“Our customer service philosophy is simple, direct, and human. We answer every call, email, Facebook message, Tweet, or support request with a human response.”

Interview by Kelsey Meyer of theloi.com

Every tour or activity provider can benefit from Rezgo, the software that Stephen Joyce and his company have developed.  Rezgo is a cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) reservation and booking system for tour and activity companies.  Rezgo provides small tourism businesses with a complete on-line booking engine, inventory and customer management, and payment processing.  Rezgo is simple and non-intimidating.  Businesses can sign-up for an account on-line, add their tour and activity products, connect their payment gateway, and begin accepting bookings from customers in a matter of hours.

Stephen Joyce understands the importance his company holds in the travel industry.  He is very proud of the fact that through the building of relationships with key influential members of the travel industry they have been able to help drive the importance of the tour & activity segment.  What truly makes Rezgo unique, and a leader in the industry is their attentiveness to customer service.

MO:
I am impressed by all of the services Rezgo offers for tour and activity providers.  Can you walk us through what a typical client of yours experiences when signing up for your services?

SJ:
We have two types of clients that sign up for Rezgo.  The first type is quite web savvy and self-sufficient.  These clients generally sign-up, start loading their tours and activities, activate their booking website, and start accepting bookings, sometimes within only a few days, and generally without any human intervention from us.  The second type of client requires more one-on-one support.  For these clients, we provide a walk-through of the system that takes about 45 minutes to an hour.  Once they see the system and how simple it is to use, even these clients are able to complete the remaining set-up on their own with only minimal support from our staff.  In all cases, when clients sign-up for Rezgo, they receive an email from me introducing them to the service with a list of on-line resources, and contact information for support.  By providing our clients with a name, a face, and way of contacting us, we immediately build trust and a sense of accountability.  I want our clients to know that Rezgo is not just some faceless web service. Rezgo is a group of passionate people who care about the client’s success.

MO:
Rezgo has an amazing pricing policy of only charging 5% transaction fee for web purchases, and 1% transaction fee for point of sale purchases.  Do you think this is one thing that makes you stand apart from other similar services?

SJ:
Yes, I think our pricing model does differentiate us.  We tried several different models from tiered subscription fees to a free & premium monthly subscription model.  We eventually settled on the transaction fee model because, philosophically, it was the one that made the most sense for us.  Our goal is to help our clients generate revenue.  If we make money when they make money, then our success is directly linked to our clients’ success.  This shared success constantly motivates us to make the system better, faster, and easier for our clients and their customers to use.

MO:
Rezgo obviously prides itself on excellent customer service.  What do you provide that is above and beyond the expected service from a cloud-based software service?

SJ:
So many cloud-based services remove the human element from the customer service equation.  Providing customer service, for many companies, is seen as a cost that needs to be reduced, outsourced, or handled with a convoluted phone directory.  Our customer service philosophy is simple, direct, and human.  We answer every call, email, Facebook message, Tweet, or support request with a human response.  Every message a customer gets comes from someone at Rezgo who is accountable to helping that customer find the answer they need, regardless of the channel through which the message was delivered.  The way we ensure the support load is manageable is by ensuring our software is tested rigorously and by focusing on maintaining a simple user-friendly interface.

MO:
You mentioned that you sponsored a study done by PhoCusWright that reported the size of the in-destination tour and activities segment as $27B, the third largest segment, larger than car rentals, cruise, and packaged vacations.  What kind of profound impact do you see this having on the segment?

SJ:
This is the first time research has been done about the in-destination tour and activities segment.  Even though companies like ours have always believed in the potential of the segment, it always seemed as if we were alone in the woods.    I expect that now that the industry has an understanding of the potential of the segment, organizations at every level of the travel food chain will look at ways of tapping into the segment.  I believe the most profound impact will be felt by the small businesses, which will finally make the leap to on-line in larger and larger numbers.  My hope is that by sponsoring the report and being active collaborators with the industry, that when these small businesses make the move on-line, they will turn to Rezgo to help them.

MO:
Rezgo is releasing its front-end booking engine as open source.  Can you share the strategy behind this move for the company, and what kind of impact you think it will have on the future of Rezgo?

SJ:
One of our goals is to foster innovation around our open and accessible XML API.  Rezgo is the only tour, and activity-booking platform that has a secure full-featured transaction ready set of XML messages.  Even though the API is well documented, building a booking engine front-end is a challenging and time consuming process.  For many small businesses, the cost of hiring a developer to build a custom interface is simply out of the question.  The open source code we provide is a complete framework, not just some sample code, but a full working booking engine built on top of the Rezgo XML API.  By releasing our front-end booking engine as open source, we hope to accelerate innovation by providing a starting point for developers.

MO:
With the tour and activity providers being such a fragmented segment, how do you reach these providers?

SJ:
Our primary marketing vehicle is our website, and our main way of reaching our clients is via the web.  Over the last few years we have developed a strong on-line presence thanks to our early adoption of social media.  We sponsor several industry blogs and I am a frequent contributor on Tnooz.com, a fast growing travel technology media website.  By producing a lot of relevant industry specific content and collaborating with the travel industry as whole, we have, and continue to build a lot of good will.  The more we participate and engage, the more content we produce, the more likely it is that our clients will find us when they are ready.