Account Manager, Clarity, winner of the Programme Achievement Individual Award 2024

Congratulations on your award! Can you tell us what this recognition means to you?

It means everything! A career goal of mine was to be nominated for an industry award, let alone win one! I am very career-driven, so to be recognised by my colleagues, customers and industry peers makes the harder days all worth it! I hope to be a role model and example for younger talent looking to enter our incredible industry; achieving an award such as this, helps me to demonstrate the things that can be achieved with hard work and determination.

What inspired you to pursue excellence in your specific field within the business travel industry?

I want to achieve the best that I am capable of and demonstrate the value I can bring to my customers and business. For me to do this I needed to think outside the box, and come up with initiatives that would really make a difference and stand-out.

You've made remarkable strides in account management. What strategies have been most effective in driving online adoption and improving customer feedback?

For driving online adoption, it has been key to understand the individual requirements and commercial models of my customers. The overall benefit of increasing online adoption helps to support with resource for us as a business. For the customer, it supports them in driving a more cost-effective solution and efficiencies in completing bookings instantly online. Analysing each customer’s buying behaviour allowed me to identify where improvements can be made and feed this back to them constructively.

For improving customer feedback, this was ensuring we as a business worked collectively to understand customer feedback, and then implement a process to allow for us to pro-actively manage, track and resolve any feedback. We now have an agreed process to support feedback and to also understand this feedback better.

Can you share an example of a particularly challenging project you successfully managed?

Increasing online adoption was a challenging project. The industry has quickly become a tech driven industry with a variety of booking tools now available. Bookers and PA’s, however, have for many years been reliant on having that offline support from someone who makes bookings on their behalf, and the transition to self-service online isn’t always an easy change.

Identifying specific training requirements for bookers and PA’s who needed that extra support was key in making this project work.

Making training relatable to them so, for example, showing bookers and PA’s how to book a journey that is a common route or location for them. 

Raising awareness was also key in making this a success as the initial challenge was: why do they need to change?

Demonstrating the time and savings that can be achieved per customer really supported in driving this change.

What advice would you give to others in the business travel industry looking to make a significant impact?

To expect setbacks. However, have the determination to achieve the goal you have set yourself!