eptica’s products allowed Haven to achieve its aim of creating the same customer experience online as that when speaking to an agent.
Eptica says the Haven’s agents quickly adapted to the software. Two of Haven’s customer service managers attended a two day supervisors’ course, hosted by Eptica, before relaying the information to the agents in a half-day session.