Helping Holidu and Bookiply on their high-growth journey

Growing fast isn’t easy – especially in the travel industry. Holidu, the Munich-based holiday rental platform, and its sister company Bookiply – designed for property owners to easily manage their holiday lets – know this better than most.

Despite a challenging year for the sector, the companies remain two of the fastest-growing start-ups in Germany, and are looking forward to further expansion in 2021. Central to this strategy is their customer service team, who handle bookings from across Europe every day.

We spoke to Darius Abde-Yazdani, Managing Director at Bookiply, as well as Johannes Rahn and Erika Lovisetto, who jointly manage the customer service team for both companies, to understand their challenges – and how they’ve used Aircall to overcome them.

Efficiency is the top priority

One of the main tasks Darius faced was unifying the systems used by both companies to streamline processes and create new efficiencies, especially for the customer service team. Initially using different communication tools, he needed to find a solution that could integrate easily with each business’s operating systems.

While email and WhatsApp were used regularly, voice remained the key channel for both Bookiply and Holidu. The team found that customers value its directness, especially for more sensitive aspects of their bookings. Keeping it at the forefront, using tools that communicate with each other, was essential.

“We had ended up with so many different tools that didn’t talk to each other,” says Darius. “We went through a rationalisation process and started to consider integration capabilities as a key criterion for every tool we use. From there, Aircall stood out as a clear and credible option for everything we needed.”

Flexibility meets integration

The two main priorities for integration were Pipedrive and Zendesk, both critical for the sales and customer service teams. For sales, Pipedrive means they can access all important information from both property owners and customers in one place – something that has further streamlined their operations – and having a voice platform that integrates seamlessly was essential.

It was the same for customer service and Zendesk, as Johannes aimed to continue driving efficiencies in the team’s approach:

“The Aircall Zendesk integration has allowed us to eliminate manual work and save time, as all key information is automatically entered into Zendesk for ticket creation, and we can easily keep track.”

The seasonal nature of the travel industry also requires a high level of flexibility when managing team resources and incoming customer requests. Different working hours, as well as creating new numbers and IVR trees, play a crucial role in the team’s ability to hit targets.

“If you set up your IVR messages correctly, you can help customers find solutions to their questions without speaking to them,” says Johannes. “This not only helps us keep call volumes under control, but also helps customers find answers faster.”

Best-in-class onboarding equals fast adoption

As the team continued to grow, the ability to onboard staff quickly became another must-have for both companies. During initial discussions with Aircall, this was highlighted as a key requirement, and both teams were delighted with how easy it was to get started – with the five minutes it took to integrate both Pipedrive and Zendesk being a particular highlight.

Moreover, although training and adoption can often take time, Aircall helped keep the process as simple and effective as possible, with the whole team up and running on the platform “in no time”, according to Darius. Erika agreed, saying:

“Aircall is overall extremely user-friendly, and the onboarding phase was very quick. Almost no one came back asking for further explanation – for me, that’s by far the best feature. It doesn’t take long for an agent to learn how to use it, so we don’t lose any time.”

A partner to grow with

If growth is difficult for a business to achieve, maintaining that growth is even harder. For both Holidu and Bookiply, finding business partners who can help them continually reach the next stage in their journey is crucial – especially as their needs are always evolving.

For Darius, this is another area where Aircall stands out:

“Aircall understands how important it is to listen to customers like us, and to make us feel welcome as a partner. That’s the feeling I get every time I speak to anyone on the Aircall team – they take the time to understand what the problems are, and what the best way to solve them is. It’s special – I really feel that we are growing together.”