Nibletz Staff
Any startup in the hospitality, leisure and tourism industry knows the power of local knowledge. It is essential if you want to successfully sell an experience or accommodation in a particular town or city. It’s also essential that you have agents available globally who can relate to your overseas customers. This can mean that your simple vacation apartment business is already operating on a global scale.
So how can a small business manage to reach international customers as well as providing the local knowledge they’ll need? Your power is in the people you recruit. As your property portfolio grows, it will reach new destinations that you may not be familiar with. You need people with local knowledge that can advise you on the unique selling points you should focus your marketing on. They’ll guide you along the journey of reaching the customer in their favorite places and in their tone of voice.
Having reliable members of staff all over the globe can be challenging. Most, if not all of your employees are remote from you. You may never meet them face to face. You may have to outsource your global payroll to meet the challenges of local laws for each employee. Most challenging of all could be coping with the time zone differences. Live conversations could be difficult to coordinate in an emergency. How can you make sure your customers are looked after if you’re not there to manage your reps?
Customer surveys are really useful to gauge how they rated their experience and the service your rep provided. You can use them to feed back to your employees and refine the function they perform. Even your order system can help provide useful insights about what customers really want. A couple of extra questions on the order form can help you refine your marketing efforts to deliver the most effective messages.
You might ask which leisure activities they plan to enjoy while staying with you. Or you might add a question about the importance of historical attractions. When you know what your customers are really looking for, your local reps can ensure they find that straight away.
How can you better manage remote or distant workers? They may need as much contact and interaction with you as you desire from them. You want to be sure they’re putting in the time and effort to effectively provide for your customers. They also want to know you value their effort and that you’re willing to reward them going above and beyond in their duties. Schedule a time each day when you can check in and exchange customer details and events.
Once a week, schedule a video call so you can talk about successes and challenges. This is the next best thing to face-to-face meetings. You can see that they are well and enthusiastic about their work. They can see that you take the time to care about their performance and success.
Relying on others to provide such crucial information and services for your business is challenging enough. Managing that from the other side of the world can be even harder! How do you take care of your overseas workforce?
