Delta Vacations - Business Intelligence Solution

Company: Delta Vacations, Minot, ND
Company Description: Delta Vacations is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines and one of the largest providers of vacation packages in the United States. Delta Vacations has been in the vacation business for more than 45 years and offers travelers convenient, one-stop shopping for custom-designed vacation packages to more than 300 of the world’s top leisure destinations.
Nomination Category: New Product & Service Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Business Intelligence Solution – New

Nomination Title: Getting the calls to right person: increasing efficiency and boosting sales at the same time

Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 650 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and sales to date: REDACTED FOR PUBLICATION

When a customer is spending thousands of dollars on a vacation, they want to talk to someone who has been there and is passionate about the destination. Routing calls to the most-skilled person as quickly as possible is an important aspect of any contact center and is the first step in providing a great customer experience.

Getting the call to the right person

All sales associates at the Delta Vacations Customer Engagement Center (CEC) are considered Mexico and Caribbean specialists. As they continue their career, they can receive additional product and destination training for certain destinations, notably high-end destinations such as Europe and Hawaii. Once they complete this additional training, they are considered destination specialists.

To leverage this employee specialization, we have empowered our employees with the ability to indicate their preference in the type of calls they want to receive each day. We then use that information to prioritize our call routing. This approach has improved close rates, decreased handle time, maximized our dedication to first call resolution, and decreased our average speed of answer; all while giving our employees a sense of control over the calls they receive and thus driving performance.

It started with asking the employees what they wanted

At the CEC, we subscribe to a simple philosophy; take care of our employees so they will take care of our customers. Cultivating an employee-centric culture, we actively seek employee feedback as we look for ways to continue to improve. With this in mind, we developed a two-question survey for our teams:

• What type of call mix (sales vs service) do you prefer?
• What destinations do you feel the most knowledgeable about?

As a result of their answers, we started to think about different ways to skill their calls, including how to provide employees with more options and control over their call mix.

The solution

Over the course of the past year, we created a new in-house performance system that also allows employees to select which call routing option they prefer on a daily basis.

The news just gets better and better

This new process has been a win-win, boosting employee attitudes and resulting in success for our business:

• We have exceeded our average speed of answer goal each month
• Decreased YOY availability by 60%

We aren’t just being more efficient answering our calls; we have also experienced an increase in sales. Our employees are producing more revenue on each booking they create, with revenue per sales call increasing by more than 12%.

We believe this approach to call routing, combined with the positive results both for our employees and customers, set us apart and demonstrate how we are re-writing the rules for call center management. It is why we feel Delta Vacations should be your choice for Business Intelligence Solution of the Year.