The small-ship cruise line said its new call centre in Welwyn Garden City would provide localised support to help increase productivity and efficiency of inbound calls, resulting in “greater agent and guest satisfaction”.
Starting 3 June, the 22-person call centre team will include 15 customer-facing agents, five internal agents, one team leader and one manager.
The team will handle calls from 8am to 6pm Monday through to Friday, with agents in North America helping from 6pm to 8pm and then 10am to 6.30pm on Saturdays. Operations will ramp up to full capacity from 1 July.
The news comes days after Silversea confirmed it was moving its UK call centre operations to the Philippines to offer agents globally 24-hour support.
Azamara’s new chief executive Dondra Ritzenthaler said opening a call centre demonstrated “huge authentic commitment” to the UK market when “others are getting out of the UK”.
“[While] some people are moving their call centres away from the UK, we’re increasing our sales people and our commitment to this market,” she said. “Around 90% of bookings in this market come via travel agents. We wanted to show a huge authentic commitment to this market.
“The demand for a UK call centre is a testament to their hard work as the market continues to grow. The UK has long been a leading market for Azamara, but its growth in recent years under [UK managing director] David Duff’s leadership has been extremely impressive."
Ritzenthaler added: “I remain committed to investing in our key international markets to ensure we’re constantly developing and improving our services and support.”
Azamara sales through the UK and Irish market hit record levels last year and now the line is keen to build on that, said Duff, who described the UK market “a real corner stone” of the Azamara brand.
The new UK centre is among several recent initiatives announced by Azamara to support agents, including virtual and face-to-face training sessions, a new ship visit programme and the launch of a new trade loyalty programme.
