Travel Buyer Takes On Choice Of Call Center Technology

<B> Travel Buyer Takes On Choice Of Call Center Technology</B>

By Sarah Welt

<I>Midlothian, Va.</I> - Taking the initiative to help his travel management company choose the best possible productivity tools for his account, Fort James Corp.'s travel services manager Jere Bankston has brought sophisticated call center technology to his new dedicated offsite res center--and in six months increased agent productivity by 20 percent.

Fort James travelers, who book $20 million worth of air tickets a year, generate 120,000 calls. With the new technology, its agents are servicing 4.5 calls per hour, up from 3.6 calls.

"The vision I had was to make a paradigm shift in this industry to get travel agencies to stop thinking in terms of transactions. What you really want to do is integrate yourself to be a call center, and issuing airline tickets is just one product," Bankston said. "If you are not delivering the most basic of phone calls in a timely manner, then you really don't care about the airline ticket either."

When Fort James's corporate offices moved from Richmond to Chicago three years ago, the paper products manufacturing company decided to keep its Richmond reservation center to handle all domestic travel. While service remains strong, Bankston wanted to take the operation to a new level. Working closely with his agency, WorldTravel Partners-BTI Americas, he researched call center technology for the 23-agent office before contracting with TDI Services Corp. of Richmond.

The idea of researching and implementing his own call center technology came from Bankston and his local Fort James team, which included account director Tony Petraitis and IT services manager John Alley.

"Working with Jere and his team has been a very positive experience," said TDI sales vice president David Cousins. "They had lots of ideas about ways to increase productivity and customer service, and we jointly developed solutions."

TDI installed a number of advanced call center systems, including AgentSet software that "turns an agent's computer or PC into their telephone set," Cousins said.

Now, added Bankston, agents "just point and click, and they can minimize or maximize the telephone pad right on the PC. There is no distraction at all." And the fact that agents now keep their eyes on the computer screen at all times "has really improved their PC skills and minimized mistakes."

The call center uses two Automatic Call Distribution groups, so that calls come in and are sent to the first available agent or routed to a secondary group. VIP calls are handled by a dedicated group of agents.

The company also uses Taske software that reports on all activity, and can actually make staffing recommendations. "We know, based on the number of phone calls people can answer how our staffing should be throughout a 12-hour period, so we can maximize the opportunity and not have people standing around during lulls," Bankston said.

Now, the Fort James Travel Center has become something of a technology beta site for WTP-BTI. "We have been measuring both productivity and how the agents like it and how well the technology interfaces with the travel center itself. If they do, we are looking at moving ahead and putting that technology out at different offices," said vice president of technology integration Brenda Catanesi.

Bankston is learning too, he said--and one new fact is that the standard benchmark of 80 percent of calls being answered in 20 seconds is not good enough. "If after 15 seconds calls go to a receptionist, they are still within that 20 seconds--but in reality your travelers haven't talked to anyone who can help them," he said. "What we try to measure is how long it takes for somebody who can help you to answer the phone."

Meanwhile, the 20 percent increase in productivity has led to a "corresponding reduction in headcount" through attrition, as agents who left were not replaced. To increase productivity further, Bankston now is rolling out the ResAssist booking system, and has 81 percent of his airline agreements on net fares.