Forum Moderators: buckworks
However, we have a terrible conversion rate (1 in 60) and are thinking about dumping our email enquiry system in favour of a callback system where people leave their phone number for us to call them back (either at a specific time or right away).
We think that our bad conversion rate is partly due to the fact that we cannot answer all the enquiries quick enough (we are pretty price competitive), although this might not be the whole story.
Has anyone had any experience operating such a system, and what would anyones advice be on how to present this on the website well?
Many thanks for any help or advice on this! I need to turn this around and pronto!
I get the feeling that customers are going to be under the impression thta filling in your form isn't necessarily going to be the last thing they have to do to make the booking. Customers are lazy beasts, and want to do the minimum work to achieve their goal. Except in VERY price-driven areas, they will usually sacrifice on price for convenience, and yours does not sound like the most convenient booking system in the world...
No. We have only had the site up and running for a couple of months and at the moment we use another tour operator to process the bookings. Our aim was to build the site up this summer with that method and get some money together to start our own reservations department next year. IF we put a phone number on straight away - we cant monitor whch calls we are sending them, to be able to split the commission.
>> Why not just have people filling in a direct booking / reservations form that is being fed directly to / from the hotel etc?
Firstly that will be quite expensive to develop, and getting hoteliers to upload availability to our system will be very difficult. also we dont want to use an affiliate network to power a booking engine as they generally dont have enough of the good hotels in the area that we want to promote, and the commission rates suck.
The hoteliers in the area are not internet savy and not all of them have a big reservations department that manage their online allocations....
A phone number would help you a lot.
How about putting a phone number straight away, and explaining they have to quote "your reference" to be eligible for special rates? This would help your partner know how many calls you send them.
If you don't trust your partner, you could still put a direct phone number, and ask people to report the name of the agent they talked to to enter a special draw. In that way, they have an incentive to tell you they called.
IMO, it is quite probable that any arrangement with direct phone number listed would work out better for you than your current system.
That's a great idea. I can certainly try this out...
I'm away from my desk until monday now (unfortunately I dont have an internet connection at home = shock!) but I certainly appeciate any help that anyone can offer...
>> If you don't trust your partner, you could still put a direct phone number, and ask people to report the name of the agent they talked to to enter a special draw. In that way, they have an incentive to tell you they called.
Have you tried doing this? with such a low rate of conversion, it has crossed my mind that we may not be able to trust our partner, and this seems like a very vague method of control...
Has anyone got any opinions on a callback system too?
