Technology at its Best

I used to work as a hotel reservations agent. I spent my eight hours a day, 5 days a week on the phone and the computer attending to hotel reservations from customers. In a bad day, I would reach a hundred calls a day and only twenty five percent of that is composed of successful bookings.

Sometimes, it helped that I was on the morning shift. We cater to clients in the US and Canada and of course, with their time zone it would be early afternoon or late night by the time I start my shift. With lesser calls at this time, most people go off-line and would prefer calling us than booking on-line and making their own reservations. I can also jump at a chance to sell a pricier room at this time since most people would be afraid to lose a room and they need a place to stay for the night.We earn more by doing this since we get commissions based on how much we sell.

It's not all selling though, sometimes people call us to say that they are trying to get a room by booking on-line and they're either having problems with their computer. We basically inform them that we do not troubleshoot issues with the computer and we can see the prices they see on-line anyway. To get a sale at this point, we convince them that booking on-line might confuse them and it would be better if we did since we can explain the terms and conditions of the reservation because sometimes there are some reservations that are noncancelable and they might not be ready to commit to it if they're not sure of their travel dates. These kinds of reservations are usually priced lower since the hotel would gain something whether or not, the guest arrives at the hotel. We also inform our customers that if something happens and they suddenly went off-line, they might have reserved the room and they didn't even realize it. We explain that with the event, of web development, we try as hard as we can to improve our web facilities but it is so much easier still to talk to a real person. So, sir, go off-line and call that reservations hot line. It would be much easier, you'll see.