BTI Stresses Best Practices In Customer Service Revamp
BTI Americas' group division is revamping and streamlining its service delivery by emphasizing best practices in all its regional offices, which is expected to make its overall service more consistent.
The change is part of BTI's continuing effort to effectively combine the two corporate cultures formed by the merger of U.S. Travel and IVI in 1995.
The division spent last year assessing the functions of employees housed in both centralized and on-site offices throughout the country, and "ferreting out pockets of expertise" within the company, said Janet Martin, vice president of operations for BTI Americas' meeting and incentive management team,
The company used self-directed work teams to do much of the legwork. "We wanted to make sure that BTI benefited from employees' talent and that our planners based at corporate sites felt connected to us," Martin said.
Prior to the merger, U.S. Travel, in addition to its transient travel management services, had operated an incentive house, and IVI focused on corporate meetings. There was overlap in employee functions as the new company struggled to fine-tune its group operations and attain mega-agency status. At the same time, meetings became a separate profit center for the agency, leading to a newfound urgency to perform profitably.
Forging Relationships
To give clients better service, the new reporting structure has the account management team-whose members all have group experience-coming into closer daily contact with the operations staff, as opposed to being affiliated with sales. These employees are located at offices in Dallas, Atlanta, Rutherford, N.J., and Portland, Ore., as well as the Northbrook, Ill., headquarters.
Martin, who oversees everyone in centralized operations but not planners based on-site for consolidated accounts, was appointed to her position in November 1995, after serving as regional director responsible for business development in the southern and western regions.
BTI's group division, which services the ad hoc meeting requirements of hundreds of corporate accounts, is steadily building a base of consolidated or partially consolidated meeting accounts, including Eli Lilly, DuPont, Kellogg and Champion International.
The reengineering involved scrutinizing every aspect of the division's operations. "We had to look at everything from who used what sort of software package to how they handled negotiations," Martin said. Eventually, all offices will install version 2.0 of the agency's MeetingMax product, which can handle registration, budgeting and analysis, and is scheduled for rollout later this year.
The group division also will look at ways to improve the teams that provide project management, air negotiation, research and program management.
The company will hold a best-practices conference for all employees in August. "The employees have developed and will direct their own agenda," Martin said. "It should be a very exciting way for us to continue to build this team.