When customers are traveling, whether it’s for business or pleasure, they expect things to go smoothly. Few things ruin a trip faster than an unexpected hiccup, and when travelers run into a problem – a missing hotel reservation, or issue with a flight, for instance – they need to easily reach someone who can resolve their problem quickly.
But at the same time customer demands are rising, travel and hospitality brands continue to struggle with a shortage of talent. Last summer, 67% of hoteliers said they were experiencing a labor shortage, with 12% saying they were so severely understaffed that it affected their operations.
Brands are under pressure to find solutions quickly, as consumers seem more eager to travel than ever. Travel spending in the United States alone is expected to grow 3.9%, to $1.4 trillion, this year, according to the U.S. Travel Association. And travel has a seasonality to it that makes it especially tough to find and retain the right talent.
The right CX technology and skilled customer service associates are essential to navigating this evolving travel and hospitality landscape.
Hire, retain top talent with an expert partner
Continuous advances in AI hold great promise for travel and hospitality, but brands will only realize AI’s full potential if they have associates with the right skillset to make the most of it.
Finding, hiring, and training associates who have the right skills to meet customers’ needs in the AI era is often difficult, time consuming, and expensive. Brands need creative ways to attract and hold on to talent. Working with a customer experience partner can help.
Give it a college try
TTEC’s College of Travel, for instance, provides comprehensive training and certification pathways so associates can envision a future in the travel industry and feel more connected to their work. We set associates up for success from the outset with our unique approach. We integrate IATA-powered training programs with TTEC’s AI-powered bots, which simulate customer interactions so associates can gain confidence and proficiency.
We provide two learning pathways: one for travel experts who obtain an IATA certification; and one for specialists who focus on interactions pertaining to airlines, cars, cruises, and hotels.
By partnering with TTEC, travel and hospitality brands can eliminate the guesswork and hassle of finding and hiring highly skilled associates on their own. Instead, they can tap into our global pool of IATA- and GDS-certified agents. They also reap cost saving by partnering with our established and proven program, versus building out a similarly rigorous curriculum in-house.
Our College of Travel ensures brands have a deep bench of associates ready to meet customer needs – whether it’s during the peak June-to-September travel season or off-season. Seasonal surges can be hard for brands to staff around, but we’re able to attract and retain skilled associates by offsetting their workload with CX experts from other industries (like retail and healthcare) that have opposite seasonality.
Grow efficiency and empower associates with AI
Once you’ve got the right associates in place, with the needed know-how to make the most of AI tools, you need to have the right technology in place.
AI, for example, can improve customer experience (CX) and employee experience in many ways. Conversation AI can listen to 100% of customer interactions and cull actionable insights from all that data. With those insights in hand, brands can gain a truer sense of customer intents, where associates are excelling, and where there’s room for improvement. That knowledge can then inform associate training and coaching to make associates more efficient and effective.
AI-powered knowledgebases can transform associate productivity by giving employees the information they need at their fingertips when they need it. These knowledgebases harness the power of generative AI, data annotation, data analytics and insights to ensure only current, relevant information is served up to associates. And it lets them search for information in an intuitive and conversational way. The results? Quicker resolutions and better experiences for associates and customer alike.
Voice and text translations can help improve your seasonal peaks and valleys, keeping answer times fast and resolutions stress-free for customers.
Seek help when you need it
The peak travel season is closer than you think, but there’s still time to get the right people and AI-powered tools in place to improve customer satisfaction and increase efficiencies without breaking the bank.
Working with a CX partner that knows the ins and out of the travel and hospitality industry and focuses on the intersection of CX and AI is a great way to tap into the global labor pool, cutting-edge technology, and proven best practices you may lack in-house.
With your CX, including associate hiring and training, in expert hands, you’ll be freed up to focus on what your brand does best: providing memorable travel experiences that keep customers coming back.
