Administrative, workplace work is the bane of everybody’s existence. It’s why there are precise roles at firms—so individuals who don’t need to do the admin work pays another person to do it.
It’s particularly difficult for small to medium-sized tour operators who don’t have the time to cowl all the executive work whereas additionally guiding or the cash to pay another person to do it.
Even the large tour guiding firms who can afford entrance employees can profit from automating mundane workplace duties and as a substitute, give their workers one thing extra thrilling to do.
What you’ll learn:
Hack #1: Automate Your Email Management
Hack #2: Automate Your Guide And Trip Calendars
Hack #3: Automate File Management
Hack #4: Automate Tasks Done In The Office
Hack #5: Automate Reports Generation
Hack #6: Automate Invoice Creation and Accounting
Hack #7: Automate Customer Service
Hack #9: Staying Up-To-Date With Industry News
Hack #1: Automate Your Email Management
Using e mail automation instruments for tour workplace operations helps you type, prioritize, reply to, and ship automated emails, whether or not that’s inner communications or advertising and marketing. You can create templates for widespread responses, schedule follow-up emails, and arrange auto-responses for out-of-office messages too. This can release a big period of time in your or your employees’s day.
Email Marketing and Newsletters
We’ve written about e mail advertising and marketing for journey guides earlier than and the way e mail advertising and marketing will help your tour guiding enterprise. For occasion, it’s inexpensive, it’s extra more likely to drive bookings than social media, it saves you time, and it builds buyer loyalty.
It’s additionally time-consuming.
There are jobs devoted to only e mail advertising and marketing and being a small to medium-sized enterprise, it’s unlikely you’ve gotten the time or cash to dedicate all of it to e mail advertising and marketing. It’s nonetheless tremendous vital to take action we advocate automating it as finest as you’ll be able to.
How?
Find an e mail service supplier
There are so many choices to select from with regards to e mail service suppliers. Some issues to contemplate when searching for an e mail service supplier that’ll assist automate your e mail advertising and marketing and newsletters:
- It’s easy and makes it simple to create extremely partaking and visually interesting emails.
- Lets you ship focused and customized bulk emails.
- You can simply handle your contact record, categorize recipients into teams, and observe your e mail’s efficiency.
- Is legit and gained’t get your emails despatched to spam folders.
- Offers mobile-optimized templates.
- It’s not loopy costly.
Brainstorm advertising and marketing emails and e-newsletter subjects
Once you’ve discovered an e mail service supplier to automate your e mail advertising and marketing and newsletters, you’ll want to really give you what you need to say in these emails.
You can create automated emails despatched quarterly or on holidays to push a promotion.
If you recognize your shoppers’ birthdays and anniversaries, you’ll be able to create automated emails with a particular supply despatched to them on their big day.
Booking Confirmations & Trip Reminders
If you aren’t utilizing an working system like Origin, then it’s important to ship reserving confirmations and journey reminders manually (otherwise you’re not sending them in any respect). This takes up solely an excessive amount of time and it’s one thing that may be automated.
Use your e mail service supplier
You may use the identical e mail service supplier (ESP) to connect the affirmation receipt to an e mail with a template already created.
When it’s getting nearer to the journey, you may also use your ESP to remind your shoppers of the reservation.
Use on-line reserving software program that automates it for you
Or you should utilize one thing like Origin that robotically sends reserving confirmations and journey reminders to your prospects with their complete price, date and time of the journey, and no matter vital data you embrace.
Review Requests
Do you allow evaluations as much as your shoppers to recollect? Or do you’ve gotten a approach to robotically remind them to go away a overview after their journey when you’re nonetheless recent on their minds?
You also can automate this utilizing your ESP or through the use of an working system like Origin. After each journey, Origin robotically sends your shoppers an e mail requesting a overview.
Hack #2: Automate Your Guide And Trip Calendars
Another administrative job to automate is your information and journey calendars. How many instances have you ever discovered your self with no information to steer a visit otherwise you overbooked a visit since you didn’t have a approach to automate all of it?
