Travel Customer Service Jobs and Careers in Blackpool & Hertford.
Within our NST and StudyLink teams in Blackpool, Lancashire and our European Study Tours Team in Hertford, Southern England, we have opportunities for telephone based customer service and travel industry professionals to use their talents delivering tours that inspire and delight customers.
Through a range of learning and development activities, including visits to worldwide destinations, job shadowing, training, and coaching, each of our Operations team members quickly become experts in a range of educational tour destinations, and tour planning.
This knowledge, coupled with their excellent customer service, communication and organisational skills, enable them to deliver high quality customer experiences to each and every travelling group.
Joining our Customer Service Teams
- A Customer First Attitude
- Fantastic Problem Solving and Organisational skills
- Strong administration and IT skills
When you join one of our operations teams, you will be given your own group of customers to work with based on the destinations you have been trained on, and, through regular contact by email and telephone, work closely with them in the months, weeks and days leading up to their departure date. You will also be there to listen to their feedback and their plans for next years tour when they return.
With so many groups travelling each year, and the high seasonality of educational travel, our Operations team members need to possess certain qualities to ensure success.
Our Tour Coordinators and Tour Planners work with our customers over many months. They provide the reassurance to our customers that everything will be perfect, with their diligent, “one step ahead” logic, and “nothing’s too much trouble” attitude.
Our Tour Planners and Tour Coordinators main aim is to support Teachers and Lecturers in the logistics of planning educational travel opportunities; so they can concentrate on delivering great learning outside the classroom experiences. This involves ensuring they are they can play multiple roles to give the right support to their customers when they need it. As a Tour Coordinator / Tour Planner you will be your customers’ personal organiser, solution finder, at times, counsellor, and even their friend. Organisational skills and a talent for solving problems, and staying calm under pressure is critical to delivering this.
Planning detailed travel itineraries for groups tours, and ensuring everything comes together perfectly for each and every customer group is a key responsibility of our Tour Planners and Tour Coordinators. Each tour requires careful planning to ensure that each element of the tour has been effectively confirmed prior to departure, and our Operations team members use a range of systems, including Microsoft Office, to efficiently plan each stage of our customers’ journeys. Therefore the ability to use technology is critical to success in these roles.
1. Rewards for Excellence in Service
We recognise the link between great customer service and customer loyalty, that's why we reward our Tour Coordinators and Tour Planners for delivering just that! Each team member can earn bonuses for both customer satisfaction and retention through our individual pay and reward packages. It's part of our commitment to supporting a Customer First culture.
2. Support, Coaching and Development
Our team members receive regular hands on support and coaching from their team leader as part of our commitment to continuously developing their potential. Each development plan is individually tailored to the aspirations of each team member, ensuring they get the support and development they need.
3. One Team Approach
We recognise that during our peak travel times, or times of travel disruption, our operations roles can get quite hectic. Dealing with unexpected changes, or even just needing the time to help quell a customer’s pre departure worries, can cause workload pressures for our Tour Coordinators and Planners. We work hard to develop a close team ethic within our operations teams, developing great relationships between members to help and support each other.
4. Educational Tour Experiences
We want our people to relate to our customers' experiences, that's why we send them to the same locations, visits and accommodation our customers travel to, as part of their ongoing training and development. Giving our team member's their own "outside the classroom" experiences supports them to develop the knowledge and experience to make our teams ‘best in class’.
5. Future Development Opportunities
With opportunities to develop as a Customer Service Executive, or Product Specialist, there are a range of opportunities should our Tour Coordinators wish to move into our Travel Specialist areas to help us develop our overall service reputation. Staying in the Operations team, there are opportunities to step into senior roles such as Operations Team Leader, Senior Tour Coordinators or Destination Champions.
These are just some of the fantastic benefits we provide our operations team members at each of our locations, alongside our competitive benefits package available to all our team members.
Interested in applying for one of our Educational Tour Co-ordinator or Tour Planner roles?
Use the Customer Service Jobs filter within our "search for jobs" tool to check out our current vacancies...
