HAVE you ever had to cope with a tearful friend at the end of a phone line in distress because her boyfriend has left her, the oven has blown up or the TV won’t work and EastEnders is starting?
It can be stressful, first finding out the exact nature of the problem and then trying to think of helpful or soothing things to say to flood the stem of tears.
So spare a thought for the travel industry’s Samaritans – the help-desk staff, who have to deal with that day in, day out.
“We get a lot of agents phoning in a panic and close to tears,” said Adrian Schwab, dedicated support manager on Galileo’s help desk.
“We must have empathy and understanding and try to calm them down so they work with us to find a solution. There is always a solution, but if it involves referring the call to an engineer to book a call-out, it might not be the one they want to hear.”
Global distribution system help desks are very busy – Galileo has 41 people working five shifts 8am-6.30pm Monday to Saturday and answering an average 1,500 calls a day – but are not exclusive to the GDSs.
The major car-rental companies, Budget and Avis among them, have someone at the end of a line ready to help agents in a crisis, and several travel insurance intermediaries, such as Atlas, have help desks to advise agents bewildered by policy small print.
Budget’s GDS help desk supervisor Denise Jobson said:”We get agents calling for help with the prompts they need to input into a GDS to get a rental rate, or to explain what a rate includes.
“We have to be patient. These are things an agent should know, but either they haven’t been trained properly or didn’t think to look in the manual.”
At Galileo, questions cover everything from how to make a booking to a computer that won’t work. Schwab also recalls the agent who asked for a bigger desk because his mouse kept going off the edge!
“No power is the most common problem on a Monday morning, after the cleaner has been in to vacuum at the weekend,” he said.
“Our first question is always, have you checked it is plugged in? There are a lot of embarrassed people.
“It is lucky we have mute buttons, as we get some very funny calls, especially on Saturdays when junior staff are on duty.”
At Sabre, making a booking, updating airline pages and faulty printers top the problem list.
In the latter case, help desk staff first have to explain how to reboot the system – illustrated manuals help them direct agents to switches on their machines.
Sabre help desk supervisor Michelle Thorne said:”You can be on a call for half an hour, but it is a nice feeling when you manage to sort out the problem.
“It is important to put yourself in the agent’s shoes. They depend on us.”
Schwab agreed. “Every call is unique for the person at the other end, even if we have heard it several times that week,” he said.
Thorne joined Sabre from a travel agent and had no technology background. It is not necessary, but helpful, said Schwab.
“What we really need are good customer skills. We do a phone interview initially to see if the candidate is calm, controlled and clear at the end of the line.
“If they pass, we get recruits in for a day to see how well they get the information they need because as well as listening, they must be able to ask logical questions. We call it diagnostic questioning.”
Staff who work on a GDS help desk are well placed to move on in the company as they know the system so well. “Some of our marketing managers started here,” said Thorne.