Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 259: Audit Your Travel Agency Systems by Walking Your Client Journey
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K with elevatewithrachelk dot com. We have Some programs and some mentoring, custom mentoring for you. If you're a travel advisor, but this podcast is free. If you want to really build a business, this podcast is all about applying business concepts to your travel agency. That way you don't have to spend a bunch of money on college tuition. Hey, except it's taught by me. So hope you have a good time. Today is day 259. Walking your own clients journey. We're gonna be doing the systems audit. So we talked about the Gemba walk from Toyota yesterday, which is going and actually looking at the real processes rather than assuming everything's fine or waiting for someone to complain about it. Today we're gonna apply that directly to your business with your client journey, walking their journey step by step as though you were your own client. If you haven't heard this from yesterday's episode or forever from me before, when you set up your travel. CRM for like your bookings and all that fun stuff. Have a test client tied to your own email so you can test all of these systems, especially when you're doing new ones, but test them just like once every three months. Okay? Because when you've run the same process dozens or even hundreds of times, you stop seeing it. You're just like, it's done, it's done, it's done. It's the assembly line. And you don't notice that the one machine in the assembly line of your little travel agency factory might need some oil or A screw has come loose. And you don't notice it because you're like, well it's working just fine enough. Enough. It's fine enough. The extra step that takes a client, like three confusing clicks, to complete becomes invisible to you because you click a button and it's automated and you think it's so much easier. You've long since learned to work around it without thinking, right? But the actual like walking the actual client journey deliberately from the outside in is what breaks that blindness. And you can do this with your content creation as well, which is super annoying because you have to like if you do a lot of face-to-video stuff like I do. You gotta look at yourself and you're like, it's not even what I look like. why are you acting like this? this is the worst. But you can do the same thing with your content. Even if it's like carousels or photos, like read your captions as though you were someone outside looking in. Okay, so we're gonna use Etsy for today's example. they use a similar principle in a technology context. At one point, their engineering team could only release new updates to their site like once a week. And it was a probably really annoying, painful process. I have a friend who does IT, I don't know, some big company. And when they have to talk about new rollouts and stuff, I'm like, yeesh, sounds painful. And their original process was really slow, it was manual, and it was risky. So instead of accepting that, well that's just how it is, Etsy's team began applying small incremental Kaizen style improvements to their own deployment process, automating one manual step at a time. And this is what I well, I have a course called Kiss Your Stress Goodbye with automations, and it's like start with one automation at a time. Don't try to overhaul the entire process. Because you can see how does that step work. And if you need to tweak the next step that you have in your automation workflow in your brain, you can do so because you fully test this first step, right? Anyhoodle. So they would automate one manual step at a time, improving their visibility, like what was happening at each stage, fixing the small friction points as they were identified. I don't know what's going on with my accent. as they were identified, and it's such a good way to do it, like I like setting up my automations this way. Over time, those small compounding improvements took them from roughly one release a week to over fifty releases a day in terms of updating their site, right? So it's not about deploying like deployment pipelines specifically. they didn't, it's that they didn't fix it by scraping the whole process and starting over. They walked through their actual existing process, found the specific friction points, and fixed them one at a time, with each small improvement compounding into a dramatically better system over time. And this is how you can. I know, I know you're listening, and you're like, I don't want to do it one step. A time someone's got all of these system templates done for me and I just pay them 200 bucks and they put it in or whatever. I don't know what people have. Something like that probably exists, right? And I know that, but that's kind of like if you have your own restaurant and you're like, I have this secret sauce, and then you just hire a rando because they're like, I have a secret sauce too, but it's not nothing like what you would put on your pasta or whatever. It's not you and you don't understand how to replicate that recipe. Is I hope that clicks. If you understand how you want every single bit of your company wants to be run, you don't have to understand how to do it, but if you understand the why behind it and how you want it to look And you doing everything one step at a time when implementing workflows or updating your client journey is so much more helpful