Q. How can you better elicit
those negative comments?
It’s tough to get them on
surveys, but if you send out
enough of them, you’ll get
one or two [negative surveys] back. Typically, we find
out by talking to clients —
by talking on the phone or
face to face, and you cannot
do too much of that.
The more you talk, the
more they’re going to bring
up, ‘Well, we had this situation a week ago with so-and-so.’ That’s how we find out if
someone’s unhappy for some
reason. Focus on that, and
try to jump on that. What
was the situation? What happened, and what people
were involved?
This industry, sometimes
it’s easy to blame the travel
agent when it may or may
not have been something an
agent did. It may have been
something an airline did, like
cancelling a flight. We’re
dealing with a lot of people
and a lot of transactions, so
people do make mistakes, so
we try to figure out where
we’re making mistakes.
That’s helpful and beneficial. We can try to create an
environment here where it
doesn’t happen again. It does
happen, but you have to be
patient with it, and everybody here is trying hard, but
occasionally, some people do
make mistakes.
Q. How do you handle
mistakes?
If we make a mistake and
it costs the client money,
we’re fairly generous about
offering to repatriate them
the out-of-pocket loss that
they made. Over the years,
I’ve written some very big
checks.
We try not to do that
unless we have to. We don’t
like to do that, but if you
fess up to your mistakes
and make good on them,
that’s about as good as anybody can do in this environment.
Get all the facts and figures, and lay them out in
front of the client, and then
ask the client what they
think is the appropriate
action. Let the client decide.
Many times we get off easier than if we volunteer to
write a check.
Sometimes, the client has
said, ‘I need this taken care
of — one way or another.’
Either you take care of it or
the relationship is closed
from a business standpoint.
HOW TO REACH: Colwick Travel Corp., (888) COLWICK or www.colwicktravel.com