Use calendar automation instruments to schedule your guides and journeys, and to remind you of vital occasions. This will help you keep on high of your schedule and keep away from indignant prospects.
Guides’ Calendars
There are a number of employees scheduling apps you should utilize to automate your guides’ calendars. Some of those embrace Deputy, ConnectTeam, Shiftboard, and Sling.
Most of those employees scheduling apps have automated scheduling, schedule distribution, shift swapping, push notifications, two-way texting, cell clock out and in, and many others. Instead of utilizing a whiteboard or Excel spreadsheet, these would make it easier to keep on high of your guides’ schedules.
Trip Scheduling
There are loads of choices to select from with regards to automating journey scheduling, like Rezdy, Checkfront, Fareharbor, PeekPro, and Acuity. They all include their execs and cons, however one factor’s for positive: they will all get a visit booked for you. Probably.
Unfortunately, a number of these employees and journey scheduling apps don’t talk with one another, which suggests you don’t have a simple approach to know who’s accessible and who isn’t for journeys. If you’re utilizing two completely different apps, you’re no higher off than you had been once you had been doing this manually.
Origin automates information calendars and journey scheduling, the place each are in fixed communication with one another so that you’re by no means brief on a information or overbook a visit.
Hack #3: Automate File Management
Use file automation instruments to arrange and handle information, and to automate duties corresponding to backups and archiving. This will help you save time and scale back the danger of information loss.
File Managers
A few stable file administration instruments are Google Drive and Dropbox. They each securely retailer paperwork and make it simple to arrange and entry them as nicely.
Use optical character recognition (OCR) know-how
OCR know-how can be utilized to scan and digitize paper paperwork, like worker paperwork, workers’ emergency contact data, contracts, and permits. This makes it simpler to retailer and seek for data and reduces the necessity for guide information entry.
Digital waivers
Electronic signature software program can streamline the doc signing course of. It eliminates the necessity for printing, signing, and scanning paperwork, and can be utilized to signal waivers, invoices, and different vital paperwork.
If you’re utilizing a platform like Origin, your company are despatched digital waivers, that are saved safely inside Origin so you’ll be able to entry them when it is advisable to.
Hack #4: Automate Tasks Done In The Office
To be capable of supply spectacular adventures to shoppers, it is advisable to have your workplace and administrative duties automated too. Use job administration instruments to create to-do lists, assign duties, and keep on high of the vital issues that maintain your tour operations working easily.
Task Management Apps
What’s improper with utilizing a sticky be aware when you’ve gotten one thing to do? Because they get misplaced. They’re forgotten. Or they’ve delicate data they usually’re hanging out in your desk for all of the world to see.
There are simply as many to-do record apps as there are issues it’s important to get finished. When you’re searching for an app to automate your workplace duties, you need to be certain it:
- Add and manage duties simply and rapidly.
- Lets you manage your duties in ways in which be just right for you.
- Reminds you of any deadlines.
- Has a clear consumer interface.
- Syncs with different platforms you utilize.
Some of the highest job administration apps embrace Todoist, TickTick, Microsoft To Do, Things, amongst others. We advocate utilizing one which integrates with Zapier, which basically connects all of your apps collectively (together with Origin).
Hack #5: Automate Reports Generation
Use report automation instruments to generate studies from information in your database or spreadsheet. This can prevent time and make it easier to get the data it is advisable to see how your guiding enterprise and guides are performing, the place it is advisable to focus, and the way a lot cash you’re making.
Web Analytics
Hopefully you’ve gotten Google Analytics arrange in your web site so you’ll be able to observe the visitors coming and going, your viewers, and the place they’re coming from. Set up Google Analytics if you happen to haven’t finished so already and take a number of hours to learn to use the dashboard.
You’ll get extra insights utilizing Google Analytics than counting on solely what your prospects inform you. And you’ll be able to automate it by constructing studies.
Bookings, Trips, and Customer Information
You ought to be capable of export your reserving, journey, and buyer information on no matter platform you’re utilizing. If you’re on a platform that doesn’t permit it, then you definately’re lacking out on a possibility to research vital data.
