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In this video you’ll hear from Gary Lewis, chief executive at The Travel Network Group.

Further information

Learn more about The Travel Network Group at thetravelnetworkgroup.co.uk

Video transcript

With Gary Lewis, chief executive at The Travel Network Group and TTG Media’s Charlotte Cullinan. 

Charlotte: Welcome to our In The Spotlight video with The Travel Network Group. Gary, you are making an announcement about your managed services proposition. Talk us through that and what you offer members.

Gary: Hi, Charlotte. Yeah, very simply, we have two managed service propositions, the Global Travel Group and Worldchoice+.

And what we find is we need simplicity and clarity when people are looking to join The Travel Network Group organisation, and by calling it The Travel Network Group Managed Services, allows us to say, this is enabling you as a business to have the benefits of a managed service – which is the finance function – all controlled, ran by us, to allow you to focus on sales and marketing.

And we just happen to have two options. And there’s some subtleties why you would choose one or the other, but we don’t want to get into that at the first part. So clarity and simplification is why we’re doing the rebrand.

Charlotte: Perfect, thank you. And what do you think sets your managed services apart from other options in the market? And tell us how you’re fostering a sense of community among your members as well.

Gary: It’s the largest – Global and Worldchoice+ put together – making the largest managed service, so therefore we’ve got the best back office technology to enable us to do that.

But the key that sets us apart, is by being a member of our managed service proposition, means that you’re a member automatically of The Travel Network Group, and by being a member of The Travel Network group, you get access to everything. That’s the commercials, that’s all the free marketing that goes on with that. That’s the technology, that’s the support. And specifically, it’s the people. Access to the people focusing on your needs as an individual member.

Regarding community, we have a vision. And that vision simply states it. Our vision is to create a community of inspirational leaders that open the world up to life changing experiences, and to create a community and understanding.

It comes into our vision of customer service. It is about building emotional relationships and being there and being able to support them on every step of that journey that our individual members are on. So the behaviours required across our organisation to support that community, build that emotional intelligence and emotional relationship, is the focus we have completely as our number one objective.

Charlotte: Thank you. And I know customer service is very important to The Travel Network Group. Could you explain your approach there?

Gary: It is the number one focus we have as an organisation. We recruit, we train every single person in our business to understand what customer service actually is, and customer service is actually building an emotional relationship in those moments of truth.

Whether you’re talking to them through email, how you are meeting, greeting is obvious, but speed of response, professionalisation, easy to do business with – the key measures that we train, recruit, and, of course measure our people against.

Charlotte: Brilliant. Thank you. And how are you helping your members stay competitive in an ever-growing market?

Gary: Understanding that members grow one customer at a time and decline one customer at a time, and getting that message across to our membership is the priority.

But obviously being able to give them stuff to enable that growth, whether that’s a business development action plan, whether that’s a focus on a strategy, whether that’s a decision on a part of the market, whether it is training or developing an individual around sales, around custom service or around product. It is really understanding what that member needs for their specific next step of their growth journey.

Charlotte: Wonderful. Thank you. And finally, what kind of support do agents receive?

Gary: I think I’ve listed some already, commercials, marketing, training academy – all the plumbing of your business whether that’s your merchant inquiry, your banking, your insurance products, your disruption covers.

But the key is the expertise and support from us as people and individuals. It’s the people that make a difference. It’s saying and doing what we say we’re going to do, to deliver against that for that individual member.

Charlotte: Thank you Gary. That was all really informative and thank you for watching our In The Spotlight video with The Travel Network Group.