Striking A Balance Between High Touch and High Tech: Meet Super Agent Margie Jordan
by Richard D’Ambrosio /Photo: Margie Jordan
Margie Jordan knows how to strike a balance. Clients seek her out for her expertise and hands-on personal touch. But Jordan knows that without having a high-tech approach to administrative tasks and marketing, she wouldn’t have the time to be the super agent so many of her clients value.
Before starting her agency in January 2005, Jordan was an accountant and later had a marketing and design career.
“I quickly got bored of accounting. It wasn’t rewarding and interesting. Travel is new every day,” said Jordan, president and CEO of Jordan Executive Travel Service. While marketing played to her creative side, Jordan realized something else was calling to her.
As a mother and the wife of a pastor, Jordan had traveled to upwards of 40 or so U.S. states, but never outside the country. “My father was a military man. He saw much of the world, but nobody else in my family traveled,” she said.
She started booking travel from home in 2005 as she learned about the industry and slowly began to ramp down her marketing and design firm. “My first year was not that productive,” she said. “Agents didn’t have the same resources we have today. There was no Facebook, no ability to reach out to others easily from your home office.”
Then, at a cruise conference, Jordan met another agent who took her under her wing. “She really helped me understand how to get customers and run my business. I started making some decent money.” But it took another three or four years before Jordan made the transition to travel agent full time.
Today, Jordan specializes in cruises and international travel, using her technology skills to streamline the time she isn’t spending working directly for her customers. “I need to have everything automated. I use tools and technology to speak to each other. I don’t have enough hours in the day to work on them individually.”
For example, Jordan uses Mail Chimp for e-mail. “When I send out an email for something like a group cruise, it goes into my database. Then I have a series of autoresponder e-mails that go out asking my clients about things like if they want to purchase a land vacation. It e-mails them about passports, other activities and expenses on the ship.
“I help keep my customers on track. And I can track who opened an e-mail, and what they did after opening it.”
Jordan also uses AutoPilot, a software program that allows her to target customer messaging. “It goes a step beyond Mail Chimp, and tells me what clients do on my website. If someone clicks on a tour I’m building today, it can automatically generate an e-mail to follow up.
“It’s important to understand the consumer travel buying cycle. If I notice a client perusing land trips multiple times on my website, then I know I need to reach out to them.”
Jordan is in high demand as a speaker on technology and social media, having taught at a variety of conferences the past six years. Always looking to give back, Jordan last October accepted the membership services vice president position with CCRA International.
High-tech and high touch
Her expertise in technology and social media continues to earn Jordan personal dividends as well. Last year, EJ and Betty Ford, a blind couple from Asheville, NC, found Jordan through a YouTube video she had posted in 2012, where she had interviewed an executive from Sandals Resort at a trade show.
The Fords wanted to celebrate their seven-year anniversary at Sandals, and their comment on Jordan’s YouTube page triggered a notice to the agent. Jordan was a little concerned, having never booked a trip for a visually impaired couple.
Betty, 40, lost her vision at 18, while EJ has been blind since birth. But while the Fords are visually impaired, they are very active. “They are the most self-sufficient people I have ever met. They kayak. EJ has a YouTube channel,” Jordan said.
If she accepted them as a client, not only would Jordan have to help the Fords navigate the world of international travel, she also was presented with the challenge of Jamaica not having the U.S. level of laws and experience serving handicapped people.
Based on an initial call with the Fords, Jordan called the Sandals Ochi Beach Resort in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, directly, explained the situation, and booked the couple a butler-level room for a weeklong stay. She figured, this way they would have an extra level of on-site care throughout their vacation.
To ensure that the Fords knew their passports had arrived in the mail, she sent them signature required. Then, she had the couple Facetime her so that she could get their passport numbers and input them into their travel documents.
Jordan also booked the couple exclusive VIP airport customs services and ground transfers through Club Mobay, to facilitate getting them to and from Sandals. “When they got to their resort, they Facetimed me, showing me around the room. I was telling them which sodas they had in their refrigerator,” Jordan said.
While Jordan was in constant contact with the couple, she also gave a lot of credit to Sandals. “They really stepped up to the plate. Their butlers were very caring.”
The highlight of the Ford’s trip was being asked to march in the island’s Independence Day parade and carry the Jamaican flag.
“We had so many moments during their planning and trip, that almost made me cry,” she remembered.
One glitch that couldn’t be overcome was the local tour company not allowing the Fords to leave Sandals for activities like swimming with the dolphins or horseback riding. “We all learned a lot that we can improve on,” Jordan said. Jordan knows of a private guide who can escort the Fords off the resort next time.
The Fords had such a great time, they planned a second trip for this month, and plan to return in 2018 to renew their wedding vows – and they’ve invited their favorite travel agent to attend. “I’m planning to join them,” Jordan said.