My friend Dale Collie, left Indy for the warm of N. Carolina years ago. But we stay in touch electronically and I love reading his newsletters and updates. I enjoy smart, no nonsense approach. I hope you will too!
Leadership Edge: Savvy leaders provide the right tools to do the job right.
Is anyone still using a travel agent to book air travel? I just booked tickets to Rome for an Eastern Mediterranean cruise and spent an inordinate amount of time searching the various on-line booking sites. After way too much research, I found that some on-line sites cannot be trusted (duh!) and that no matter what the displayed price per ticket, they all pretty much wind up in the same range once taxes and fees are added.
Finally, I went to the airline site and booked the ticket. Sounds easy. Right? Well, not so fast there … when I entered my credit card info (as I’ve done many times with this airline), an alert screen came up saying I needed to enter my credit card data (which was also shown on the screen just as I entered it). So … now we have to call the number shown and work through the Mash One for English (that’s NC talk for Touch One), answer yes and no a few times, Mash other numbers followed by the pound sign and finally get a live person.
Oh … we’re not done yet … so he takes all the info (I wish he could have Mashed One), then he tells me, “Oh, I must transfer you for international flights.” And we go through the Mashing and Pounding thing again.
Just as the international customer service assistant (very nice southern voice with no Mashing) started to help me, the confirmation email arrived – while the alert thingy was still on the screen.
We’re almost finished … now we need to select seats because the seat thing “wasn’t available at this time.” So I request bulkhead seats (for a real reason), and I’m told she can only assign bulkhead for domestic flights, I’ll have to wait until I’m at the airport and request for the international flights …
How do you spell that word … Sheeessh!
The point of all this is — give your team the right tools for the job. Saving pennies by booking my own flights is counterproductive when there are many more important things I could be doing.
- Ask your team members what new or old technology you could provide to help them be more productive.
- Review your own routine to see where you’re wasting time and effort 3. Put the changes in the budget if you can’t afford them right now
And if you work with a travel agent, I’d sure like to have the contact info.