Good Travel Management is a values-driven, corporate travel company that provides seamless door-to-door experiences for its clients. The UK-based, family-owned business has been a staple in the corporate travel management sector for over 100 years.
Over the past century, Good Travel Management has innovated at every turn, using technology to simplify travel, earning one of the first IATA travel agency accreditations, and operating as a carbon-neutral business since 2022 — all without losing the company’s uniquely human touch.
Good Travel Management uses Front to streamline communication and deliver unmatched service to their clients.
Challenge
Good Travel Management is a people-led business, and people, performance, and the planet have always been at the core of what they do. But at a certain point, their tech stack was holding them back.
Before Front, the operations team used Outlook and a mixture of texting and chat for internal and external communications. Switching between various systems slowed consultant productivity. And without any built-in collaboration features, endless email chains made it tough to track message ownership, often resulting in duplicate work. As Operations Director, Julie Ornsby, explains:
“We were using shared inboxes, and consultants would indicate ownership with a color code. We’d get hundreds of quotes a week, and if there was ever a delay in the system, especially for a remote worker, then two people would end up responding to the same quote request.”
Even when questions of ownership were resolved, it was difficult for consultants to catch up on client history: Outlook only stored 6 months of email data. Robust reporting was a challenge, too. Prospective customers expected travel agencies to provide metrics like average response and resolution times before signing new contracts.
Solution
By unifying their communications and working together in Front, consultants can collaborate to deliver the personalization and attention to detail their clients expect at scale. Julie shares: “Everything we do in Front is improving consultant productivity so they can give better experiences to our clients.”
Improving cross-functional communication thanks to enhanced collaboration
Eliminating duplicate work was the first big benefit of using Front, and achieving it was simple: only one teammate was assigned to each message — no more consultant collisions.
From there, consultants could ask for input from their manager or colleagues by tagging them in a message or shared email draft. All parties could offer feedback in real-time, helping consultants deliver better service to clients faster.
“Before Front, it was always lots of back and forth internally before getting back to the customer. Now, apprentices and seasoned consultants can easily loop in colleagues to get input like: Have you got any more ideas on this, any way we can get a better fare for this client or a direct route?”
Close collaboration has especially benefited team members who work remotely, helping them feel more included, and showing them when their teammates are online. Front has also promoted cross-functional collaboration with finance, support, and operations, a huge step up from Outlook.
Today, teams can collaborate in the same space, working together to proactively solve clients’ problems. When clients are approaching their credit limits, consultants and their finance counterparts can collaborate on next steps so no travel is impacted. Consultants can also contact support if needed, ensuring issues with credit card processing or invoicing are swiftly addressed.
Cross-team collaboration has been so effective that Julie wants to onboard more teams and systems to Front: “I want to bring other teams onto Front because they will get so much value out of the collaboration. We’re looking into connecting our CRM, a phone system, WhatsApp, and Live Chat as well.”
Maximizing client satisfaction with built-in productivity features
Front’s workflow automation and productivity capabilities have streamlined consultant’s workflows. With Front’s rules engine, consultants can automatically share the hotel confirmation, which includes invoicing requirements and specialized needs with relevant internal parties.
Front’s SLA rules also remind consultants when the agreed SLA response time is approaching, enabling them to always meet their contractual response time. Some consultants have also implemented Front’s auto-responses to reassure clients who prefer to have requests immediately acknowledged, as opposed to the 2-hour SLA.
Front message templates allow teammates to create pre-populated drafts for common responses. With important details taken care of upfront, consultants have more time to tailor client messages. They can even use Front’s GIFs and emojis to make their communication feel more human.
Snoozing has been a game-changer for consultant productivity, too. If a client wants to change a flight but doesn’t reply after a consultant has asked for more information, they can snooze the message until a few days before the customer’s travel. This feature guarantees follow-up and helps consultants hit inbox zero, clearing their workspace of cluttered notes and lists.
“The team is massively into snoozing now. Snoozing has changed everyone’s lives, really. They love a clean inbox.”
Consultants also use Front’s tagging and individual rules capabilities to keep their inboxes organized. They can categorize requests and auto-archive irrelevant messages, resulting in a tidy inbox and increased efficiency.
Ensuring top-notch service with transparent metrics
Superb service is what Good Travel Management is known for, and Front has helped them deliver on that promise with robust reporting.
For example, Julie’s team can monitor response times, handle times, SLAs, and lots of other metrics in Front Analytics, confirming consultants are replying to clients on time and with care and precision. In some cases, this has helped them both stabilize and strengthen client relationships.
“One of our biggest challenges was when clients perceived we may not be meeting SLA’s or where we wanted to review and make changes to SLA’s on response times and expectations. We can now turn an unclear position into a real positive, be more confident in our service delivery, and work with clients on continuous improvement,”
With Front’s CSAT reporting, Good Travel Management can measure the impact of consultants’ streamlined workflows on client sentiment. So far, every client has given their consultant a five-star review, with a stellar quote to match ⭐ This positive feedback is fueling Good Travel Management’s go-to-market campaigns and motivating consultants to continue providing excellent service.
“One of the consultants came up to me and mentioned that they got a 5-star review, and they’re buzzing over it. They’re super proud.”
Eventually, Julie’s team plans to prepare packets for account managers that demonstrate consultants’ adherence to SLAs and showcase their efforts to go above and beyond — all powered by Front.
No matter how much or how fast Good Travel Management grows, the team is dead set on maintaining its signature 5-star service — and they’re doing it with Front.