Tips From an Expert: Establishing and Maintaining a Customer Base
by Daniel McCarthy /“Customers are not owned, they are earned,” said Stuart Cohen, a travel industry veteran, professional speaker and business coach.
In a Travel Institute webinar titled, Are You My Travel Agent? 10 Ways to Get Me Your Customer and Keep Me Forever Loyal, Cohen gave agents tips on how to retain customers and how to attract new ones.
“I think entrepreneurs who blame everyone else for losing customers are the ones lying about truly wanting new customers,” Cohen said, “[some] agents blamed the customer for not coming back to book a second time.”
According to Cohen, maintaining a loyal, growing customer base is all about becoming—and marketing the business as--the travel expert so many clients are looking for and making business as easy as possible for clients.
Identify roles
For agents to sell themselves to customers, they first have to realize why an agent is important. If agents don’t recognize that, neither will clients.
“I don’t need you just to make bookings,” he said, “it’s not my fault if I don’t understand your value. Just get real with the customer, what do you do and why should they care.”
Cohen urged agents to figure out what makes them unique, and then to show that to their clients.
Building a blog instead of a regular booking site is a way to get started, according to Cohen. Showing the customer testimonials from past, satisfied clients, also helps.
“Don’t be another online travel booker, be you,” he said.
Permission marketing and social media
Practicing permission marketing—delivering relevant messages to people who have signed up for them—is the first step in developing the sort of a relationship with a client that will keep him or her coming back.
“Don’t go for my cash, go for my email address—let’s be friends first, rather than focusing immediately on making a sale,” Cohen said. “Quit worrying about making a sale to me and get me on your list and get my card.”
Not every client relationship has to start with a sale, instead, a lot of the connections that are built can begin with advice or knowledge that will establish expertise—an important step in establishing trust with a client, Cohen said.
“It’s your opportunity to establish yourself as the expert because eventually I’ll need you or refer you to a friend.”
Making sure a website is visible and social media pages are updated is an easy step in making it less difficult for a client to find an agent or agency, as is making content relevant, helpful and unique.
“Offer the customer helpful gifts of information because the internet doesn’t. When you’re giving something [like content] away you’re exercising the reciprocity trigger—I [as your client] will be more encouraged and more likely to give something back to you,” he added.
Reach out and make business easy
By offering to speak to clients in several different channels—on email, on the phone, through texting or through live chatting—it becomes obvious to clients that an agent is putting their needs first, said Cohen.
Having a mobile-ready website, removing lengthy online forms from client interactions and offering a cell phone number or a live chat feature for customers is all a part of making it easy to do business—along with making interactions between agents and clients about the experience rather than the process.
“You want to be a consultant, not a sales person.”