The future is in the hands of SuperAgents – New Travelmole travel agent column by Travel Counsellor Barbara Charlton

How times have changed! When I started my career in retail travel in 1994, you had a package or a flight only booking or a UK hotel booking. You could of course add on the odd car hire and airport parking and airport hotel.

There was a time when the agents knew more than the customers, now we have to have evolved into Super Agents or else we would have been trodden on along the way by the internet led consumer.

This is a wonderful and enlightening challenge for those of us who are as technologically correct as the clients we are trying to keep a hold of. But is that what it’s really all about? I don’t personally think so, yes, we definitely HAVE to embrace all this knowledge and technology around us, and make sure that we still know MORE than the consumer. But it’s also about the personal service that the clients get.

Take the British Airways catastrophes for the last three summers. Clients that have booked on the web….advice given to call a number it may take them hours to get through to. Clients booked on the high street? Try to get through during office hours. Clients booked through a home-based Travel Counsellor? Even if it’s out of hours, you may well have his or her mobile number to give them a call and let them rebook your seats for you.

There is no price to be put on the personal knowledge and advice you can get from a SuperAgent that travels regularly, on educationals as well as exploring on their own holidays.

Our value is in knowing (and owning) our clients, making sure you look after them at all times, value them and they will remember and value you. Don’t just speak to them once a year when they ask about a holiday, send them a birthday and Christmas card, or Anniversary card, and if you don’t know those dates you are not getting to know your clients in the first place.

The future is in your hands SuperAgents, you need to make sure that your clients trust you to help them with absolutely everything to do with their booking and in any way you can.

So what is it like to be me? Well, I have been working from my converted garage office since December 2002, and I am used to the peace and quiet and just being able to get on with my job.

Of course, you have to very self disciplined to work from home, and it goes without saying that you really have to know your stuff, but if you have always specialised in one area of the world, and you start getting referrals from clients for other destinations, you have the support and online live advice from over 500 other Travel Counsellors if you need some help.

We are all self-employed and run our own businesses with the support from head office in Bolton. The technology is brilliant including our own weekly live TCTV web broadcasts, which bring the chairman, various directors and guests directly into our offices, filling us in with what’s new and exciting in the world of travel.

My day starts at about 08.30 when I have said goodbye to the three teenage children I have, had a quick tidy up, and some breakfast.

Naturally, first job of the day is to check for any overnight messages and go through my emails. I check my diary to see what little jobs need doing today-it could be contacting hotels with client requests, sending out birthday cards or delivering tickets, all everyday things in my working week.

I always have plenty of enquiries on the go, so it’s checking the status of each of them and dealing with new ones as they come in. Most of my clients email me their needs, because they are doing it from work, and they know that I always get back to them quickly with lots of options.

Sometimes I remember to get some lunch, but it’s usually mid afternoon before my tummy tells me too! Time just flies in this job! My postal run is usually around 16.00, and if it’s dry I try to walk, as I will then meet local people from my village, and you get chatting about holidays, and from a trip to the post office, you get home with another enquiry!