Sandbridge Travel is a small agency with big dreams. Sure, the Virginia Beach, VA retailer is only a year old, doesn’t have a specialty, and handles mostly leisure travel.
But it’s got two things going for it: An ambitious blueprint to expand its fledgling Web site, Cheapairlines.com, and an online customer service tool called Click 1-2-1 that it credits for a 5% boost in business in two months.
“Our growth plans are mostly online,” says Sandbridge Travel president Matthew Boughton. “A lot of our customers have questions and concerns before they buy a ticket on the Web. They want to talk to a real person, either to get their question answered, or sometimes just to give us a credit card number.”
Research suggests that Sandbridge needed to make a good connection with its customers or it would lose them. A study by Yankelovich Partners finds 63% of potential online transactions were not consummated because users needed more information. Analysts at Rubric, Inc., note that e-commerce ventures typically lose 60% of their customers every six weeks because of inadequate customer service.
Boughton says he chose Click 1-2-1 over competitors at MCI and AT&T because of its ease of use and lower rates. The phone companies also required service contracts, which Click 1-2-1 didn’t. The system installed within 20 minutes on his Web site and required no additional hardware or software.
Essentially, when a user clicks on a special button on the Cheapairlines.com site, it initiates a phone call between the agency and customer using conventional land lines.
“The response has been great,” adds Boughton. “We’ve been able to increase our sales when these calls come in, because we can ask things like — Do you need a hotel room when you’re in New York? and often, the answer is Yes.”
A business of Sandbridge Travel’s size (it books about $10 million in annual air volume and employs 10 agents) gets charged a one-time set-up fee of $129.95 and then a monthly maintenance fee of $14.95, plus 10 cents a minute over its toll-free number. Click Interconnect Inc. is a privately-held company based in Miami, FL.
For the agency, the alternatives weren’t as appealing. Boughton says one idea he’d toyed around with was hiring someone “to do chat from our home page during regular office hours, to answer any questions people might have,” but that proved impractical. “This just seemed like the easiest and most cost-effective way of doing it,” he says.
Click 1-2-1 is a relative novice to travel. Its two other high-profile industry clients, Baymont Inns, the 170-hotel chain formerly known as Budgetel, and Neal Watson’s Undersea Adventures all report the same or similar results.
But it remains difficult to quantify the effect of an online “call” button in terms of bottom-line revenue, and any gains can only be estimated in ballpark percentages. There are other technology vendors that offer real-time communication between the buyer and seller either in real time through a chat session, or through a video or audio link but
Click 1-2-1′s practical approach to linking people through technology that already exists is finding some fans in the travel industry. Whether customers will embrace this electronic marriage of old and new technology remains to be seen.
Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.
Elliott is consumer advocate 
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