Sabre understands that difficult decisions will be made, or have been made, to ensure travel agencies are able to remain operational in this time of crisis. In response, our Global Consulting Services team has curated a guide of best practices as observed by diagnosing issues affecting travel agencies' productivity, efficiency, costs and technology.
Contact Management
While not travel specific, contact management remains vital to agent productivity. Year over year, an average of 4% point of contact shift from phone to email, with an average of 60% of contact coming via email holding. Automated Call Distribution systems, if set up well, are very effective at directing specific requests to recipients with the correct expertise to handle them. The same is not the case with emails: email management tool adoption is low and agents are forced to spend time manually deciphering communications and determine a course of action for everything in their mailbox. Based on these observations, here are some recommended actions:
Point Of Sale
A common roadblock to agent productivity is handling multiple points of sale:
The results are clear-in the case of single points of sale, agents can produce 42% more transactions per day on average, compared to peers using multiple points of sale. Agencies utilizing only one point of sale, will quickly redirect requests that cannot be fulfilled to dedicated specialist teams.
File Finishing
During File Finishing, typical tasks that we see are the addition of PNR remarks, running of scripts or the creation of invoices. When completing a travel request, 21% of an agent's time is spent in the file finishing process, of which the majority is "Add/Read Remarks" (45%) or "Run Script" (25%). That time can be optimized by using scripts and minimizing the use of manual keystrokes via automation, which reduces errors and can return a 10-12% total workload reduction.
Quality Control and Agency Debit Memos (ADMs)
Manually completing commissions, taxes, exchanges and refunds severely increases the risk of ADMs and results in additional costs for travel agencies. Agencies must remain conscious of both speed and quality to ensure work effective overall. Benchmark ADM rates sit around $0.37 per ticket. High-performing agencies will minimize ADMs through two main additions to the workflow: exchange automation and automated commission collection tools. Beyond technology additions to the workflow, best-in-class agencies systematically track, analyze and implement prioritized improvement intiatives for their highest-cost ADM.
What's next?
The reduction of manual processes has multiple benefits for your business. Apart from the ability to reduce costs, it also eliminates human errors and improves the quality of your business operations, allowing resources to be diverted elsewhere. To automate intelligently, resulting in the greatest long-term impact, consider these four steps:
If you have questions, we are here to help. Contact your Account Representative to explore how Global Consulting Services can help you navigate this challenging time.
