Insider: The Art of the Online Up-Sell

By John Federman, CEO, eStara

Mr. John Federman

With nearly four out of 10 travel bookers researching online but booking offline, you’re probably happy to get the sales you do get online without worrying about how you can up-sell and cross-sell wary customers.   

While concerns about the security of using credit cards online to pay for their purchases still plague many consumers, a recent Forrester Research report found that hotel and travel companies can potentially expedite the online sales process, and boost the total order by up-selling and cross-selling relevant products, simply by implementing tools such as online chat and click to call. 

The hope is that travel sellers may be able to reduce online travelers' anxieties by offering assistance from an expert when the customer needs it most. Since most hotels started moving sales operations online, many were content to offer customers self-service tools to book their own plans online without any attempt to up-sell or cross-sell.  Can you imagine a travel agent not trying to up-sell or cross-sell a customer?  Why should things be any different on your Web site? 

Customer service tools are not the only solution to this problem, but they do play a major role in rescuing customers that are about to abandon your site and not book online because they have a question or concern.  By offering the right contact, at the right time, hotels can offer personalized experiences to each customer that reflect positively on their brands and help generate sales whether the customer books online or offline. 

The key is not whether or not you decide to engage your customers, but HOW you decide to engage your customers.  With you just a few simple steps, you can leverage the real-time data from your Web site to offer customers anything from promotions to customer assistance to an opportunity to provide feedback about their online experience.  Why not do these things to engage your customers in a dialogue with your brand? 

Another problem the haunts many hotel companies is the disconnect between their sales channels.  Nothing is more frustrating to a customer than beginning a transaction online and move to the telephone only to discover that they have to “start all over again” on the phone.  There is no reason why your call center agents can’t have access to the customer’s Web session data to improve service efficiency and look at the customer’s preferences to up-sell them on a different package based on their online behavior. 

In my article in this week’s Hotel Business Review “The Art of the Online Up-Sell“, I discuss the various types of chat and click to call deployment options available to hotels to help them up-sell and cross-sell potential customers.   

In an increasingly crowded environment, where the competition is just a click away, companies can no longer afford to let their Web site data go to waste and not try to maximize the value of each customer.  The time to engage is now. 

Sincerely, 

John Federman

CEO

eStara

703-842-4436

John.federman@estara.com