CLIENT

• Vacation Exchange
• Provider Over 2.5 million members
• 2,000+ Travel Consultants worldwide

BACKGROUND

The client is a business unit that provides vacation exchange services to members and is part of a larger travel services company.

Vacation exchange services are provided from four call center locations, each in a different country. These centers also service other business units within the parent company; consequently the business unit did not have direct managerial responsibilities for the call center operations.

The business unit management wanted to address significant variations in sales performance across sites but had been unsuccessful in overcoming the organizational and cultural barriers that were present.

The client engaged us to help break through these barriers and bring the performance of all sites up to that of the best center.

KEY ISSUES

• Call center management and the business unit management were not aligned on performance goals and expectations
• New hire training program focused on how to navigate computer systems but was not effective at teaching selling skills or how to structure and control the call
• There was a high level of variation in how calls were handled. Definitive guidelines for how a call should be handled did not exist
• The abandoned call rates were excessive along with the wait times
• The call monitoring and evaluation process did not evaluate sales techniques
• The ACD systems were not fully understood nor used to the fullest of their capabilities
• Performance reporting was not available at the counselor level or published frequently enough.