Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 83 - Are you afraid you aren't good enough for your travel clients?
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome back to the Travel Agency New Year Podcast. We're on day 83. I'm your host Rachel Kay and I'm kind of just getting myself comfy cozy in my chair right now. So let me get all situated here. We've been doing a series on like the top 10 fears that entrepreneurs, specifically travel advisors have when starting their travel business. And today is the fear of client satisfaction and client welfare. Can you actually take care of them? That is very intimidating, especially as you scale and you start getting clients that are like people you don't even know. They aren't friends, they aren't family, they aren't people in your town. It's just randos from social media like, hey, that can be very terrifying because they're putting a lot of trust in your hands, right? So that being said, this whole series about the fears, it kind of just talks about like what this looks like when you are experiencing it because you will probably experience one if not all of these at some point in your journey as an entrepreneur. And then some things you can do to mitigate said fears because you can't necessarily totally erase them. You can learn to live with them and not let them take over your life and your business. So this can show up as like, I doing good enough for my clients? kind of imposter syndrome, like you feel like you're a con artist a little bit, like you know you can serve them, you know how to do research and you know your processes and everything, but maybe this is your first group or maybe it's a first destination or type of niche travel that you are offering and you're like, uh-oh, they're gonna know I have no clue what I'm doing. And therefore they're no longer going to trust me and this is going to cause a rift in our relationship and could lead to bad reviews and then my business is going to go out of business and I'm going to fail so why even try? That's kind of how this fear works. They're all very similar yet different. But the biggest thing is, are you doing good enough for your clients? This is why I highly recommend getting feedback from every client and every trip if you can, if they're willing to provide it, because it can always help you improve. It's not failure. is merely feedback. And I also recommend having a growth mindset so that you can learn everything is an opportunity to learn rather than a failure and you're just not good enough. So why even try? Okay. Speaking of, you want to mitigate this fear, you're going to have to really put yourself out there and ask for client feedback. A lot of people get very set in their ways and they're like, I do what I do and I don't need client feedback because I'm perfect. We do not really see our true selves and how we're really operating. It's always so good to get feedback from somebody. Might as well be your clients, right? So you need to have very strong boundaries in place and how you operate your business, so that you can maintain your sanity and then still be able to care for your clients, right? If you don't have any boundaries and you bend over backwards and you're like, ⁓ I'm right on top of that rose and you're not in a fake way, if you've ever watched Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, go watch it. The dishes are done, man. All right, anyway. But if you're like, I'm gonna do this right away for you and you drop everything for one client and then another client does the same thing five minutes later and you don't have your boundaries in place of like, these are the expectations, this is how you communicate with me and this is my process before they start to work with you, that's gonna lead to a lot of issues, a lot of confusion and therefore your client will start to develop resentment and a lack of trust. Oftentimes, when someone is hiring a travel advisor, it's for pretty important trip, because it's not just like, well, I got to go to this conference and the hotel's already picked and I just fill out this form kind of thing. It's like I'm doing my anniversary trip or my honeymoon or a very special, I've always wanted to do a heritage trip for my family and see my roots, where I came from, that sort of thing. Those are pretty important trips. Don't worry, this is what you do. Don't think I'm not ever gonna be able to do this, okay? So A, have your strong boundaries and be very, very okay and foster an environment where clients can safely provide you feedback or ask for additional help. So, for me as an example, when I was doing destination weddings, my bride and groom, They could email me and they could text me and I would tell them I don't have text notifications on. So if I don't see your text right away, it's because I don't hear the ding. I just check my texts periodically throughout each day and if I see it, see it. If I don't check texts that day, I'm probably sick or something or just don't want to have a day with my phone. Email is best. ⁓ And I tell them that all of their guests will communicate via email or schedule call with me because there's no way back when I was doing like 30 weddings a year, there's no way when there's 120 people on each wedding guest list, that's a lot of people. I don't know math. Well, 120 times 30. Two zeros, 3,600 people. I can't save all those contacts on my phone, so I just don't. I tell their wedding guests, and I tell them to tell the wedding guests. You email me, or you schedule a call. Here's links to schedule a call. And I tell the bride and groom also. If anyone comes to you or any group host, if anyone comes to you and is