Once upon a time, new recruits to Bridge Travel Group’s call centre were rushed through a rather short training programme before being left alone to take their first booking.
But by last year the operator had begun to realise that, due to the brevity of their training, some staff were less than confident handling calls. Also, it recognised that many of its employees were feeling the strain of working in such a hectic environment.
Hence the launch of The Academy – a new division to carry out a structured training programme designed to boost staff knowledge, raise their confidence, and ultimately to increase bookings for Bridge.
A year later, one of the group’s brands, Disneyland Paris, says the scheme is producing some very good results. Brand manager John Bellenger said staff are earning more money, the company is providing agents with a better service, and he hopes Disneyland Paris will get more bookings as a result.
“Previously, we believed we were providing agents with a friendly, helpful service but like most companies, it was nothing more than adequate,” said Bellenger. “With our new training programme, we aim to provide agents with something much better.”
The Academy puts all new recruits through a two-week induction during which they learn about the group’s products and its reservations system, pick up sales techniques and get the rundown on customer service.
They are then sent to the call centre for whichever of the group’s brands they will be working on, and they spend the next two weeks with an experienced member of staff learning about the specific product and how to sell over the phone.
When they start taking their own calls, a member of staff is on hand to assist until they feel confident enough to be left alone.
To assess how staff are performing, Bridge employs a mystery shopper to make 10 calls a month to the company, pretending to be a travel agent booking a holiday. Staff are then scored on a scale of one to five on their sales technique, product knowledge and telephone manner.
Bellenger said that when mystery shopper started last November, staff were scoring an average of only 1.9 but today that has risen to 2.8.
The company’s target score is 3.4, which it hopes to reach in April.
Bellenger insisted that the company was not spying on staff to catch them out, but rather it was trying to help them improve their sales performance.
“We provide staff with full feedback from the mystery shopper and go through the score with them, providing praise and positive criticism where necessary,” he said.
To further encourage staff to sell more holidays and holiday extras, Bridge has introduced a new booking incentive scheme whereby each employee receives 50p per booking, which doubles to £1 if their unit meets monthly targets.
Bellenger estimates Disneyland Paris’ 20 or so reservations consultants can add an extra £750-£1,000 a year to their basic salary under the incentive scheme.
“At the end of the day, this will mean that our overall wage bill will be higher, but we would hope that the incentive scheme will pay for itself in terms of the extra bookings,” he said.
Bellenger also hopes the incentive scheme, coupled with better training, will encourage staff to stay longer.
“Like a lot of travel companies, we have quite a high turnover and staff tend to move on after about 18 months to two years, but we would hope by investing more in their training and by giving them incentives, we will keep them for longer,” he added.