because then you can test it like one tiny step at a time. So if they're filling out a client lead form. Is everything a required response? What if they're a solo traveler and you have three travelers listed on your form? That doesn't make sense, right? Or hmm, what else could you do in the first points of the client journey? Making them verify their email to get into your portal. The software my host agency used, I was so excited to have real travel CRM software, and then I was like, it's not that great. But they would like require like the two-step verification to get my clients to get into their portal. And it was like weird through Facebook or something. I don't really recall. And Then my clients couldn't sometimes get back into the portal, and I was like, sorry. But like that part of the process, it looked really cool on paper for me. It was like an upgrade, because the travel agency I worked for prior didn't even have a CRM. So I was like, my gosh, this is real. They didn't even have a suggestion for a travel-related CRM. They told me HubSpot. And I was like, Well, I know how to use HubSpot. But I'd have to, I don't want to do all this work to make it travel related. So, anyway. What I'm saying is test everything one step at a time in your processes. Go through it as though you were a client. you can speed it up. Don't be like, well, my automations are set up to go 30 days out. Well, like change it quick for this one trip and have them come in within hours or all at once and just like go through the process one day. Anyway. So you list out every stage of your actual client process from first contact with you to well after the trip ends, the initial inquiry, discovery call, consultation, the proposal booking forms, whatever, the leave forms, trip. planning fees, invoices, like your entire process, trip planning, communication, all pre-departure communication, during travel, post-trip follow-up, ongoing nurturing. You walk that same map. You rewalk that map and you can say I it's fine. Walk that map. Is there a link broken? Is there a button broken? Did you forget to put an affiliate link in an email? Do you have typos in your email that are like major? Do you have book a call with me and then nothing there? Like walk yourself through the process as though you are a client. And as you are going through this process and you're walking yourself through it as though you are the client, do it as literally as you can and ask yourself: would the client really enjoy this? Like, say you have your pre-departure travel email, say your timeline for pre-departure trips. Email stuff. Let's say you start sending them three to six months out. We'll do six months out. But you're sending them an email every five days because you want to give them all this information and you're so serving them, and then you look at it and you set it up to where your client, like your test client in your CRM, you can probably get it triggered to where it just all goes out immediately for your imaginary trip. And then look at how many emails you're sending. And like you are not the only person they are communicating with in life. So maybe that's too many emails. And what can you eliminate or what can you compact into like take two emails and put them in one message? and you may have set it up that way in the beginning because you're like, I'm such a good person with service. I'm gonna overload them with information. They're gonna know everything. A, most people don't care about most of that information, you know. Sorry, not sorry. And B, do you want to get emails? Like, I can't stand it when I have anyone that I'm working with sending me emails every three days. I'm like, cool your jets. Unless It's like right before like a webinar, something that I've signed up for. I and even then I don't want the twenty-four hours to your webinar you signed up for. Yeah, I already got on my calendar. Thanks for reminding me. in s six hours it's the webinar. Okay, yep. I now I'm just gonna delete this. Thanks thanks for the extra half second of work. And then in one hour. Alright, yep. fifteen minutes. And then I've even gotten on some of these like webinars I've joined I don't know if this is your experience, but this is mine, but I've gotten like emails after the webinar of like, your webinar's starting, don't forget. And I'm like, I am fully aware of the situation and if it's important enough to me, I'm gonna go. But if you need some if you need to send me this many emails to join this webinar, clearly you're selling me something, right? At some point, like anyway, so think about that. Like, if your client fills out an inquiry form, fill it out yourself on your own website, on a phone, because that's mostly how your clients are gonna be filling everything out. This is I remember like a decade ago it was like mobile phone optimization with your website is super important and it very much is. And so anytime any students I'm mentoring sends me a link for like their like here's my first booking page, here's this landing page, I whip that sucker out on my phone and I'm like, what's the mobile experience? And they'll have really great copy, like I'm not saying this is every thing that any agents ever sent me. But they'll have really, really good copy, but when you open it up on your phone, it looks like four paragraphs. You're just scrolling just to get to a button or the next like step, right? Or they have like a really big hero image. Anyway. Does