like, I have trouble, like you redirect them to contact me because this is not your problem. This is my problem and I need to help them not further frustrate you. However, with like the parents of the bride and the groom, I will make exceptions. If I know that it's like a grandparent calling, usually the only times I would get random phone calls would be from like a grandparent or an aunt or uncle that was really, really struggling and just doesn't internet well. And that's when I would see the area code and I'd be like, that's probably someone related to this wedding. And they're really struggling. So that is kind of a way that you can like foster an environment where people can provide feedback. I also like to have check ins with my group hosts to see how things are going, if they are inviting their friends and family, ⁓ who's struggling, how can I help them? How are things like, are my systems working for your group? That kind of thing. Another thing that's going to help you overcome your fear of client welfare is consistent, like bad client welfare, consistent practices. If you have the same process over and over and over again. Yeah, you're going to have the one-off person that's just in a bad mood. However, for most people, they're going to be very happy getting what you promised them. You set up your processes to align with your marketing messaging so that when you market and you're like, hey, I'm going to do x, y, and z, you're going to actually do it and follow through. But that also doesn't mean that you will not change your processes. I have evolved my group travel management processes specifically for destination weddings a number of times to make it easier and easier. And also, back when I first started, Facebook groups, like private Facebook groups, were like cool to have. And now none of my couples want that. They're like, no, I don't want that. So. I've had to kind of evolve my services with my destination weddings in that regard. However, the overall, here's my boundaries, here's how you do things, really hasn't changed for several years. Your client welfare, like the fear of whether or not your clients are gonna be happy working with you and if you are doing enough, ties into your business's communication philosophy. Let me see my notes. I think it's in the 50s, day 50. By the way, if you're here on day 83, is that where we're at? I feel like I say the wrong day half the time anymore. It's fine, it's fine. think it's back in the 50s. But we talk about developing your communication philosophy, which sets the standard so that when you do scale and you do start to hire, specifically employees, you can't really do a whole lot with ICs. you can have consistency in your communication across the board in your travel business. And that's going to also help alleviate your fear of client satisfaction and client welfare. If you have a strong communication philosophy developed, you know exactly how you're going to speak to them. Again, that's also tied to your boundaries. That can be very, very helpful to alleviate this fear. So what I'm saying is this fear, if you think about it, is kind of coming from ⁓ I'm not really prepared. I don't really have anything in place. And if you want my dad to talk to you right now, if you fail to plan, plan to fail. So I know some people hate that phrase. I don't care. Now, when it comes to social media feedback, if someone is a client of yours or Google my business, I consider that kind of social media as well in a little bit. It's internet. It's media. Anyway. You will start to get unhappy people. when you start serving enough clients. It's impossible to always have five star reviews for thousands of people. If you see people with businesses like that where it's five stars every single person, they most likely bought those reviews. So if you see someone, I don't look at anyone's reviews, but if you see someone with 2,000 reviews and it's 4.9 stars, they bought most of those reviews. So don't worry if it's like a competitor of yours or someone you're aspiring to be and you're like, gosh, I could never have that many. 4.5 to 4.7 when you start to get into the thousands is like decent. OK. What I'm saying is if you get a bad review, if you get people trashing you on social media, do not be a child, grow up, but do not block them. Do not ban them. Do not trash anyone that disagrees with how you do things because it's just negative feedback. And just because ⁓ you aren't satisfying one person, doesn't mean you're not gonna satisfy everyone. And when people have to call people out for trashing them and how they do things, like news flash, you instantly look like a seven-year-old who cannot emotionally regulate yourself. And it promotes that you're okay with displaying emotional immaturity and reacting instead of responding. Now. I'm not saying don't block or ban people if they're like, I'm going to murder you. That's clearly a different story. But if someone's like, I don't like how XYZ traveled, did this, this, and this, and I wasn't satisfied, you need to thank them for that feedback, because that's going to help you rather than be like, this person's terrible. Only block or ban if your actual life is in danger, not your ego. Don't be a child, okay? And don't perpetuate that it's, like, don't normalize that being emotionally immature and acting like this is how people, adults, should be, okay? I feel like I'm yelling into the microphone all the time. I should probably lean back, but I'm like right on the mic. So you should thank people for any negative reviews and consider if there is room for improvement in your services. I know for a while, the only bad reviews I've ever gotten