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Adopting and deploying the latest technologies is essential to ensuring any business operations are future-proofed, but when it comes to the role of customer engagement, particularly in the travel sector, it can be game-changing. During and following the pandemic, the importance of human connection, especially between travel advisors and customers, has never been greater. Technology plays its role by helping to streamline transactional processes and foster connections, ultimately enhancing the personalised and caring service travel advisors can provide. The effective adoption of technology, in tandem with genuine care and empathy, in customer service is becoming a defining factor in setting companies apart from their competitors.
In fact, recent research from McKinsey highlights how companies are turning to AI to deliver proactive, personalised customer service, potentially delivering up to $1 trillion of additional value each year. Clearly tech adoption when enhanced with the human touch is significant in unlocking new opportunities for enhancing and improving customer service.
At Travel Counsellors, we are proud to be the UK’s largest and fastest-growing technology platform for travel entrepreneurs. Our high-touch, digitally enabled ‘platform’ model plays a pivotal role in achieving our goal - to enhance personalised experiences for our people and customers while supporting business owners in nurturing closer personal connections with customers.
Our revolutionary platform, Phenix, empowers our entrepreneurs to redefine personalisation in travel and build their businesses in a way that suits them, with limitless potential and scale. This year alone, we are investing over £10 million into the platform. Phenix integrates booking and customer management, documentation creation, product reviews and content. Connecting to multiple flight, cruise and car hire partners as well as 15 accommodation wholesaler partners, it enables franchisees to tailor-make itineraries for their customers with greater control.
“During And Following The Pandemic, The Importance Of Human Connection, Especially Between Travel Advisors And Customers, Has Never Been Greater”
Staying ahead of the technological curve, over the last year, Travel Counsellors has executed several significant initiatives as part of a business-wide digital transformation programme, supporting individual business owners, customers, and support team colleagues.
These include the development of a modern, scalable, and flexible payment solution in partnership with BR-DGE. Having moved from a rigid payment model tied to a small number of incumbent payment providers to a flexible “orchestration” approach, we have been able to intelligently route payments across providers, optimise fees, to provide a truly global payments capability with a modern user experience.
This year, we have developed a new enhancement to the Phenix platform: TC Teams. TC Teams, allows our Travel Counsellors to seamlessly collaborate with one another, helping them to build lasting relationships with customers and increasingly work in teams to help support and scale their businesses.
We have also migrated from a legacy finance system in Microsoft Great Plains to a flexible, cloud-based platform in Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&O. This migration resulted in risk reduction, process improvement and optimisation helping to build a scalable support function for our Travel Counsellors and customers.
Additionally, we have adopted AWS (Amazon Web Services) as a scalable platform for the future of Phenix that will offer resiliency and increased developer agility.
Regular developments to travel tech platforms are crucial for enabling smarter work and enhancing the customer experience. Businesses that leverage technology to prioritise people at the centre of their operations will thrive, as is evidenced by Travel Counsellors tech adoption and the positive effect this has on customer service.