it look clear and professional on your phone? Does it look easy to use on your phone? Or did you only bother to test it on your desktop? Even if you're like using the little mobile layout on your desktop, that's fine and all, but like the actual user experience on your phone. If there's a payment step, credit card info form step. Time how long it takes you to figure out how to do each step. Make a note of where you feel any confusion, because that's what your client's gonna be feeling. Or friction or some unnecessary extra step, even a small one, like list your preferences for your next trip. They don't have to fill that in, but if you make that a required thing, oof. It's not gonna be good. So what do you look for specifically? Redundant steps. Are you or your client entering the same information more than once in more than one place because two tools in your process don't talk to each other? at any point in the journey of your client experience of like going to your landing page, your website, whatever, is it genuinely obvious to the client what happens next, or are they left waiting without knowing whether the ball is in your court or theirs? Mmm, so this is like the buttons on your website. The copy on your site. I do see a lot of agents are like, here's the steps to planning. That's great and all. What if you also added take step one now and just link it to your scheduler? That would that would clearly state you have to take the first step and just book this consultation right now. okay, then There's the manual workarounds. Are there steps where you're doing something manually, like copying information between the systems? Or manually calculating something that used to be like kind of something reasonable you could do, but has quietly become a permanent and unreviewed, very nasty habit and time suck. Also, Xavier. Get zapier if you're like, well, I gotta copy this from this spreadsheet and put it in this other thing. Like, why are you not zapping that? Alright. Next thing to look for. Any points where you personally become the bottleneck? This is from I think day 253 for delegating, auditing. Are there any stages in your client's journey that are stuck waiting on you specifically for reasons that don't actually require your expertise? So if you follow Etsy's example, you have to resist that urge to redesign the entire client journey in one sweeping overhaul. Just pick two, three biggest friction points that come up the most clearly during your own walkthrough. fix those heading into the next quarter. those small compounding like don't worry about anything else those small compounding fixes applied consistently quarterly tend to produce a far smoother system over a year than one exhausting all at once rebuild mentality that's so hard to sustain and so easy to abandon halfway through. And you'll also get into the nasty habit of not doing the walkthrough with that whole experience. And then clients start complaining about that. And then you're like, well I guess it's a whole system overhaul because You're building a machine and machines need maintenance. Okay? Like you can't just be like, I did these system once and you do this massive overhaul and you do it in a state of scarcity and panic. It's not gonna be perfect, but you're gonna be like, well, it's done. I don't care. And then squeaky wheels come up, and instead of getting them grease, you're like, tear it all down. Here's a new system that's way better technology. And you just like gaslight yourself into thinking that that's how you need to live your life. What? No. No. It'll save you so much more money too. And if you notice a lot of friction points more than two or three and I know I'm said just like do those two or three two or three going into the next quarter but if you notice like ten major ones absolutely you need to be working on them do the first two to three most important and then every week after that do one to two. It shouldn't be more than hopefully 30 minutes of your time doing those one to two tweaks each week and then within three months your system is so much smoother. You want to do it that way. Alright, so how do I do this again, Rachel? Great question. Map every single step of your actual client's journey, then physically walk through it as the client would, experience all of it from the tech point of view, your systems, on the devices, excuse me, that they'd actually use. And you want to look specifically for any redundant steps, any unclear next steps, any manual workarounds that you realize, well I have to do this on my own, and any points where you become the bottleneck. Because we want to avoid that. and fix the two or three biggest if you have a lot of them and you want to get it done faster then two or three biggest in the next week and then one to two each week following. Don't try and do a full overhaul all at once. Because also, as your business grows and as you grow, you're gonna realize the overhaul that you thought you wanted. Trust me, I've been there. The overhaul haul that you're like, this is gonna solve all my problems in two years. You're gonna be like, I hate all of this, and it needs a full overhaul. But if you're just constantly tweaking little bits like Maybe one or two things, maybe once a quarter, after you like fix the main problems in your client journey experience, it's gonna make your life so much easier because then you're like, okay, I've thoroughly got this, it is aligned with my personal