SmarterTicket Case Study – Bali Discovery Tours

Managing Worldwide Customer Support

These days, industries are finding it more and more difficult to set themselves apart from their competition. As segments become commoditized price devolves into the main motivating factor for companies interested in continuing to acquire new business and new customers. To counter this trend, a company has to find a niche, whether it’s service and support, the quality of the product being sold, or how fast a transaction can be completed and services rendered. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the travel industry, where quality of service and customer retention are critical.

Bali Discovery Tours is a full service travel agency selling vacations to the island of Bali, Indonesia, over the Internet. Visitors to their website can book stays at hundreds of hotels and villas on-line. In addition, they provide a wide range of activities and excursions in Bali that visitors to their site can inquire about or book. As can be imagined, the exchange and tracking of information between Bali Discovery Tours and their clientele is the lifeblood of their business.

Before their adoption and implementation of SmarterTicket, Bali Discovery had relied upon a rather archaic system of website-generated emails. When a customer had an inquiry or wanted to book a trip, a hotel room or ask a question, they filled out a simple form on the Bali Discovery website. That form information was then sent to a generic email alias which forwarded it to nine different Bali Discovery employees. With no organized dispatching of an inquiry, Bali Discovery noticed that a number of different things could happen : it was answered correctly and immediately, it was answered multiple times by multiple representatives (sometimes with conflicting information), or it wasn’t answered at all because one representative would assume that another representative would answer it. The confusion and frustration that developed as a result of the latter two happenings was palpable and soon became a real problem for Bali Discovery and its management. Something needed to be done to streamline the process and to ensure clients were answered quickly, efficiently and correctly. According to Markus Niesen, E-Commerce Manager for Bali Discovery, “It became clear that we needed an email management solution to cope with the ever growing number of bookings and enquiries generated by our website.”

However, whatever solution Bali Discover implemented needed to be able to be integrated with their existing infrastructure (a website as well as their existing call center) with little modification. It also needed to be easy enough for multiple representatives to learn quickly so as to keep from disrupting normal business operations. SmarterTools was able to meet with Bali Discovery Tours and provide them with SmarterTicket, a fully manageable sales/support ticketing system that was able to meet, and in some cases surpass, each and every requirement issued by Bali Discovery.

Integration with Existing Infrastructure

The lifeblood of Bali Discovery’s business model is their website. As such, any solution they adopted had to be easily integrated into their site with as little reordering, re-coding and redesigning of the site as possible. The last thing they needed was a complex solution that required both front-end as well as backend integration and development that has the potential to lead into long development times, issues with mismatching code, downtime for the site itself as a solution is put in place, and a myriad other problems.

SmarterTools was able to discuss these concerns with Bali Discovery Tours and offer SmarterTicket. With its ease of set up and implementation, minimal changes are required for its integration into an existing infrastructure. According to Markus Niesen, “Before we could launch SmarterTicket I had to rewrite the code on our website which was responsible for generating our confirmation messages, or those messages that are automatically sent to the customer after someone has placed a booking.” However, Markus realized that the changes necessary were not only easy to initiate, they made a world of difference as now messages were sent to the customer and at the same time another email was generated, mimicking one sent from the customer, and sent directly to a POP3 email account managed by SmarterTicket. “That way we were registering all new bookings and enquiries in SmarterTicket and if an agent replied to such an email their message was going directly back to the customer. Our answer had the unique ticket number from SmarterTicket in the subject line and all further communication was handled and registered under that number.”

Implementation and Training

Implementation and training are key determining factors when assessing a new software product when that product’s main purpose is improving customer service. A product can promise the world, but if it is too difficult to get up and running quickly, or if the learning curve for agents is too steep, then it may as well never have been implemented at all.

SmarterTools again easily addressed these issues with Bali Discovery Tours with SmarterTicket. After making some minor coding changes to their website, Markus found that SmarterTicket was basically set up and ready to go. “We have been using SmarterTicket for almost three months and we are handling around 1,500 tickets per month with it. Out of our 10 registered agents, 8 are using the application on a permanent basis and they are constantly working with the system,” he said. “We have encountered some minor glitches but it was very easy to find some workarounds that suited our needs.”

Additionally, training of the Bali Discovery staff was handled quickly. “Our Indonesian reservation team is not necessarily very computer savvy. We found out however that the application was quickly understood and after a short training of only 1 1/2 hours everyone at our office was able to run SmarterTicket as intended.”

Finally, there was the matter of technical support. Bali Discovery found it necessary to contact SmarterTools on two separate occasions during the implementation and training process. According to Markus, “In the two instances we contacted the support team of SmarterTools, our enquiries were handled extremely fast and professionally,” thus making the implementation process that much easier.

Conclusions and Some Unforeseen Benefits after Implementation

Bali Discovery Tours, a full service travel agency selling the island of Bali, Indonesia over the internet, found that they needed a way to track inquiries from their website. They noticed that emails coming into their representatives were being answered by multiple times, sometimes with conflicting information, or not at all. In an industry that is intensely competitive they felt they needed a way to not only coordinate and dispatch incoming communication, but that taking a proactive approach to this situation would give them an advantage over their competitors. As an industry becomes commoditized, offering superior customer service not only improves a company’s appearance and reputation, it sets them apart from their competition and earns them repeat business and customer retention. SmarterTicket, a fully manageable and flexible ticket system is one way companies can offer improved customer service. With complete and simple integration into an existing infrastructure, a short training cycle for users, and easy implementation from install to release, SmarterTicket is the choice for any sized company looking to improve their public face and private structure.

Finally, Markus Niesen and the entire management team at Bali Discovery found a few other surprising results of their implementation of SmarterTicket. “We have had no structure in our reservations team and the problems that we encountered were becoming all too common. SmarterTicket gave us the chance to look into our operations and to start organizing us: we created a front-line group within our reservations team and we set up some escalation procedures that we didn't have before. Management became finally better involved in the handling of our bookings and enquiries: if someone from the front-line group is not able to handle a request on their own, they are able to transfer that request to someone from the second level group to get additional help. In addition, SmarterTicket has finally given us a reliable company structure and we are now much better positioned to come back with efficient and complete replies to all of our incoming messages.”