America’s “Guru of Customer Service” heads to Nairobi to conduct travel seminar

The Villa Rosa Kempinski Hotel in Nairobi is the venue this Saturday morning for another workshop in customer care by Amadeus in conjunction with the Kenya Association of Travel Agents, in short KATA, to which 200 senior staff from Kenya’s leading travel agencies and in part from the wider region have been invited. Amadeus, Eastern Africa’s leading CRS provider, spared no expense to bring none other into the conference room than America’s John Tschohl, who has been dubbed as “The Guru of Customer Service” by USA Today and Time Magazine after publishing 8 books on the subject. Tschohl is the President of the Service Quality Institute and as such eminently qualified to bring the topic to Kenya where raising the bar for service delivery is now high on the agenda.

The aim of the seminar is to educate the East African travel trade on how to improve on customer service, grow their businesses, and remain competitive in the ever-more challenging environment of today’s world where technology advances need to be matched by increased human skills.

Juan Torres, the CEO of Amadeus East Africa, said it was the time for the East African tourism sector to up its game: “As a leading technology company, our focus is to help our clients run their business successfully. We are, therefore, delighted to welcome for the first time in Kenya, the guru of customer service, John Tschohl, to the KATA and Amadeus Customer Service Seminar. In this highly-competitive landscape and specifically in the travel and tourism industry, having an end-to-end customer service strategy supported by technology across multiple customer touch points is essential for companies to differentiate themselves and succeed.”

In turn, KATA Chairman Mr. S. G. Kaka said: “In today’s world, the only way to remain relevant is to deliver value to the customers who dictate whether you stay in business or not. Companies should, therefore, strive to deliver this value by having a clear customer service strategy.”

The seminar comes at a time when the travel industry in Kenya is facing challenges with a significant drop in tourists coming into the country. More than 20 hotels at the Kenya coast, considered the heart of tourism in the country, have already shut down in the first quarter of this year, prompting an industry-wide search for key game changers. While guarded optimism among industry players remains high, it is equally clear that Kenya has to up her game, and this seminar is aimed to accomplish exactly that by imparting what has worked well in America and other parts of the world to Kenya’s and East Africa’s leading travel agents.