Agent Diary: Why welcome-home calls are very worthwhile

Seeking feedback can be scary but it encourages customers to come into the shop, says Arundel Travel’s Helen Parry

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me to go and view a house with her. She dropped the specs round a few days before and it seemed a great buy on paper. The rooms looked large and light, the location was spot on and the agent gave it a fab write-up.

When we arrived for the viewing, however, it quickly became apparent that the house was not quite what it had seemed and that it hadn’t been matched well to my friend’s requirements. Sadly, this viewing ended up being a waste of everyone’s time, and we were left wondering if we could have found a better property by doing the research ourselves.

There should be no need to spend time and energy looking for things yourself; go to the ‘expert’, give them your brief, and bingo! 

Like a lot of ‘specialist’ businesses, you expect to pay for the privilege of using a third party. There should be no need to spend time and energy looking for things yourself; go to the ‘expert’, give them your brief, and bingo! But this situation really got me thinking.

Inviting feedback

Do we make sure that we take time to match the brief on every occasion, or do we sometimes look for a quick win? Doing the latter means we typically lose the sale (as it’s unsuitable) or have an unhappy customer who won’t return. As a team, how do we avoid this?

Well, something we have started doing again is the ‘welcome home’ call. This was something we did prior to Covid and my friend’s house-viewing experience made me realise it was time to start it again. I’m not going to lie, it can be a little bit scary picking up the phone and asking for feedback, but it’s a very worthwhile thing to do.

I’m not going to lie, it can be a little bit scary picking up the phone and asking for feedback, but it’s a very worthwhile thing to do

It can be daunting, because although I know our team is fabulous, do our customers feel the same? Have we helped them make the right choices? Have we recommended a holiday that suits them, or rather a holiday that suits us because it was easy to book? And the big, most important question, is always ‘would you book with us again?’

Building relationships

We are not the perfect fit for everyone, as we found out last week. A customer was unhappy that we were making coffees for our clients, that we were asking about their interests, their families and what they were doing at the weekend. Apparently, we were spending “too much time chatting and not enough time doing”.

I politely informed the customer that this is what we do; we don’t want our customers to feel like a number, we want to build a relationship and make them feel like friends rather than a transaction.

The welcome-home calls are encouraging our customers to come into the shop to discuss future trips, and they also make them feel looked after

I went on to say that this is how we get to know each individual and make sure we recommend the right holiday for them. Rightly or wrongly, I suggested that maybe we weren’t the right agency for them.

The welcome-home calls are encouraging our customers to come into the shop to discuss future trips, and they also make them feel looked after. We are not a team that takes the money and runs. We are interested in their feedback and want to better ourselves any way we can.

If you aren’t doing this already, I would 100% recommend spending a few hours each week making your customers feel special by calling them upon their return.

Training events are so beneficial

We are always looking at ways to improve our knowledge and, as I’ve previously mentioned, we’ve started in-store tour operator training sessions again, which are going well. However, it is always great to be asked to attend training events outside of the shop. Last month we took advantage of a Seychelles training night at the Malmaison Hotel in Leeds and this week joined some fabulous agents at the Bright Travel Agent Training evening at Rudding Park in Harrogate (pictured).

Both events were fabulous, providing an intimate way to meet some very knowledgeable suppliers that want to help us help them. It’s very encouraging to see operators and agents working hand in hand to maintain their positions as specialists in this very competitive industry.