The boss of the Travel Village Group has vowed to keep all sales channels “fully staffed and open” to ensure the business does not lose any customers as it rebuilds from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The agency carried out a consumer survey earlier this month in an attempt to continue improving the relationship between agents and customers, and said it would make the survey an annual fixture after receiving almost 1,000 responses.
Results from the company’s first opinion poll in four years were shared with staff at the Blackpool-based business today (December 20).
Phil Nuttall, owner of the Travel Village Group, said the parent of The Travel Village, The Holiday Village and The Cruise Village would carry out a similar survey every December from now on.
Questions in the latest survey focused on customer service; communication; whether customers would recommend the business to others; pandemic performance; booking priorities; sustainability and charity fundraising.
Of the customers who responded, 75% rated the level of customer service as “excellent”, 62% said they would “likely” recommend Travel Village’s brands to family and friends, and 31% said they would “definitely” recommend the business to others.
Nearly 98% of customers rated the business “good” or “excellent” at calling them back as promised and processing refunds, while their customers rated the trust of the family-run business as a reason to book with them, second in the list only behind price.
Nuttall (pictured, centre) said: “It has never been more important to understand the relationship between an agent and a customer.
“What value do they see in us? What value do they put on what we do for them? Our relationship is also going to change from what it was in the past.”
He added that the survey presented his agency with an opportunity to further improve.
Group managing director John Warr (pictured, left), who joined Travel Village Group in October, said this year’s survey gave staff a chance to “roadmap” the business on what customers liked.
Tour operators wanted to partner themselves with an agency that cares about customer service, Nuttall said.
Explaining how his agents had a role to play on behalf of tour operators, he added: “Tour operators cannot serve all of their customers directly. They cannot give every customer that same level of service.”
In terms of preferred method of communication, 18% of customers said the prefered “in store, face to face”; 32% answered “over the phone”; 20% said “online live chat”; and 29% “via Travel Village’s websites”.
Warr said customer-facing teams would be fully-staffed so they could successfully deal with customer enquiries.
Nuttall added: “Our survey shows all businesses now have to keep all channels of communication open to their clients at all times.
“The fallout of closing any of these channels down could result in losing at least a quarter of your business.
“This is why I kept all our team on full salary, fully-staffed and our phone lines open throughout the pandemic.”
Travel Village Group also asked customers how important a company’s “charitable efforts and sustainability ethics” were when choosing who to book with.
Around 25% responded “very important” and approximately 33% said “fairly important”.
Warr said, in his experience, customers did not always follow through with their promises on sustainability and charity when it came to booking a holiday.
“I would say that they’re very important [points of difference] but whether customers choose one operator over another [because of them], I’m not so sure,” he said.
Travel Village Group is also changing its strapline to ‘We Give You More’ after around 30 years of using ‘Where Customer Care Comes First’.
Warr said the new strapline would be on the business’ websites, emails, CRM system, and the shop front. Homeworkers at the Holiday Village will also use the strapline in any communications with customers.
It also plans to donate a portion of commission earned from bookings to a charity initiative Give A Vaccine.
The agency initially aims to raise around £15,000 to fund vaccination rollouts in countries around the world.
Nuttall said the push to support vaccination programmes through Give A Vaccine was driven by the need “to do something that our customers will appreciate”.
“This is what our business is about,” he said. “We’re continuing to give back. I want to encourage others to get in touch with Give A Vaccine.”
More: Travel Village Group kicks off cruise sales staff recruitment drive
Two cruise agents bag biggest-ever bookings with world sailings