Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 98 - Are you asking for your travel clients' feedback?
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome back to day 98 of the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. This episode is kind of geared towards his newer agent. And it's all about client feedback, yet the client feedback. Do you have a client assessment and feedback system as late? Not just, hey, thanks for your trip, welcome home, neither were you, bye. I stopped not be that. They might be feedback, but they might just feel like boom, five stars, you know what I mean? But why even ask? confused that. Great question, Rachel. I have one, two, three, or five reasons why you could ask for client feedback. I'm going lean back in my chair a little bit. I hope that this affects the audio too badly. It's the type of thing that went off track, Okay. The YS Stoopy Bap number one. ⁓ you get a way better understanding at your client's pain points, especially as they evolve over time. Like, I do talk about developing your ICDA so that you can do very clear in your messaging and your services offered aligned with serving one very clear avatar that hundreds, thousands of people would be very similar to, right? And that doesn't mean when you create your ICA that you 100 % know them in fighting out and all of their pain points. So getting feedback from your clients helps you to refine your services to meet your ICA's preferences, expectations, and it gives you the ability to innovate to resolve more paying points that you may have exposed while serving them footer drip. Not that you're the paying me at, I mean, but like, you didn't realize, I don't know why I'm leaning towards the European fixes. I've only felt the whole lot of them, but you didn't realize the interfaces of traveling from one country to the next. For some reason in Europe, like the rails issues or like strike. going on with the ferries or rail for the airline and how you would mitigate those pain points from the future. And you can't just be like, well, either just do those with this foot I want, because you're not thinking about your flight and thinking about yourself, right? And your client providing to you that after the trips would be helpful or even during the planning process. We'll get into that toward the end of this excerpt. Number two, it builds loyalty because you are involving your clients in creating and refining your services. Your success is their success. Their success on their next trip is your success. When is that said next trip? Cause you want to leave Nathan, right? That makes sense. Like imagine we're just going to pretend It's an ice cream shop with Faval Agent V and Ice T-Sop. Or you really like ice cream. I don't know why I'm talking about ice cream right now. I need dessert. ⁓ but let's say you walk into an ice cream shop and they're like, would you like to try? We have three new recipes, but we don't know which one we want to promote. Would you like to sample these three and provide feedback? So we know what to add to our mint. First of all, you're like, yeah, free ice cream. Secondly, how excited did you be if you're like, oh yeah, this mint chocolate chip is the way to go, and then they have it on the menu, you feel like, I helped make that decision. It's almost as though you were, you were investing in the company, right, by providing his feedback. So it's almost like if you fought, like, a bunch of shares of stock and a fucking pie and made a biflin. Because I got the vote and the shareholder's needing it because I didn't add my stocks in Nitya. Or an index fund. Anyway. That's what I'm saying. Like you feel like you're more invested as you provide the feedback and then the company can stack and say, hey, enable this difference because of you. Do that with your client, sell that world. Three, point number three, outcase the competition the faster you implement feedback and innovate accordingly, the more you're going to outfaces off the distance. Mm-hmm because I don't I feel like A lot of people buy reviews just to rank higher with Undo My Business. In fact, I know it's an encouraged practice in the industry, which is like not cool in my opinion. Like why do you have to buy people off but promote you? I don't know, it's a thing. It's weird, SUNY. And you aren't actually getting any feedback. You're just like, give me five stars and I'll give you some money. ⁓ So I can get more clients. But you aren't actually getting any feedback. And then you're either struggle bus, if you want to like change niche or the industry itself that you are booking in and working in that sphere, whatever starts to evolve. And you can't keep up because you just like my systems and processes are the best. And then you get burned out because you start getting crappier and crappier clients because you are no longer. Ranking up there at the competition. So then you're like, well, I'll just completely maybe switch niches or whatever. But then nobody wants to come book with you again. This you never asked them for big guy, right? So then you have to try and find all-need clients. I would pace the competition if you see trends changing in your niche, specifically like little service trends, but more more of your ITAs are like, oh, I really like this. And if there's any way in the future you could do this for future clients, that's going to be super helpful. Instead of just sending them an email and be like, I'll send you a $50 Amazon gift card for five Star Wars years. Thanks, Ty. It also aids you in growing in the ability to adapt to the change in friend. Emerging technology based on your clients' preferences, not based on what somebody else in the industry is trying to sell to you. Okay? So think about that. Like, some people might come to you and say, I would really... I don't know to do both. In two-months' reference days, I had a really good accent when I recorded it, as I don't have enough nos. Bear with me. You can still like, come out. I'm not listening to this anymore. Done. Oh, here's an example. So when I was doing a lot of destination weddings, I had my system in place and I was like, this is how it is. This is great. And then I was introduced to new products to add to my arsenal of serving clients. And it was very similar to one that I used previously. And so what I did was for, this was like back in 24. Yes. I invested in the new technology or the software. And for those brides like getting married in 225, I was like, okay, so you've already done like the site stay with a couples. I always say bride, they're couples. You've already done the site infection stay and this was my normal process. And this is what your group should expect to get when they travel. It's like the site infection stay. However, I have this new technology, would you like to check it out? And I let them look at both apps to see which one that they preferred. And I had them those. I like the other app, like the new technology a lot better. However, all of my brides were like, you know, I don't like that. I like this. And so I stuck the field of technology. ⁓ Even though not out like that has no zootra competition, but that's like the understanding of investing in technology based on your client