From the onset of the COVID-19 USE pandemic in 2020 to the present day, no industry has been on a wilder rollercoaster ride than travel and entertainment, specifically the cruise industry. For one cruise client, they were left without any choice but to lay off 75% of their team as cruising all but ground to a halt in 2020. However, when demand resurfaced, they needed skilled sales-minded Service Partners to help facilitate bookings, and they needed them quickly.
With speed and quality, Arise launched this new insider sales program in less than 60 days, including certification. As Arise successfully launched this sales program, a need for an even more specialized sales curriculum became apparent, as 90% of calls Service Partners handled came from travel agents, resulting in group sales, rather than individual customer sales. Once this insight was uncovered, Arise reworked the service agent certification curriculum to better suit these call types.
At launch in January 2022, this insider sales program utilized 50 FTE and grew to over 60 FTE by April. Upon discovering the need for curriculum changes to better accommodate customer bookings, Arise tailored those learning journeys, with the Arise curriculum now used by the client’s internal teams. Once this new curriculum was implemented, the average close rate of 90-day Service Partners rose to 28-30%, nearly equal to the 30-32% close rate of those with 5 years’ experience.
