Strategic Partnerships Starter Kit (FHDN)

Slack is our internal communication platform that we use internally at FareHarbor. To customize your Slack sidebar theme check this page here.

Slack Profile

Your Slack profile should have:

• A picture of yourself
• Display Name: Your name
• Phone Number: Your number
• Email address: your@fareharbor.com
• City
• Title: Your Position Title

Slack Channels

This section is a list of relevant global and team-specific FareHarbor Slack channels, including a description of their purpose and the direct access link.

Team-Specific Slack Channels

You should join all the team-specific Slack channels.If you can’t find a channel or a room, let your Manager or the Strategic Partnerships Operations know that you should be added. Here’s the list of the channels:

#strategicpartners-affiliates – This is where all questions and communication for the Strategic Partnerships live. Any team can ask us questions in this room by using the workflows or by tagging @strategic-partnerships

#strategicpartnerships_team – This room is a private team room for the Strategic Partnerships Team members in Denver and Amsterdam for daily team communication, questions and important updates.

#fh_activity_sites – communication between Strategic Partnerships, Sites, SEO, Account Management, Sales Ops for all new and existing FareHarbor Activity Sites (FAS). A FareHarbor Activity Site is a destination-specific affiliate site that is operated by FareHarbor through the FareHarbor Distribution Network (FHDN) and our team is responsible for them.

#fhdnpayments – Communication between our team and Payments Operations

#affiliatesites – All things related to FHDN / affiliate sites (paid or free)

#fhdn_foghorn – Daily bookings coming through the FHDN

#new-inventory-fhdn – Updates when a live FH client Tier 2 or Above join the FHDN.

Global Channels

#lounge – Company-wide global announcements room

#account-management – Account escalations from the support team

#sales – Global Sales Announcements

#live – _Global Announcements of live clients

#ambulance – Global Announcements of any issues with FareHarbor and its partners that power it (for example if Stripe is having issues processing cards)

#product-updates – Updates in FareHarbor’s dashboard

#payment_operations – Used to ask the PayOps team questions

#support – Used to reach out to the support team for immediate assistance with a request or questions

#client-comms – Marketing campaigns/emails to clients

#fareharbor_compass – Updates on Compass, new articles, questions about issues with Compass pages

Americas Rooms

#colorado (Private Room) – Office announcements

APAC Rooms

#apac – Office Announcements

#apacsales – Announcements for APAC Sales

#apac_questionqueue – For questions relevant to all teams in APAC

EMEA Rooms

#emea (Private Room) – Office announcements

#emea_highlightreel – Sharing great feedback, calls, clients’ growth. All things motivating to keep on RIPPING and earning $

#emea_questionqueue (Private Room) – For questions relevant to all teams in

#emea_sales – Announcements for the EMEA Sales Team

Bonus Rooms

#industry-news – To share articles and updates regarding the tour & activity industry

#skeletoncrew – Global announcements regarding FareHarbor competitors

#tilt – “Today I Learned That” – share new things you have learned about FareHarbor and learn from others

#workscouncil – Questions, updates from the FareHarbor Work council

#conferences – Updates and requests regarding upcoming conferences

If you are a new hire or have transferred to our team from another FH department, you should have received access to Zendesk already from the Operations team. If you haven’t please submit the IT form. and request access to Zendesk.

What is Zendesk?

Zendesk is a customer support platform that facilitates communication between FareHarbor’s teams and our clients and sometimes affiliates. Equipped with features that allow Supporters to receive, analyze, and respond to support requests accurately and efficiently, Zendesk is an important part of FareHarbor’s celebrated 24/7 customer support services. Read more about Zendesk in this help page here.

FareHarbor Zendesk Login Page

Click on the FareHarbor Zendesk login page to access your account. Make sure to bookmark this in your Internet browser!

Zendesk Signature

1. Copy the text above by pressing command + C
2. In Zendesk, click on your profile icon in the top-right corner of the page and click on View Profile.
3. When your profile opens in the left-hand panel, click in the space behind Signature and paste the text you copied earlier by pressing command + P on your keyboard or right-clicking and selecting Paste. Adjust your name and your position.

Zendesk Distribution Views

Every Zendesk comes with certain default views. These will appear on the left side of your Zendesk dashboard. The way Zendesk views work is that tickets are grouped together in a way that will allow you to deal with them most logically and efficiently based on specified criteria. See picture below.

