The Role Empathy Plays in Your Travel Business

We don’t often hear the word empathy used in business, but it’s a practice we are all familiar with. It’s the idea of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. It’s not just hearing, but actively listening with an open mind.

It’s closely tied to emotional intelligence, which is a trait that we strive to develop among our KHM Travel Group team members.

It’s an important quality for travel agents too, because they answer so many questions from clients, and are often asked to fix problems that they did not cause. Clients can understandably become emotional when something doesn’t go as planned on the vacation they’ve been looking forward to for months or years.

Of course, they turn to their travel advisor for a solution. Maybe they want to be relocated to a different property, or they are dealing with a medical emergency while on their trip. What an agent might not realize is that solving the problem is part of the process, but it shouldn’t be the first step.

The first step is demonstrating that you are empathetic to their situation.

Think about the last time you found yourself venting to a friend or family member about a challenge or frustrating situation. You were probably seeking advice, but first, you were looking for empathy.  You wanted your pain points to be acknowledged and validated.

Your clients need the same thing in stressful situations. They want to know that you are aware of their problem and that you recognize it as a problem that needs attention – your attention.  

This could be as simple as repeating their problem back to them, and then following that with, “I am so sorry you are going through this. I understand why you are upset, and I am here for you.”

Some circumstances may require agents to rely more on their emotional intelligence to get to the root of what is truly bothering their client. Maybe they skirt around telling you that their vacation wasn’t everything they’d hope it would be. Dig deeper by asking more questions. It may also require reading in between the lines of their responses or observing other non-verbal cues.

To ignore this step and skip right to the solution indicates that you don’t view their pain point in the same light as they do. To your client, it may seem that you are more focused on yourself, and getting things fixed as fast as possible so you can move on with your day, rather than on their experience. Ultimately, the goal is to shift their focus away from the negative thing that happened to them and towards the positive, which is that they chose to work with a travel agent that genuinely cares about them.

What’s the payoff? In the long run, investing in empathy can help you develop one of your business’s most important assets, which is your clients’ trust.

About the Author

Rick Zimmerman is the President and CEO of KHM Travel Group, one of the country’s leading host travel agencies. Rick joined the travel industry fresh out of college where he worked as a travel agent for a small agency in Cleveland, Ohio. After a 25-year career in the construction industry, Rick returned to his travel roots and helped found KHM Travel Group in 2005. Rick is an active advocate of the travel agent community and serves on multiple travel-related Advisory Boards.