preferences also aligned with what you want to accomplish. Just because you like it and it's pretty to you doesn't mean you're client innocent. Even though you've got to work in Albury. Okay, point number four, reduce the risk of missing the mark with your services. but helps you focus on investments in your agency that improves or develops features and functionalities that you're applying values, not with what you like. Basically a long winded thing that I just said, yeah. Uh, Point number five you get to learn to stare men's and evolve rapidly It strengthens your crate pray it pray it pray it pray it pray it free a titty. There we go. I Don't know the stutter. I just call like doing that for a second strengthens your creativity and innovation muckle You might develop a whole new system to change your niche, like how your niche thing to serve your flying petraplet in the niche that you sells, with you completely change how it's done. if you did get the fever. Now! How do you incorporate feedback? was my notebook. Water in the Force. This isn't a just as seen by Medi. I won't. I don't like the idea of buying. It's just frustrating. Yeah. Again, for the 50th time in this episode. ⁓ look at the life cycle of your threat client. Was it a cycle of like managing your client from computation all the way through in a booking process? Depending on your niche, you can set up possibly a few phone calls or zoom meetings along the way as like trip planning check-ins and ask the feedback in the Process not like well, do you want to do this file luminescence tour or do you want to do this party bow? Like that? Yeah, that's part of it. I don't know why I did that voice for it and also just like how are you feeling about this part of the process like do you like the forms is it easier for you our credit card payment form is that easy for you to process? Stuff like that. You definitely want to set up All post trip. Okay. So again, it depends on the niche and like how long it takes for you to book a flying and what I've been noticing at the time of recording end of 25 early 26. It used to be people would plan trips out, like actually plan trips. I think now people are just giving up on planning anything and there's moving very, very last minute. So this would be hard to like, regularly implement like FITs for just individual like resort trips, you know what mean? That aren't complicated. It seems like a lot of people are like, I just need to get out of this country and zwerg for like eight days tomorrow. Can you do this for me? You know what I mean? Like I've been getting that. A lot of my students have been getting that. My subagents have been getting that recently. Where as it used to be like, more like three to six, maybe nine months out. It's just like an individual little trip. And then for groups, like even my wedding requests are like, we're getting married in like two days. Can you get 120 people together? Not two days, but a lot shorter timeframe than it used to be. So this might be a little bit difficult to tweak if you need to tweak it. Again, just look at the... time it takes for you to go apply it. Okay. And Figure out a way to set up Hall. At least have something, post travel documents delivered to them and now are we deliver it to them. Yes, you can stream record videos and they get a lot of easier and also always offer the chance for a full hall. So walk them through and answer any more questions before they go. Some people will be like, now we got it, it's super easy, thank you though. Other people are gonna be like, I don't know what an app is. I need your help. Get me on how do I fill out the immigration forms? I'm so nervous. Like everyone's a little bit different with how the care they feel. And then again, always set up a call post trip for feedback. If you do a lot of weddings and groups, do it with a group post. Don't do it with everybody in a group. That would be a nightmare. Now, when you are doing these calls and getting this Steve back, it's not always going to be like, this is the best thing ever. You're going to get some like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. This is very frustrating for me at different points during your career. I'm not saying like it's guaranteed to happen with every client and it will happen in some. Please understand you need to take the criticisms seriously and constructively. Don't. fall into victim mode like lispers did just an ass will you fice take a nap and get back to Take it seriously and know that there is no such thing as failures. Don't spiral and be like, ⁓ well, everybody just hates me. There's no such thing as failure when you did that. This is why you get a feedback assessment. If it doesn't have the all good news. See how you can adapt to any constructive criticism that your clients are providing. And I'm not saying if your clients are like name calling and just being jerks in general to be like, I appreciate your feedback and I will work on that. that's someone you need to fire. Has anybody been up there? But you do need to see what you're doing that is causing confusion or frustration for your client's experience. Adapt and address those pain points that they are having for future people. Thank them for all the feedback. And once you've implemented a fix for it, feel free to reach out to them. like, you know what, after careful consideration, we've decided to implement ba da da da da. Due to your feedback, we really appreciate your feedback. Would you like to just like test the system out or we would love more like follow up from you? Not by trying to book a repeat trip by the way. You'll be like, well, if you book another trip, it'll be better. Just be like, I can send you a little test sample and see how it works. So we can set up a meet or a zoom and we can talk about it. That's what you need to do, not be like, the next time you book a trip with me, I'm not gonna totally drop the ball in this. So, that's all about the client feedback. Get it. Implement it. Don't think that you know what's best for your client, especially if you work with a very specific ICA and at a certain age group, because eventually, if they're like your age when you start in the industry, eventually you're going to age out of that and you're going to be like, what is this new technology? Nope. I have crazy weird methods from... the 20th century and then people are gonna be like, what? Everything's done on the phone now. You know what I mean? Like that's kind of how it is now with some, not with agents, but like. What I did when I first booked with a travel agent before I became a travel agent is completely different from what my clients expect of me now. And if I were to like, just follow that method from 15 years ago, I would be completely out of touch with my ICA. Age flip. The vice. You know what I mean? Okay. Well, that is the Plottings Feedback episode. Again, I had to re-record a bunch of episodes. So this is late night in my office. And I'm tired. Enjoy the next few days. He says they're gonna be real weird. I'm gonna get real weird with it. Uh, thanks for listening. Feel free to subscribe if you want to listen to me. I'm very tired. Due to technical difficulties. And if not, just come back tomorrow and have a good day.