NEWS
New recruits, from left:
Melanie Lindsay, Fiona Coates,
Curtis Knowles, Danielle Hurst, John Raine,
Peter Whalen and Heaven Crossley
Hays expands social sales channel with 48 recruits
Ben Ireland
Hays Travel has recruited 48 agents to work in a digital contact centre aſter a staggering rise in social media enquiries from a “new breed” of customer. Te full-time recruits
will handle enquiries from platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twiter, and on Hays’ live chat and email, joining an existing team of 10 in Sunderland. Teir contact with clients will be
STORY TOP
digital and marketing John Milburn. Digital enquiries have grown by 300% in the last two years, meaning Hays’ separate call centre and 150-strong homeworking division have had to step in to deal with overflow. Te first 22 digital sales consultants, who began training last week, will start on July 8. Te rest will be ready
to take enquiries from July 22. “Digital clients are a new breed
exclusively via digital channels until the point of booking, which will take place over the phone. “We’ve invested a lot in our digital
strategy in the last two years and we’re geting a lot of clients through live chat, email and direct messages [on social media],” said Hays head of
travelweekly.co.uk
of customer we’ve seen more of recently,” said Milburn. “So we need a new breed of agent to cater for them. “It’s not the same interaction as
with someone who immediately picks up the phone. Tey are oſten younger, and want advice on chat before they call. With the digital contact centre, they will be dealing with the same
Digital clients
are a new breed of customer. So we need a new breed of agent to cater for them
agent from start to finish.” Milburn said live chat and direct
messaging was prevalent in other industries, such as broadband and TV, so customers were used to interacting this way, adding that phone calls of “a few minutes” helped close sales and were required for secure payments. “We originally wanted to hire 100
people,” he added. “Tat’s a long-term target, but we
had to tell ourselves to slow down.” Social media is a growing sales
channel across the industry, with homeworkers and independents widely using it to generate leads. Tui uses social media and live chat
for customer service and its agents began using chat to answer customer questions in the sales process last year. Thomas Cook uses live chat to
communicate with customers during the booking process, but requires payment to be made by phone, web or in store. It uses social media for customer service. Barrhead Travel introduced a
social media sales team last year at its Glasgow head office. President Jacqueline Dobson said digital enquiries had grown “substantially”. She added: “It started organically but it’s opened up a new sales channel. People check Facebook more oſten than email. It’s less formal.”
20 JUNE 2019 5
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