Customer Relations 

Receiving Clients - Acknowledge all persons entering the agency immediately by standing up and personally inviting them to your desk. Personalized service must be our first priority.  Even if an employee is busy on the telephone or with another client, the person entering our door must be acknowledged.  Make eye contact with the entrant and verbally, or by gesture if necessary, invite them to have a seat.  Often a person who feels welcome and at ease is more willing to wait to be assisted.   

Telephone Greeting

For all telephone clients, our standard phone greeting is:

Thank you for calling Spears Travel/Travel Leaders.  This is (your name)__.  How may I help you?  Receptionists should say: How may I direct your call? 

Customer states their travel plans.

That's great.  We would love to help you with your trip to XXX.  Again, my name is ___, may I have your name?  

Customer Complaints and Problems

All customer complaints should be discussed with the owner/manager

immediately.  We encourage strong dialogue and rapport between customer and sales agent.  We prefer to settle all disputes without management

intervention when possible, and support agent efforts.  This is not always possible, however, and must occasionally be settled by a third party.  Whether problems are settled by the agent or with management, the owner/manager should always be briefed from the first hint of a problem.

Clients Picking up Tickets or Documents

We have had several instances, where a client has picked up their cruise or tour documents and the booking agent was not present to go over the documents with the clients, and the passengers were not given full information about their trips. In at least two of these cases, it has cost Spears Travel a lot of money to correct a situation that could have been avoided. We all know that our clients frequently come in when they are not expected, or in a hurry and will not stay long enough to look at documents, but in the long run, it is OUR responsibility to make sure that when the client walks out of the office, they have everything they need, and all the information they need. This is another way for us to differentiate our services from the internet, where no-one tells them anything. In order to try to keep mistakes from happening, we will be instituting some new rules.

1. ALL travel documents, once received in our offices, will be kept in a central location, until the clients pick them up ... not in your desks, briefcases or cars!!!! If you do not have time to check them at the time they are received, they need to be put in that location until you do.

2. When you call your clients, to tell them their documents are in, ask them to try to schedule the pickup for when they have some time to review the documents.

3. If you know you will not be in the office, when the client picks up the documents, ask someone to be responsible to review with the client, and then give the client that agents name. Sometimes clients just show up, or you are out of the office for unforeseen reasons, this is why it is so important to have everything documented in Sabre, and not just in your head, as other agents have no way of knowing that "Mrs. Smith is meeting her daughter at London Heathrow" unless that is in the PNR.

4. If a client comes in to pick up documents, and the agent is not present, you MUST check that PNR and see what the agent has booked and/or documented that may not be obvious from just looking at the travel documents. It is important that you take the time to go over all aspects of the trip with the client, even though they are not your clients. This puts our Agency in a very positive light, keeps mistakes to a minimum, and allows you the peace of mind to know that YOUR clients will be treated in this fashion if you are out.

5. After you have given the client their documents, please put a 5H- remark in the PNR that PAX picked up docs with day and time. It would also be nice to send the agent a short e-mail to let her know, that documents have been picked up. The agent should then attempt to call the client prior to travel and make sure all questions have been answered I realize that all the above seems really basic, and many of you already do follow these rules, but unfortunately, we all get in a hurry and have a bit of a "not my client, not my problem" attitude at times. It is so important in this day and time that ALL our clients feel taken care of, and that we have added something positive to their plans, so we can remain in business for many more years.

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