Hays Travel has restructured its homeworking businesses to improve support for agents and increase call conversions.
The group’s Personal Travel Consultants has been set up as a standalone division, separate from its telesales homeworkers, and no longer falls under the Hays Independence Group umbrella.
Jacqui Sulton, head of the PTC division, said the move recognised that the 43 homeworkers, who generate their own leads, have different needs to telesales homeworkers.
“It’s about catering for them better and motivating. I don’t think we were encouraging them enough to work as a team,” she said.
PTCs now receive weekly video messages with tips from the previous week’s three highest sellers and daily sales tracker emails, showing a league table of agents’ sales.
A Facebook page has also been created to encourage PTCs to share news and views. The page also shows a daily sales target and highlights agents’ specialist destination knowledge.
“If agents are struggling and need help on certain destinations, they know which colleagues they can contact,” added Sulton.
PTCs will also be invited to take part in free, bespoke training sessions.
More efficient working practices have been introduced for Premier Homeworkers, Hays’ telesales homeworkers, in which agents specify which hours they will work each week and in return are guaranteed high call volumes. This had already led to increased profits and call conversions, the group reported.