My Open Tickets – shows tickets that you are currently working on that are assigned under your name.

My pending tickets – shows tickets that are pending on action from the submitter (aka client/ affiliate).

Distribution – New view – contains all emails communication sent to our Strategic Partnerships email address.

FHDN Sign-Ups – automatically created tickets when a company joins the FHDN through Compass.

FH Activity Site – Contact Submissions – Each FH FareHarbor Activity Site has a “contact us” form. When this form is filled out by a potential end customer, a Zendesk ticket is created in the FH Activity Site – Contact Submissions view. Tickets in this view will have in their title the name of the FareHarbor Activity Site site.

Monitoring Zendesk

It’s your responsibility to check Zendesk a few times per day and make sure that all tickets in our ZD queue are responded to.

Respond to a Ticket

Respond to tickets right away, or write an internal note that you are responding to or have responded in Close. If you are unsure how to respond, post your question to your team members in #strategicpartnerships_team.

Assigning a ticket to yourself

If you are going to pick a ticket out of the ZD queue and take ownership of it, you should change the assignee field and then submit the ticket as Open. This tells everyone else on the team that you are working on that ticket and that steps are being taken to move it forward. The assignee field is in the upper lefthand corner and marks the agent or group that is assigned ownership of the ticket.

Once you have claimed the ticket by selecting your name from the drop-down menu, or by clicking ‘take it’, click Submit as Open. Alternatively, you can click Submit and Stay if you find yourself frequently needing to go back to the ticket while you work on it.

Assigning a ticket category

You cannot submit a ticket if you do not have a ticket category selected. Ticket category indicates the type of request. The category to select is fhdn.

Leaving an Internal Note versus Public Reply

If you want to leave a note in a ticket, select Internal Note and write a message and submit the ticket as Open.

If you want to send an email to the requester, select Public Reply and then choose either Pending (whenever you are waiting for the requester to respond) or submit as Solved if there’s no further action after your reply.

Resolving a ticket

Getting a ticket to the Solved state is your goal. To solve a ticket, go to the bottom right of the page and click on the arrow next to Submit as New submit option then click on Submit as Solved.

Before you submit a ticket as solved, ask yourself a few questions:

• Have I solved the requester’s issue?
• Have I filled-in any required ticket fields?

Working on FHDN Sign-ups tickets

When a company (i.e client or affiliate) opt in to the FareHarbor Distribution Network through FareHarbor Compass page, this creates a Zendesk ticket that is assigned to the Strategic Partnerships Team and Close will be updated with the date this company joined the network. Tickets will always include the company name, shortname, submitter name, submitter email address as well as the signed agreement will appear in bold with the text I ACCEPT. Read more about the FHDN setup process and how to handle those tickets here.

Company has joined the FHDN to be resold

Ticket description will include I ACCEPT (Join as a Supplier) only after the Documents – Provider Participation Agreement.

Company has joined the FHDN to resell others

Ticket description will include I ACCEPT (Join as a Reseller) only after the Documents – Affiliate Participation Agreement.

Company has joined the FHDN to be both a provider and a reseller

Within the ticket description both Documents PPA and Documents APA will be followed by I ACCEPT.

Working on FareHarbor Activity Site (FAS) Contact Submissions tickets

Each FareHarbor FareHarbor Activity Site has a “Contact us” form. When this form is filled out by an end customer (aka tourist), a Zendesk ticket is created and appears in this view. The Strategic Partnerships is responsible for answering these tickets in a timely manner (<24 hours during working hours). The goal in answering these questions is to convert the question into a sale on the FareHarbor Activity Site.

