Ola!
Im writing in from The Blueberry Trails. We are an experiential travel company based out of Mumbai, operational since Sept 2010. Holiday packages with an experiential twist is our usp, as we believe that travel is so much more than just sight seeing.
We have catered to 1500 happy customers since inception with a total of 150 trips on ground: weekenders from Mumbai, longer holidays around the country and corporate getaways, however we wish to take this to the next level, and we might need some help from other members of the start-up eco system. Members like you.
So let me get straight to the point, in the next part of this post I will be addressing a few pain points, and a perhaps if you give it a read the solution may lie there with you. Or you could help by just spreading the word too:)
- Automation
- Manpower: Fulltime employees +Interns
- Office space.
- Automation. The sales process that we currently follow, is very manpower intensive. The entire process of receiving a call, finding their interests, sending them an email with trip options, out of which they choose a couple, giving them a comparative study of the two and then finally making a sale. This entire process is currently done one email at a time. Consuming time, energy, manpower costs and millions of cups of coffee. The team feels that most of this process could be automated. Atleast the initial checking out the trip locations and their availability/customization on the website. Post which a chat option of a telephone call in facility will be handy to close the sale. We were looking at a software which automates this inbound sales call and can be added to the website, which happens to be the first interface that we have with the customers. Have you developed something like this, or know someone who has?
- We are looking to develop a small team of dreamers and doers right here at Blueberry Trails. So we have these few FULL-TIME positions open.They will have the following role:
-Sales: Weekend trips, Longer holidays and Corporate trips
-Trip Planning: A travel enthusiast who will look after the logistics behind the trips, also help us hunt down more locations to add to our portfolio
The SUPERINTERN portfolio will include 2 functions: Social media engagement and Travel research. Will be a paid internship.
3.Office location. If you know anyone who has a small office space to lease, hook us up with them. Glamour quotient can be minimal, but what we aren’t ready to compromise on is a happy vibe. So a simple place with a happy vibe will be just great:)
We are so so grateful to Alok to give us this space to reach out to you. It was his idea to take this out to you and try the crowd sourcing method of getting things done. He is super optimistic about getting a great response and we are super excited too. So hoping to hearing from you real soon.
If you want to connect, you can find me on sudeepta@theblueberrytrails.co.in/9820925721
Perzen Darukhanawalla
Hi Sudipta,
Great to have you write in. I’ve had a few friends go on tours with Blueberry Trails and they have always come back raving about the experience so congrats! In regards to your questions, here’s a few pointers that may help:
1. Automation – I’ve been in the hospitality/service industry for a while now and I may be labelled a black sheep for this but there is nothing better than having a human being to talk to. This is the reason why people in India still choose the smaller mom and pop travel agencies than the big daddies who automate everything. I feel that your usp of being boutique and human would be under threat if you were to automate too much. You could instead look at improving some aspects of your site such as having a trip schedule that’s a bit longer (typically people want to plan in advance) or having an algorithm that shows up places based on where they live and how far they want to travel. You could also make the trip planning experience easier by setting up calls rather than communicating via email and that would still give the customised human touch in my opinion.
2. For HR, I have a couple of friends within this sector so will ask them if they are interested. But, you could also check out letsintern.com, IRMA is looking for placements for its management interns and other interning portals or connect with Sushrut Munje here at Rodinhoods – he gets invited to place interns in his startup Hammer and Mop so he could share some leads with you.
3. I am a big believer in the sharing economy so I feel a shared office space may be useful? If you are looking for something shared then I would suggest Bombay Connect – they have a really super vibe and its full of other startups. There is also the playce.in and a few others around mumbai.
I am a big time travel enthusiast so would like to connect just to have a big yabber one of these days 🙂 Happy to have you on board The Rodinhoods – it will be the best decision you’ve made!
Manish Golchha
Completely agree with Perzen for point 1 but Perzen if Sudeepta wants to grow bigger, she need to go in auto mode may be partially. To capture big market, you need to give more options to your customers which can be possible only through ready to book packages or at least to checkout what all options are available via website.
2. Lets Intern is really good & quality of students are there for internship.
3. Shared office – You may checkout firstoffice.in (South Mumbai) or The Playce (Mulund). Bombay Connect have more than 39 waiting thats what I heard about.
Engineer by Force, Traveler by Choice.
Welcome to Rodinhood !!!
Sudeepta Sanyal
Thanks Perzen and Manish
Firstly for the warm welcome
Perzen, for sharing the positive feedback about our trips. Words like that make our day/week.
So in terms of the debate about automation vs the good-ol-fashioned way,I do agree that DIY travel planing is not very hot. also customers need to have someone to talk to. We couldn’t agree more. But then I will agree with Manish that we will have to automate a part of our operations to go beyond catering to a few hundreds of customers. We do need scale to take the business to the next level. But we do realise that we will need to have a good team in place to answer calls about the trip, not the usual call centre execs , but travel curators who understand the need of the experiential traveler. Thus we are still looking for a more automated version of the website, a good developer to get that done.
Thank you Manish for your inputs on the internships. We have already posted on sites like letsintern and the likes. Got a few good applications, looking forward to a whole lot more. What would you suggest would be the best way to get freshers for a full-time role? Any suggestions.
Will check out the office space sites. I have heard of the co-working options, sounds pretty interesting, we will definitely look at it in details.
Looking forward to many more such exchanges:)
Manish Golchha
I suggest, if you have bit of established product & giving options to travel, its all goes with kind of attitude he or she carry. Even when I hired couple of interns, I try to check their past experience but more than that what I ask them was about their future goal and if somewhere my company is adding value to his career then we shortlist those students. Today’s youth (most of them) looks more for recognition in their group circle (a story which they can share) and if you can add that, you can get best out of them.
Milind Katti
Dear Sudeepta,
If your usp is experiential travel then experience starts with the first connect/touch with your company. From that angle even if you automate certain repeated processes, keep the ‘human touch’ alive.
With respect to automating sales process following aspects can be looked at without compromising the experience.
1. Self service wizards on the site to help customers move through all options that is manually provided today. But be sure to give them a number to call anytime if they wish.
2. Centralised database of all past customers with their preferences, spends etc.
3. Centralised database of all prospects (lost past prospects as well as future prospects). a ll types of leads (web forms, event etc) are routed here.
4. Ensure sales team keeps this updated (even if they spend 1 day a week to do this but ideally they should do this as and when)
All the above requires a good CRM system that can connect to your telephony system & website. There are many options. I can suggest 2 extremes.
One: Use opensource SugarCRM with one good PHP programmer to customize get whatever you want. Your only expense is PHP programmer. You can also connect this to opensource soft epabx like elastics (PHP programmer can do that too). This option is inexpensive, lot of flexibility in terms of customization but dependence on that PHP guy. You can also use open source e-mail marketing tool effectively to generate leads if data in the CRM is updated with right fields. Alternately if you can spend a little more try ZOHO with many connectors it has. You can write to shri@opensource-india.com who has done this at my company. I will speak to him, he will provide free consultancy on how to do this.
Second: You can go for salesforce (any global CRM) with Avaya telephony & the jazzz. They are good, scalable & expensive.
Hope this helps.
Milind Katti