Jane Evans, call centre and customer services manager, TVTravel Shop
Education: seven O’ levels.
First travel job: sales consultant, Victoria Travel Tours, London, aged 16, where her learning curve began. She soon realised that there was more to the travel industry than being a travel-ticket delivery girl, sent all over London, and so moved on to a new company after a short time.
Career path: Jane spent a year as a sales consultant at Jetline Travel and then enjoyed time-out travelling. In 1987 she moved to First Choice Holidays. As reservations supervisor, Jane set up a new call centre, trained a sales team of 30 and set targets for her team to achieve. Jane’s next move was to USAirtours as a sales team leader. In 1997 she became telephone sales manager, responsible for a team of 70. Jane quickly identified that she could have a real impact in this role. She recognised a skills shortage, identified transferable skills and recruited non-travel staff, whilst also revising the pay and conditions structure. This role ended in voluntary redundancy after effective restructuring and so in June 1998, Jane joined the call centre of TVTravel Shop – the UK’s first ever home-shopping travel channel. In her current role Jane oversees a team of 250. She has established a rota system for the call centre’s 24hr operation, for 200 sales staff, enhanced the telephone system and developed the skills of 10 supervisors, who were all promoted internally.
Advice for people wishing to develop a career in travel: “You need to be an effective communicator and enjoy a hands-on role. You must remain focused on the key objectives behind any call-centre operation. Enthusiasm,a personal desire to constantly beat targets and improve standards, have to be key drivers.”