Sales take off after airline team’s training

Citation

(2007), "Sales take off after airline team’s training", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 39 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2007.03739aab.001

Sales take off after airline team’s training

Employee performance at Virgin Atlantic’s contact centre climbed after a training programme that won a south-east regional award in the UK National Training Awards.

Following a downturn in the airline industry after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it became clear that the market was going to take time to recover. “The only way revenue could be bolstered was to increase the conversion rate of sales enquiries to sales, and reduce the cost of sales”, said Vanessa Baker, contact centre sales manager.

The contact centre wanted to achieve its goals while improving customer service – and set out to instil a sales culture alongside the service culture that existed.

One key problem for staff, who handle some two million calls a year, was the breadth of query they had to cover. “Everyone did a bit of everything”, said Paul Dickinson, director of customer service. “One minute you were selling a flight, the next answering questions about vegan meals.”

A separate sales operation was therefore created to handle 80 per cent of the sales calls, with the rest being handled by a service area. Staff who wanted to sell were recruited to work in a new sales environment with a bonus scheme linked to key performance indicators. A sales management team was given courses in sales skills, sales coaching and managing sales performance, and a three-day sales course was delivered to sales advisers.

Vanessa Baker said: “When the sales team went live the impact on the business was immediate, and within three months the programme had paid for itself. Productivity has increased every month since the programme began.”

The sales conversion rate jumped from 6 per cent in 2002 to 9 per cent in 2005. Revenue increased by 48 per cent in two years – substantially higher than the industry as a whole. More money is now earned from each call. And a staff survey showed that 92 per cent of the contact centre sales team was proud to work for Virgin Atlantic.