Whether it’s heli-skiing in British Columbia, a guided trip to the French Alps or family fun on Copper mountain, Colorado, Ski.com’s experienced Mountain Travel Experts can plan the perfect trip for each client’s budget and preferences.
The company began 50 years ago as Aspen Ski Tours. Working with 120 resorts worldwide, their services include airfare, lodging, lift tickets, equipment rental, ground transportation and high-level concierge services.
While competitors have left the industry, Ski.com has continued to grow. “It’s our buying power — the ability to have as many different products as we have in as many different resorts,” says Peisach. “You want a house, you want a hotel, you want a townhouse, you want ski-in-ski-out, you want five-star, you want one-star … whatever you want, we can pretty much provide it for you.”
After running into limitations with previous chat software, they moved to a new service provider that offered a blended call center. The call part worked, but the chat never did. “We were having major issues losing, frankly, a lot of money, because we depend on the sales that come in through the website,” Peisach recalls.
Chats were not being delivered to their agents and the company was losing a lot of business. They depended on the chat system to communicate with agents and retail clients on the websites, and it wasn’t working. They were in the middle of the ski season and knew they needed to make a change.
“The more we take chats and the more we convert, the more money we make.”
While researching multiple platforms, Peisach spoke with a tawk.to representative and decided to give it a try. “We did. And it’s, frankly, one of my best decisions,” he recalls.
After implementing tawk.to on the first website, chats started coming through. They could see what the visitor was typing in real time and, very quickly, had a sale.
“We said, ‘This is it. This is the platform,’ and we made the transition and pushed it out to the rest of our websites.”
Seeing the visitor’s message in real time was only one of the features that brought Ski.com to tawk.to. They can now follow each visitor through the website and see which page they’re on. Agents can handle four or five chats at a time. Team members can stay in touch with direct messaging. And with tawk.to’s webhooks, Ski.com can now take a chat that’s coming in and start a quote in their system with information provided by Google or another third party.
After adopting tawk.to, Ski.com has seen sales increase. While in-house Travel Experts answer most of the chats during business hours, tawk.to’s Hired Agents are always there to take chats when no agent is available, so visitors don’t have to wait.
The 24×7 Hired Agent Service has also made a big difference after hours. Before adopting tawk.to, the company was losing business from missed chats that came in at night. Now, the tawk.to agents collect any information needed, so a team member can convert it into a quote and send it to the client the next morning.
Clients now have another way to reach out any time they need support. For example, if a traveler is unable to make contact via an emergency phone number, they can reach out in the chat and the tawk.to agents will message the team directly to address the issue.
Live chat is now eclipsing phone support, especially for millennials, who would rather text than talk. “tawk.to has helped us reach those clients by being able to chat with them as opposed to call. Some of those clients may not have ever called us,” says Peisach.
“A lot of the chat platforms out there are great for service centers, but for call centers that actually do sales, tawk.to is great. tawk.to can handle a service center, but it can also handle a sales center, which is what we are.”
Share your own entrepreneurial journey and help build an inspiring collection of stories. We’ll film it then share it with the 5,000,000+ members of the tawk.to community. We’re excited to hear what you do with tawk.to to get closer to your customers.
The green widget you see below this text is the tawk.to live chat widget, if you click it you will see the window maximize and you will be able to chat with the tawk.to team 24×7-365. You can add a chat widget like this on your own site, with your own custom colors, messages, size, position and language. Click the widget and give it a try!
