Customer Relationship Management 顧客關係管理 of STA Travel

STA Travel has over 25 years experience in student, budget and independent travel and operate from more than 400 branches worldwide. It offers travelers a unique range of flights, accommodation, adventures and expeditions in 90 countries helping to organize trips and holidays for six million people a year. With its distinct and loyal following, there’s little wonder why the youth and budget tour operator was voted UK coolbrand 2006 for its innovation, style and desirability.

There can be few things more annoying in this modern world than being left on hold for what seems like an eternity waiting to speak to someone on the phone. For customers, being trapped in call centre hell can be frustrating and a waste of time. For companies, keeping your customers waiting can be damaging leading to poor customer service and lost sales.
And yet there is a simple solution that not only prevents tempers from boiling over, but also means that companies don't lose out.
"Queue Buster provides an additional service to our customers," explains Ross Holmes, UK Resource Manager for STA Travel. "It smooths out our call centre resource during the day and helps me to manage the peaks and troughs of calls."

How? Simple. By giving customers the opportunity to be called back by the call centre operator. Cable&Wireless' Queue Buster system helps reduce call centre queues by offering callers the option of accepting an automated call-back, instead of waiting on hold. It's a simple yet effective step to improve customer service levels in contact centres. And it helps to reduce operating costs by making the most of the available call agents who need minimal training because Queue Buster is so easy to use.

Instead of receiving an incoming call, they are presented with the caller’s name and an outgoing call is made automatically. It's then up to them to speak to the customer and handle their enquiry.

"It's imperative to keep the customer experience high - which is why Queue Buster is an ideal solution," says Ross. "Callers can either stay in the queue and wait to speak to someone - or request a call-back. It's up to them. If they want someone to call them back they just have to leave their name and number. They are then kept in the call queuing system and when it's their turn at the front, they receive a call. Easy."

"The best thing about Queue Buster is its simplicity. It is very easy to set-up and to turn off. It took around 20 minutes to install and just ticks along in the background. QueueBuster means we are capturing business we might otherwise lose. It's about customer service and keeping customers happy."

In the trials carried out so far, Queue Buster notched up customer satisfaction ratings of up to 98%.

STA began trialing the call management system in January 2007 to help it manage one of its busiest times of the year when call volumes can rise by around 65%. Since then its been a resounding success. Around 5% of calls end up being successfully handled by the Queue Buster system. And since two thirds of all calls STA Travel receives are sales related, the travel company is able to retain a sizeable chunk of business that might otherwise be lost simply because someone got fed-up waiting to speak to a sales agent.

"The feedback from customers has been great. There are a million different reasons why people put the phone down before they can speak to one of our agents. Being able to call them back is really important.

Although some were skeptical to start with, people are very happy with the level of service. And they love not being kept waiting on hold.

"One customer described it as 'a breath of fresh air' -that here was a company using technology in such a way as to help customers navigate call centres," says Ross.
For STA Travel, such feedback is vital as it can continue to maintain its high levels of customer service. After all, it's the customer experience that counts.

Source From: CRM Today (http://www.crm2day.com/library/50454.php)