Three years ago, I would have said (and did) that the greatest
resistance to service fees was not from the client but from agency
owners, managers and front-line travel counselors. I was wrong.
Not wrong about many agency owners and managers, who assumed
that customers would not pay for services that had been free and/or
clients would flee to competitive agencies or suppliers that did
not have the fees. I was wrong about the front-line travel
counselors. Did many appear to resist the introduction of fees? Is
this the case even today? Yes.
However, there is a difference between appearance and reality.
Late last year, we (Joselyn, Tepper & Associates, Inc.)
produced a three-videotape series on the reasons for fees,
developing the right fee strategy for a given agency and, most
important, the dos and don'ts of successful fee implementation.
To prepare the series, we spent considerable time sitting next
to front-line counselors as they presented fees and coped with
customer questions and objections. We wanted to know everything a
customer might say and to develop the most appropriate and
effective responses.
While we were at it, we learned that the vast majority of
counselors did not oppose fees but, in fact, thought fees were long
overdue. A significant majority of front-line counselors have felt
used and abused, under-respected and under-compensated for years.
Most felt they deserved to be directly compensated by customers for
the work done on their behalf.
The front-line counselors did oppose agency fees implemented
without appropriate training. After all, it was they who were going
to have to present fees to customers across the desk and the phone
line.
As owners and managers looked for ways to win over front-line
counselors, they, like me, had not realized most counselors are
already pro fee.
The goal of mere acceptance is too modest. The objective is to
have everyone in the agency embrace your fee strategy. To
accomplish this you need to address three issues.
The first is to educate and remind staffers of the meaningful
value they deliver to the travel customer. Collectively, agencies
bring an impressive array of talents, skills, education and
experience to the travel planning and purchase process. While
agencies are proficient in selling supplier products and services,
most agencies were not telling and selling the value of their
services to the customer. In the process, not only did the customer
take agents for granted, so did the agents.
As a result, I am now convinced, part of any resistance to
asking the customer for money is rooted, at least to some degree,
in a diminished feeling of self-confidence and self-worth resulting
from years of doing an often difficult and demanding job,
seamlessly and invisibly, and then promoting it to the customer as
"free." The first step? Remind the front-line counselors of what
they do for their clients and of the real and meaningful value they
bring to the process. A counselor who knows he or she is worth a
fee will ask for one with a degree of confidence that a customer
can feel.
The second key to getting front-line counselors to embrace fees
involves education and motivation. The agents need to see a
successful fee program not just as a benefit to agency owners but
as a benefit to themselves. They must understand the economic
impact on their agency of the caps, the cuts, price competition
among suppliers, declining override opportunities and more, and the
secondary impact these issues have on their compensation, benefits
and opportunities.
Perhaps it is not so surprising that many agency employees are
figuring this out themselves: We hear from owners and managers who
suggest that if they don't implement fees their staff will revolt.
It is good that counselors recognize the broad connection between
an agency's well-being and its staff's well-being.
However, they embrace agency fees more enthusiastically when the
fees they collect figure into an incentive program, if one exists,
and perhaps become the catalyst for one, if one does not exist.
After all, if your agency has an incentive program based, at least
in part, on revenue sold/serviced, a dollar in fees is every bit as
good as a dollar in commissions. For those without an employee
incentive compensation system, I recommend one. The simplest
fee-related incentive is to share a portion of the fees with
front-line counselors and agency support personnel.
The third key to winning wholehearted agent support for fees is
training that focuses on the presentation of fees and response to
clients' fee questions. Begin with an in-house training program
that highlights the need for fees and the correct customer
presentation techniques, including predetermined wording for
initial fee presentation and commonly asked client questions.
Go beyond a "this is how you should do it" presentation.
Learning tools such as role-playing are vital in enabling
front-line agents to achieve the right comfort level with fees.
Counselors need to practice the scripts until they have responses
committed to memory. A helpful pointer here comes from other
agents. A number of our clients have developed CRS hot-key access
to predetermined scripts for various situations.
Training should be ongoing. Once fees are in place, document the
most difficult client situations, questions and comments, and use
them as topics at staff meetings. Appropriate responses, once
again, should be developed and practiced. Clearly, the bottom-line
motivation for charging fees is the bottom line.
An often overlooked dividend, however, is how a successful fee
program makes agency employees feel about themselves. In my
experience, they sit a little straighter, they hold their heads a
little higher and, in general, they feel better about themselves
and what they do for a living. In my book, that alone is worth the
effort.
Dr. Robert Joselyn is president and chief executive officer
of Joselyn, Tepper & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm in
Scottsdale, Ariz.