Modernizing Travel Agency Contact Centers: Practical Steps for Better Operations

After 20 years working across product development and travel operations, I’ve seen firsthand how customer expectations have evolved—and how travel agencies evolve with them. I’ve worked with teams managing everything from airline partnerships to corporate travel, and no matter the segment, the same pain points emerge:

• Agents overwhelmed by repetitive inquiries that don’t generate revenue

• Siloed communication channels leading to inefficiencies

• Rigid workflows and outdated methods that slow down service

The challenge isn’t just about adding more agents or adopting new communication channels. Instead, modernizing a contact center requires a shift in strategy—leveraging the right technology, optimizing workflows, and ensuring your agents focus on the interactions that truly matter.

Here’s how travel agencies can take practical, high-impact steps to modernize their contact center operations.

Step 1: Identify & Reduce Low-Value Work

Even a well-structured FAQ page can significantly reduce inbound requests.

One of the biggest inefficiencies in travel contact centers is the sheer volume of repetitive, non-revenue-generating inquiries that consume agent time. These include:

• Questions about existing bookings (e.g., “What’s my baggage allowance?” or “What terminal is my flight from?”)

• Visa and entry requirement checks

• Basic itinerary details that travelers could retrieve themselves

• General airline policies (e.g., change fees, cancellation rules)

Deflecting as many of these inquiries away from your in house agents has the greatest impact on efficiency. Many modern travel agencies implement self-service tools—such as chatbots, online knowledge bases, and automated notifications—to provide travelers with instant answers. Even a well-structured FAQ page can significantly reduce inbound requests.

Step 2: Automate Routine Transactions

While self-service can handle informational queries, transactional tasks like cancellations, ticket changes, and refunds still require significant agent involvement.

The solution? Automation.

Many agencies are now integrating AI-driven automation to process routine transactions, reducing the time agents spend navigating airline policies, fare rules, and systems. Automating exchanges, refunds, and schedule change processing can cut resolution times from hours to seconds—improving both efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Additionally, workflow automation within contact center platforms (such as Genesys, Five9, or Avaya) can streamline how requests are handled, ensuring:

• Cancellations and modifications follow predefined policies or are routed to your in-house agent best equipped to handle

• Fare rule validations are automated to prevent errors

• Customer notifications are sent proactively to prevent unnecessary follow-ups

By automating routine workflows, agencies free up their agents to focus on high-value bookings, personalized service, and complex problem-solving. I want to stress though that it's extremely important to find the right partner in building these automations though, because you don't want to risk removing one problem and creating two more with a poor customer experience or an increase in ADMs.

Step 3: Move Beyond Static Mailboxes & Phone Lines for Better Routing

One of the biggest inefficiencies I’ve seen over the years is how agencies manage support inquiries using dedicated mailboxes or phone numbers for different traveler types or accounts.

While this may have worked in the past, it creates silos that limit efficiency, transparency, and service quality.

Here’s why static routing methods fall short:

• Agents waste time manually sorting requests—figuring out which department or team should handle them.

• Lack of visibility across teams leads to delays in urgent traveler support.

• Rigid assignment rules don’t account for real-time needs, like prioritizing a stranded traveler over a general inquiry.

How AI Improves Routing & Transparency

Instead of relying on static inboxes and pre-set rules, agencies can use AI-driven routing that understands context, intent, and sentiment.

• Dynamic Prioritization – AI can analyze incoming emails, calls, or chat messages to detect urgency, booking status, and traveler sentiment. This means a flight cancellation request can be escalated immediately, while a general itinerary question is handled through self-service.

• Transparent, Cross-Department Visibility – Instead of emails sitting in an unchecked inbox or getting lost in a forwarding loop, AI-driven systems ensure that every inquiry is tracked, categorized, and routed to the right agent or automated workflow.

• Better Resource Allocation – AI can distribute workloads evenly across teams, preventing some agents from being overloaded while others wait for tasks. It also ensures that high-value clients or urgent issues don’t get stuck in a queue behind routine requests.

• Higher CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Scores) – When agencies replace static inboxes and traditional phone routing with context-aware AI, travelers get faster, more accurate responses, leading to a measurable increase in CSAT.

By moving beyond dedicated email inboxes and traditional call routing, travel agencies can build a more responsive, scalable, and intelligent customer support model.

Step 4: Strengthen Agent Performance with Real-Time Data & Monitoring

A modernized contact center isn’t just about handling requests—it’s about improving how agents work. Agencies looking to scale efficiently should focus on data-driven performance management, such as:

• Monitoring key agent metrics (e.g., response time, resolution time, NPS scores)

• Tracking customer sentiment to identify areas of friction

• Providing real-time coaching based on agent interactions

Some agencies have started using AI-driven analytics to track how agents handle calls, identifying where workflows can be optimized and where training is needed.

Step 5: Implement AI Without Overhauling Existing Systems

A common concern for travel agencies is that modernizing means replacing existing systems. That’s not necessarily the case.

Most AI-powered solutions today are built to integrate with existing contact center platforms (such as Genesys, Salesforce, or Zendesk) rather than replace them. This means agencies can:

• Layer AI-driven automation on top of their existing workflows

• Gradually roll out AI tools without disrupting daily operations

• Test automation and self-service in targeted areas before full implementation

By focusing on incremental improvements rather than full system overhauls, agencies can modernize their contact centers in a scalable, manageable way.

The Bottom Line: Efficiency Doesn’t Have to Mean Complexity

Having worked in travel operations for two decades, I know that modernization doesn’t happen overnight. Travel agencies don’t need to reinvent their entire support system to see improvements. Small, strategic steps—like deflecting low-value inquiries, and replacing static routing with AI—can make an immediate impact.

By replacing outdated static routing models with AI-powered context-aware automation, agencies can ensure that every traveler gets the right help at the right time, while agents focus on the tasks that truly matter.

Modernizing a contact center is about scaling smarter—not just scaling up. Agencies that invest in dynamic workflows, AI-driven routing, and automation-first strategies will be the ones that deliver faster, better service—without increasing operational costs.