8.30.2022
Travel Outlook, the Hotel Call Center as a Hotel Profit Center™, is expanding the hotel sales training of its reservations specialists provided by the Kennedy Training Network (KTN).
“We have always used the KTN training resources during our new hire and ongoing education,” said John Smallwood, President of Travel Outlook, “But these recent enhancements by KTN take us to an entirely new level of excellence, in both sales and guest hospitality.”
“This summer, we committed to having all new reservations sales specialists participate in KTN’s online, self-study version of its Reservations Sales QUEST program”, said Smallwood. “The new training emphasizes a conversational, caller-focused approach to convince today’s distribution channel surfing callers to book now instead of going back online”.
The course, which has been fully customized for Travel Outlook and launched on Travel Outlook’s learning management platform, consists of six video-based modules that KTN President Doug Kennedy recorded personally in a studio in Los Angeles, CA. Participants also complete an online assessment and assigned training activities.
In addition, every Travel Outlook agent actively participates in a private, live four-part webcam training as part of every onboarding training class.
“What’s amazing is how Doug Kennedy can find time to present three of these four parts to our team personally,” says Smallwood. “New hires first meet Doug on their very first day of onboarding training, and meet him again later in the course when he presents a live webcam training called ‘The Whys Behind The What’s of the KTN QUEST Call Scoring Criteria.’ ”
“It’s easy to make such a strong commitment of my time to personally facilitate training for a client like Travel Outlook” says KTN President Doug Kennedy, “Because they have fully embraced our entire suite of training, coaching, and remote call scoring services.”
For Part Three, every agent experiences a one-on-one coaching with Cathy Cook, DTM, who is KTN’s Executive Director of Training, before returning for a small group feedback session with Doug during which they talk about what has worked well and what has been their biggest challenges in their journey to sales excellence.
Given its progressive approach to the voice channel – in terms of performance, training, transparency, testing and the tools used to measure performance – Travel Outlook The Premier Hotel Call Center™ is the leading voice reservations team in hospitality. Travel Outlook’s valued client list includes Viceroy Hotel Group, Curator, Outrigger, KSL Resorts, Proper Hospitality Group, Pacific Hospitality Group, Atlantis, The Irvine Company, Catalina Island, and many others. Travel Outlook’s team and approach increases sales conversion and helps to create more effective voice communication between hotels and their guests, resulting in improved social scores in addition to increased voice channel revenue.
“It is such a pleasure to work one-on-one with each new Travel Outlook agent,” says Cook, “and I think it’s because they recognize how much their company is investing in their career development.”
“We are very proud of having been Certified in sales excellence by the Kennedy Training Network since 2013,” added Smallwood. “I understand from Doug we are the only hotel call center with this distinction. Our clients know that our agent sales performance is state of the art, and always tested for performance.”
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