Case Studies / Travel
How a travel agency handled a flight-disruption email spike without burning out its team
Published
6 min read
Some client identities are withheld due to confidentiality and engagement agreements. References are available where appropriate.
25 min → <1 min
Per disruption email, at peak
4x
Email volume handled during a cancellation event
0
Casual staff hired for the surge
Challenge
During flight disruption events, the agency's inbox could receive four times its normal daily email volume within a couple of hours, with every affected traveler asking a version of the same question. Answering accurately meant checking each traveler's actual booking and the airline's current disruption policy, which could change hour to hour - previously requiring casual staff to be brought in just to keep pace.
Solution
PreSorted reads each disruption-related email, checks the traveler's booking and the airline's current policy for that specific disruption, and drafts a reply specific to their situation. The proposed rebooking, refund, or hold action goes to a staff member for a quick approval rather than being built from scratch.
Outcome
The agency has since handled two major disruption events with its regular team, with no casual staff and no weekend overtime. Average response time during a disruption dropped from over a day to under two hours.
This travel agency books flights, accommodation, and package holidays for clients across South East Queensland - a business that runs smoothly most weeks and gets tested hard on the days it doesn't. When a carrier cancels a bank of flights, or a route gets disrupted by weather, every affected traveler emails at once, all asking a version of the same question: what happens to my booking now?
Answering that well meant checking two things for every single email - the traveler's actual itinerary, and the airline's specific policy for that disruption, which could change hour to hour. Doing that by hand, at volume, under time pressure, was the hardest day of the month for the team, every time it happened.
The morning everything cancels at once
During a disruption event, email volume could hit four times a normal day's load within a couple of hours. Each email needed a staff member to open the traveler's booking, confirm what flights and connections were affected, check the airline's current rebooking or refund policy for that specific disruption, and then write a reply that was actually accurate to that traveler's situation.
At roughly 25 minutes per email under pressure, with hundreds of emails arriving in a morning, the team physically couldn't keep pace. The agency had previously brought in casual staff for major disruption events just to answer email, and even then, response times stretched into days for travelers further down the queue.
Checking the booking and the policy, every time
PreSorted now reads each disruption-related email, checks the traveler's booking in HubSpot to confirm exactly what's affected, and checks the current airline policy for that specific disruption before drafting a reply. Because the policy check happens fresh on every email, a change in the airline's rebooking terms partway through the day gets reflected immediately, not after someone manually re-briefs the team.
The draft reply and any proposed action - a rebooking request, a refund initiation, a hold - goes to a staff member for approval. Reviewing an accurate, pre-checked draft takes under a minute, compared to the 25 it used to take to build one from scratch.
- Checks the traveler's actual booking and affected flights
- Checks the airline's current disruption policy, refreshed on every email
- Drafts a reply specific to that traveler's situation, not a generic holding message
- Proposes rebooking, refund, or hold actions for a staff member to approve
Handling the surge without the surge staff
In the two disruption events following go-live, the agency handled the email volume with its regular team - no casual staff, no weekend overtime. Average response time during a disruption dropped from over a day to under two hours for the whole affected queue.
Travelers noticed the difference in the replies themselves, not just the speed - each one referenced their actual flights and the current policy, instead of a placeholder response promising an update later.
For a business where the worst days are also the days that define the client relationship, being able to answer every traveler accurately and fast - without scrambling for extra staff - turned the agency's hardest mornings into just another part of the job.
About Queensland Travel Agency
Location
Brisbane, QLD
Team
19 employees, seasonal surge staffing during disruption events
Systems connected
HubSpot
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