values, it's in my voice, it's in the system and process that I know I can manage on my own and/or easily train someone to do, and it's the set standard. And then That piece of the puzzle is done and you can do a little bit more with the next bits of your processes. So Pretend you're your own client. I have caught myself on landing page. Even with Elevate, I'm like, that link's broken. Why I forgot that I got rid of this and didn't update the web page. And I'm probably confusing people. Or well, I probably need to check on my mentoring program page and pages because I I'm like, I'm pretty sure I have them all finished and completed and integrated. But who knows if everything actually is fully integrated and I need to make sure, like for myself, like I just did this in the last quarter, I just launched it, and I need to do an audit review of like the mentoring application and be like, is everything good? Is the con is everything working as it should? You know, and I've already tested it once, but I don't trust software. So I I know something weird's gonna happen and come up and Okay, so wrapping it all in a neat little package, you want to map every bit of the step that your client walks through, then physically walk through it yourself, as the client would experience it, on the devices that they'd actually use. And then look specifically for the redundant steps, anything that's unclear, next steps, manual workarounds that's going to add more time for you in the long run, especially if you like grow. That's important. and any points where you become the bottleneck. That is very, very important. Fix the two or three like biggest friction points. I would say the biggest friction points. I have seen with myself and agents I have mentored is well you want the leads to come in as consultations, right? So your biggest friction points is that wall you're putting up without being clear about book a call with me. Yeah, or book this trip. and you want to make sure that those are easy for them to get to. So you can have your landing page that's like book now and then instantly link it to your scheduler. That book now button doesn't have to be book now, but like work with me or book a consultation, whatever you want for that wording on your button. Link it directly to your scheduler so that they know the next step is, yep, book a call. Here's their calendar. I'm gonna pick a date and a time. Awesome. keep it simple. and same thing with like a like a lead magnet. Give them exactly what they wanted in the very first email. Everything. Like if they want more information about a specific trip, have the page for them to book it in review right there. Honestly, I don't even know if I would put that as a funnel necessarily. But you could. but I'm thinking of a lead magnet. Hmm. I'm thinking with a lead magnet, they have to have clear next steps. And same thing, like those are probably the two I had to cut some of this out because I started coughing. So those are probably the two Well, I would say the website is probably the most important, like number one priority to check, to make sure your links aren't broken and to make sure that the buttons take them to start working with you immediately on your landing page or your website. And I see that with a lot of agent sites and even my own sites sometimes. I'm like, whoops, don't know why that happened. And you need to be checking this pretty often. Another part that's really important is when you become the bottleneck itself. Like where you are at the bottleneck. What can you automate there that's gonna free up more of your time and make it easier for your clients? But if you have to like be in charge of a lot of things and you're like promising them that you're gonna get it done within 24 hours, you will become the bottleneck as soon as you get enough business. Now, if you can automate it, great, but if you can't, it's like highly specialized concierge services, you probably need to extend that 24-hour time frame to like like a 72 hour time frame and you could probably have them fill out a form to make them f like obviously they're probably gonna fill out a form anyway. But when you have them fill out a form, you can have the response of like I'm putting this together for you. Your requests have been submitted if it's like high level concierge stuff, and you could say, you will get an email from me within seventy two hours. And that gives you some time or three business days. Like if you're like I don't want to work on the weekends, you can make it three business days. You can make it five business days. but that way you have that going and you could even set it up d don't know what CRM you're using, but you could set it up when they submit that form for like the high level concierge requests that they want. You could have it on your calendar as like a reminder on your phone. So that way you know it's coming up and give yourself a deadline or you could zap it to like, I don't know if you use Trello or whatever project management software you use to manage your day. You could maybe have it zapped to that as well. So it's add it to your to-do list so you don't even miss it. those are just some examples. So tomorrow we're gonna shift from the processes to the platforms, your actual tech stack, and the large, large amount of money businesses like you and mine, yours and mine, that we waste without even realizing it. This was day 259. Have a wonderful day. I'll see you tomorrow.