Automation is quickly becoming commonplace across a wide range of industries—in fact, it’s estimated that 85% of all customer service interactions will be automated by 2020. The tour booking industry is no exception! Automated processes can save you time and money, which allows you to allocate more energy and resources elsewhere. This increase in efficiency and reduction in costs translates to larger profit margins for your tour booking company.
The Human Touch in Automation: Personalization Strategies for Your Tour Booking Emails
One of the most common hurdles to businesses adopting automation is the fear that it will take away the humanistic, personal aspects of communicating with their customers. In reality, it is still very much possible (and even simple) to have that personal touch in your communication even if your tour booking system is automated. Let’s explore a few ways how to achieve this—and why personalized automation can help enhance your customer experience.
Address Customers by Name
Modern businesses operating in a competitive market know that they need to put a personal touch on their customer service approach. A very effective first step is simply referring to the customer by name. If you think this isn’t possible unless you’re talking to the customer in person or manually creating emails to send to each one individually, think again!
With our automated tour booking software, aReservation, personalization tokens can be used so that your automated text messages and/or emails address the customer by name. How does this work? When a user’s information is in your tour booking system database, a personalization token will show a value for that contact. That means that when the system sends any form of communication to that user, their personalized name token will be attached automatically. This also minimizes any human errors like putting the wrong name on an email or spelling the name incorrectly. This ease and accuracy creates and fosters a more personal human relationship between you and your customers—even though the communications were automated.
Send Confirmations and Reminders
You can set up our automated activity booking software to deploy an email or text message whenever a user books a tour or rental. This verifies that the booking was successful without an employee having to call them up on the phone, leave a voicemail, and wait for a response. Manually reaching out like this takes your employee’s focus away from more important tasks, wasting time and resources. Your automated confirmations can even provide important tour information like directions, cancellation policies, and what participants should wear and bring with them, which adds value to the service you provide.
Once the date of the tour or rental approaches, our tour booking system can then send a reminder to everyone participating through automated text messages. This way, your employees don’t have to look up every participant's contact information and separately send them each a reminder by hand. Booking reminders can also reduce no-shows or the risk of someone showing up at the wrong date or time—and fewer idle rentals or missed tours means more revenue for you! You may also want to include a “Thank You” message to customers for booking and mention that you’re looking forward to having them join you soon. This generates excitement amongst participants and enhances their experience with your brand.
Follow up on Bookings
As a tour operator, you’re busy keeping track of bookings, equipment, and employees. Often times, sending follow ups can fall by the wayside—but it’s important that feedback is provided so you can improve your business, and feedback is even better when the experience is still fresh in your customer’s mind. With our tour booking software, you can set up automated emails to deploy a set period of days after a tour or rental has been completed. This way, you’ll never completely forget or accidentally wait too long to ask for feedback.
Encourage Customer Reviews
In your follow up, you may want to invite customers to share feedback on platforms such as TripAdvisor or Yelp or complete a quick survey. You may even encourage them to share pictures from the tour on social media and tag you or use a particular hashtags. You could even consider using an incentive such as a refer-a-friend promotion or discount drawing to encourage a higher response rate. This makes your current customers feel like their feedback is truly valued—plus, it can attract new customers when many positive reviews are posted on social media and review sites.
Retarget Previous Renters
From the moment a customer gives you their email address to book a tour, you have the opportunity to communicate with them again. Email automation enables you to automatically retarget these previous customers for particular tours, activities, or dates depending on their purchase history and patterns—all without having to manually sort through loads of data and match it up to future events they may be interested in yourself.
Segment Your Customer Communication
Using data to determine exactly which tours or activities may be appealing to a past tourist drastically improves their customer service experience. Rather than spamming them with a bunch of tours that aren’t aligned with their interests at all, you’re able to deliver customized suggestions that are likely to catch their eye—and make them actually open your email. This presents a huge opportunity for your tour booking company to up-sell and bring back repeat customers. As a matter of fact, 58% of marketers cite opportunities for up-selling as the second most important advantage of using marketing automation!
Now that you know it is still possible to personalize your automated tour booking communication, we hope you’re more inclined to implement automation in your business!
At Indexic, our free online tour booking software can help your business automate repetitive and tedious administrative tasks, such as confirming bookings, sending reminders, and asking for follow up feedback. This can lower expenses and improve efficiency—while still allowing for that personal touch you’re looking for to enhance the customer’s experience.
We’re experts on the tourism industry, and we’re passionate about helping your business streamline operations to see increased revenue and customer satisfaction! Ready to see how Indexic can work for you and make it simple to experience the benefits of automated tour booking communication?
