We spoke with Sam Barker, Sales Director at Golfbreaks.com, who have been using our services for the last 7 years to aid and elevate their inbound and specifically out of hours calls.
Tell us a little about GolfBreaks?
Golfbreaks.com, one of the world’s largest and longest established golf travel companies, was formed in 1998 by Chief Executive, Andrew Stanley, and now organises golf breaks, holidays and tournament experiences for over 230,000 golfers annually at over 2,500 resorts and golf courses in the UK, Europe and Worldwide.
With 20 years’ experience and an expert team that is passionate about golf and travel, the company is known for delivering outstanding choice, value and service, with the reassurance and security of booking with a fully bonded travel company (both ABTA and ATOL in the UK). In post-trip surveys, 99% of customers indicated they would rebook with Golfbreaks.com, as authenticated by Reevoo.
Golfbreaks.com are also the only golf travel company to reward customers for their loyalty with discounts on future bookings through the innovative Breakpoints customer rewards programme. The 150 staff in the main company headquarters in Windsor, Berkshire, UK also support the local sales offices in Charleston, South Carolina, USA and Copenhagen, Denmark.
Golfbreaks.com prides itself on an unwavering commitment to developing employees and has had an Investors in People accreditation since 2006. In 2015, the company was awarded the Gold standard for the second time, joining the top 7% of accredited UK organisations.
What issues did you identify in your business that prompted you to approach Aquarius?
With us offering breaks all around the world we wanted to ensure clients were able to connect with us for more than just our standard opening hours in case of any emergencies or if they just wanted general assistance while on their trip. The office itself is open for 75 hours a week but we wanted to see how these could be extended which prompted us to approach Aquarius.
How does Aquarius support GolfBreaks?
The main way is on weekends and evenings when our office closes, at which point the calls are then diverted to Aquarius until 11 pm meaning clients can speak to an agent rather than hit a voicemail. This personal touch enables us to speak to more clients about new enquiries and also enables us to be aware of any on-site emergencies that need immediate attention so we can support our clients rather than them being left alone due to the incident happening outside of regular opening hours. Aquarius are also on hand during the core hours if we have any system issues and calls can be diverted instantly to the team to pick up while we fix any issues we have.
How do you feel the partnership with Aquarius works?
Very well. The team take detailed messages or hotkey calls directly through to the management team if required. The Aquarius team deal with our clients in a prompt and friendly way and continue to offer our clients the high levels of service we strive to achieve in-house.
How do you feel Aquarius has benefited your Customer Service?
Our calls are now answered for an additional 30 hours per week due to our partnership with Aquarius. This means that our calls are answered for 105 hours a week so our clients are able to get in touch with us from 8 am – 11 pm every day. With clients travelling 7 days a week at all times of the day and to various destinations (with different time zones) this has been a great added benefit to clients of Golfbreaks.com.