You ought to be capable of simply see all of the bookings you’ve made, journeys up to now and future, and see all of your buyer data. With Origin, admins can export all of the pages with pertinent information. That manner you may make knowledgeable enterprise selections.
Hack #6: Automate Invoice Creation and Accounting
Save your self time, keep away from errors, and ensure you receives a commission on time with bill and accounting automation. These instruments can create invoices from information in your database or spreadsheet and automate duties corresponding to bookkeeping and tax preparation.
Invoicing
Luckily, a number of on-line reserving techniques supply some sort of invoicing, which must be the usual since it is advisable to receives a commission for the booked journeys they’re serving to streamline. Origin does this too. Not solely will we bill, however we are able to take deposits and also you set the gathering date.
Accounting
The main identify in accounting might be QuickBooks. It’s pretty simple to make use of and with Zapier, you’ll be able to join your reserving software program, like Origin, with QuickBooks for streamlined accounting.
Hack #7: Automate Customer Service
Use customer support automation instruments to reply buyer questions and resolve points. This will help you present higher customer support and scale back the period of time you spend on guide duties.
Implement chatbots
Chatbots can be utilized to automate customer support and assist duties. They can reply often requested questions, schedule appointments, and deal with fundamental duties with out you having to reply calls outdoors of workplace hours or miss one thing vital.
Notable customer support apps embrace Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, and Help Scout.
Answering prospects’ questions
If you’re not into the chatbot thought, an alternative choice is to easily create an FAQ web page in your web site to level prospects there. Granted, you gained’t be capable of cowl each single query somebody may need, which the place a chatbot otherwise you or one in every of your employees would are available to assist, however it should prevent a while.
Hack #8: Automate Marketing
Use advertising and marketing automation instruments to automate duties like social media advertising and marketing and lead era.
Social media advertising and marketing
We’ve beforehand written about social media advertising and marketing. Like can social media advertising and marketing assist develop your journey guiding enterprise and why tour operators want a social media technique. We’re followers of social media however it does take a number of time to get and maintain a following.
You’ll nonetheless have to seek out and make content material, however scheduling it may be automated. Again, there are many apps to select from to automate your social media posting, like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Zoho, MeetEdgar, Loomly, Sendible, Buffer, and SocialPilot.
Lead era
Lead era is a elaborate approach to say getting company’ contact data so you’ll be able to attain out to them later or keep high of thoughts once they’re able to e-book a visit with you.
In addition to e mail advertising and marketing, there’s Google Ads, which lets you promote to vacationers who’re at present trying to find journeys. If you don’t have the time to do your individual outreach or the cash to rent a gross sales particular person, your finest answer is paying to point out up in search outcomes robotically when vacationers use key phrases you’re focusing on.
And when guests come to your web site, ensure you have an attractive e mail seize type (set this up utilizing your e mail service supplier) so you’ll be able to contact them later with offers and promotions.
Hack #9: Staying Up-To-Date With Industry News
Laws and insurance policies are continually altering and it may be difficult to remain up-to-date on them whereas additionally managing your corporation. Make your life simple by automating this too.
Set up Google Alerts
You can arrange Google alerts to get emails when new outcomes for a subject present up in Google Search. You decide the subject and Google will e mail you when one thing new pops up. It’s simple to do, however it may well rapidly get out of hand. Enter 10 completely different subjects and anticipate 10 separate emails.
It’s an effective way to remain up on developments and insurance policies inside the open air. Here’s learn how to set it up.
Use an aggregator app
If you don’t need to obtain a handful of emails (in your already overflowing inbox), then use an aggregator app like Flipboard or Feedly. They’ll present you articles from the sources you select to see in a single place.
By automating workplace and administrative work, it can save you time, improve effectivity, and scale back errors. Take a while to determine the duties that may be automated, and select the appropriate instruments and applied sciences that may make it easier to consolidate your platforms and duties on the identical time.