personally were people that like none of our agents knew who this was. And so we tried to ask them who the heck you're talking about and we never got an answer. ⁓ But if people are bashing you, you should be like, thank you. Now, if they're just completely also being childish and they're like, they smell bad, and I just don't like their face, and none of it makes sense to your service, people are going to leave reviews like that. I'm not saying that's going to happen to you. And also, it could happen to you. So don't thank them. I mean, you could be like, thanks for your feedback. I'll try to shower more often or whatever it is if it's completely irrelevant to the trip. ⁓ Sometimes you can get negative feedback with your tone, and that is something that you can work to improve on. I'm trying to think. The scariest part is getting the negative reviews if someone has a bad experience versus a good experience. And this is why I say if there's like thousands of five star reviews they've been bought and paid for. And this is from a hospitality and tourism class I took in college. And I remember the professor saying. If someone really enjoys your service experience, they might tell four people. They're probably not going to leave a good review. Maybe they'll leave a five-star review. They're not going to go into too much detail. Maybe they will. But not all of them are going to do that at most they're going to tell four people I had this wonderful experience with so-and-so travel advisor if they have a bad experience they will tell 20 people and I'm gonna try not going on tangent about this I think Yelp has something to do with that and just the ability to leave reviews in the first place There's an old South Park episode. I think that came out probably 15 years ago I think and it's Stan's mom, Randy, sorry, Stan's dad, Randy Marsh, I think. Who's like, do you know who I am? I'm a Yelper. Da da da da da. like, kind of influencers do that too now. Like, I'm an influencer, I should get my meal for free and then they'll leave a bad review or threaten to leave one if their tab isn't comped. Those are just crappy people. It's fine. So anyway, finally, I'm just kind of going on a tangent. There's always conflict resolution. If all you can do is be a child about it, be like, ⁓ my god, look at what this person said to me, and block and ban them, and just like, that's not healthy, that's not good, that's not mature. What are you doing? You're embarrassing yourself. But. You can work on your conflict resolution skills. And I'll tell you, it's when conflict does come up between a client and myself, occasionally. Sometimes there was a wedding guest that was trying to stir up trouble, and I'd be like, hey, calm down. I'm not here to screw you guys over. you can cross that bridge and realize, okay, we aren't a perfect fit for each other, but I'm gonna continue doing the best that I can for you. So back to the four agreements, always do your best. Be impeccable with your word. Don't assume anything and don't take anything personally. Having boundaries in your business is an excellent foundation to prevent conflicts because you clearly state if you do this, then this will happen. If you call me at midnight, I will not answer. You know what I mean? I will be asleep. However, you also need to work on practicing thorough communications and patience is going to help because conflict is just a part of life. So with regards to patients, I like to think of every client I work with is roughly eight years old in terms of like literacy levels and communication understanding. So that way I'm not like tempted to throw in a bunch of jargon terms and industry terms and confuse them. Like I want to make it as simple and clear as possible. I don't want to ramble on forever. And I also think of them especially when I'm creating workflows, even my emails that I reply to, like that I get in on a daily basis, they have never traveled before ever in their life. So I know I cover everything that needs to be covered, even if they don't need that information, even if they're fully aware. But on the off chance, they try to say, you didn't do X, Y, Z, or you didn't say this to me, this is all your fault. I don't get that at all because I'm very, very clear and I'm like, okay, you need to be at the airport as recommended three hour minimum before an international flight. Even if you book your flights on your own, da da da da, your transportation company is probably gonna pick you up about four hours prior to your flight departing, like between three and a half and four hours depending on where they're at. I highly recommend doing a pre-stay and or post-stay on a cruise especially if you do not live anywhere near the port. And if you have no way of driving to the port and you're flying in, definitely do that so you do not miss embarkation. Now if you're driving in, you could probably just do a pre-stay. But be very, very clear. So again, if you subscribe, you've already heard these episodes. But there are past episodes on developing active listening skills and your communication philosophy. Those are really going to help you mitigate this client satisfaction fear, like I'm not good enough for my clients. And some people you just can never please, and that's OK too. All right, we are nearing 20 minutes. ⁓ Capping off this episode. ⁓ So I hope you really enjoyed this episode. Again, subscribe, share it with somebody who's like, I'm too scared, I'm going to piss somebody off. Just share this episode with them because you probably are at some point, how are you going to navigate it when it happens? And I hope you have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.