By: David J. Wardell

© 1994 By: David J. Wardell.  Reproduction or redistribution in any form without written permission is strictly prohibited.

Travel agencies are in the business of providing reservation services and issuing tickets. Despite years of evolution and rapid changes in customer expectations, these two components remain at the core of what defines "good service" and "bad service" in our industry.

Technology, properly applied, supports, strengthens, organizes, enhances, and enables many aspects of service delivery. No where is this more evident than in 24-hour emergency reservation services — the competitive product most agencies must have but that hope they will never use.

24-hour "service" has been around almost as long as agencies have been taking reservations. Local agencies used answering services or forwarded their calls to agents who were "on call" during hours the agency was not open.

Calls were few because customers expected to handle their own "emergencies" directly with airlines or hotels — and their reservations were simple enough for them to do so.

When national and multi-national agencies developed, true 24-hour services were born. Travelers started to look to their agencies as complete "managers" of their travel — if there are problems enroute, its the agency's job to set them right, regardless of the time problems arise.

Reservations are more complex than ever — negotiated fares, non-refundable tickets, blocked-space hotel rooms, and a host of other company-specific services make it impractical to handle "emergencies" without assistance.

The 24-hour service solution allowed a staff organized to handle off-hours calls from travelers to serve an entire multi-regional agency, or group of agencies. This also concentrates emergency assistance expertise in one place, so it is readily available to travelers where necessary.

Customer expectations continue to evolve, and today's agency must examine how technology supports the need for 24-hour service coverage:

Large agencies and 24-hour services support multiple CRSs. Technology makes it possible to consolidate CRS access into a single workstation. More importantly, however, productive operation in a multi-system environment requires that at least some phases of the reservation and emergency-resolution process be standardized across each CRS — so that the agent must learn only one set of commands that can be translated by the workstation software into instructions unique to each CRS.

This is a demanding but essential task. Finding and retaining skilled staff able to work in five or six CRS environments is so difficult that managers may compromise on service skills (which the customer truly values) in favor or system familiarity.

Availability of the appropriate "common language" CRS interfaces will perhaps be the most important differentiator of 24-hour services in coming years.

Travel management is becoming ever-more data intense. As 24-hour services are relied upon not only for enroute emergencies but increasingly for basic round-the-clock service, an agency's customer reporting data must be expanded to include reservations made through 24-hour services.

This sounds simple but empowering a 24-hour service to provide accurate and complete reporting data, where agents may be unfamiliar with account-specific reporting requirements, is challenging and requires commitments to data management that most agencies have not made.

Technology can assist in delivering and organizing data for efficient access by 24-hour agents, if the appropriate systems are in place.

Getting the right information to the agent who must speak with the traveler at the right time and in a usable form is what enables effective customer service. CRS-based "profiles" are part of the solution, but are ineffective if they are unused, incomplete, or disorganized.

As agencies move toward providing services to travelers at multiple reservation points (which sounds obvious but in practice is rarely done), a commitment to customer and company-specific information management and distribution must be present. 24-hour services are but one potential reservation point.

The success of failure of customer information management will be clearly recognized and valued by the traveler.

Through technology the industry can expand "core services" and meet the challenges increased customer expectations impose. 24-hour reservation service delivery is a key area for appropriate application of future technology solutions.