Most common scenarios

• If there are any specific questions that you can’t answer because you cannot find the information on the FareHarbor Activity Site (i.e. can I get on the boat tour from a different location), provide the customer with the tour operator’s contact information. Go to the tour operator’s lead in Close and click on the lead URL to get the contact information that is displayed on the tour operator’s website. Grab their phone number and email address and send it to the requester. Close the ticket.
• If there are any updates we can make to the FareHarbor Activity Site to limit questions, the person responding to this ticket of the site will submit the update request.
• At times we will receive questions from influencers or marketing companies that are interested in partnering with the FareHarbor Activity Site, or getting a free tour in exchange for publicity. Post these tickets in the #strategicpartnerships_team channel, and ask team members if this would be a potential FHDN partner, prior to answering the ticket. There may be good potential FHDN partners that we can work with outside of the FareHarbor Activity Site. If it is not a good fit, respond by thanking them for reaching out, and we are not interested at this time. If it is a good fit, the appropriate team member will reach out.
• At times we will receive inquiries from clients that are not on FareHarbor or are not on the FHDN. If we receive one of these inquiries, we want to use this as an opportunity to get the client to join the FHDN, or get potential clients more interested in joining FareHarbor. If it is a FareHarbor client, let them know that this site is operated through the FHDN, and encourage them to join. If this is a potential FareHarbor client, contact the Account Executive and let them know that this client has reached out. Respond to the client and let them know that to be listed on this site, they will need to use FareHarbor, and you would be happy to connect them with a colleague to provide more information.

FareHarbor Activity Sites email etiquette

Solving a FareHarbor Activity Sites ticket

• No matter whether you are closing this ticket or are waiting on a response from the submitter, ticket owners should always be left as Strategic Partnerships.
• Tags is fareharbor_activity_site_contact_submission
• Ticket category is fhdn
• Make sure to select Public Reply to send the email and not Internal note.
• Submit with a status Solved.

What is Close?

Close is the CRM system all FareHarbor teams use to communicate with clients or affiliates and keep track of leads.

Close Account

In your Close account, you should have both your personal FareHarbor email as well as our team’s email account strategicpartnerships@fareharbor.com. Contact your manager or team lead for access to the distribution email account. Once you have access and have added the strategicpartnerships@fareharbor.com in your Gmail account, follow the steps below.

1. Go to Close > Settings > Integrations > Connected Accounts
2. Click Add Account (top right corner)
3. Select Google and click on Connect with Google
4. This will open a new tab where you can select the strategicpartnerships@fareharbor.com Google account you want to connect and add to your Close Account.

Close Email Signature

1. Open this page, press command + A to select the entire text, and press command + C to copy to your clipboard.
2. In Close, go to Settings > then under Communication click on Email.

3. Under Email Signature click the icon in the lower-right:

   

4. Paste the copied information, then deselect the icon.
5. Change the name, position, and phone number to your own and add the right Support number(s) for your region(s).
6. Save your changes, then confirm that the signature looks correct when sending an email.

Close signature example for our team

Your Leads

Your leads are those with your name in the SP – FHDN Sales Owner or SP – FHDN Account Manager custom field. These are the only leads you should be reaching out to. If another name is in that field, or that field is blank, do not call or email that lead.

Keeping Close Updated

Our CRM Close is used by all teams within FareHarbor. You know your leads better than anyone, and it is therefore up to you to keep them fully updated at all times and keep your notes organized.

Update Contact information (and RE-ORDER)

• If you find a new contact, ENTER IT.
• If you find out someone is deceased or has left the company, mark it with xxx in front of their name and then move the name to the bottom of the list of names so someone does not accidentally contact them.
• Enter new phone numbers and email addresses.
• Own Close and update anything on any lead you call with (even if you’re moving fast on a ripmaster)

Logging calls

• [SPK] – logged after you speak with someone at a company
• [MSG] – when you leave a voicemail
• [CNM] – used for Call No Message (called, but hang up before leaving a voicemail)

Strategic Partnerships Custom Fields: FHDN

The Airtable view below shows the custom fields that are relevant for Strategic Partnerships Managers handling the FHDN.

Smartviews to manage pipeline

Smart views are essentially saved search queries based on the criteria you set. They help you navigate through your lead pool and keep yourself accountable and organized. The Airtable view below contains smart views that you can use and save in your Close account. If you are creating or saving a smart view for yourself, make sure to select “Keep it private – only visible to you” under Sharing Options. You can read more about how to create a smart view here.

Team Email Templates

Team-specific email templates that are available for everyone in Close will always start with “Distribution” in the title. Once you click on one of them, it will open the email template.

Areas of the Dashboard you should be familiar with in order to be successful:

• Affiliates
  • Settings > Affiliates
  • This is where any company who is reselling the charter is listed
  • You should be familiar with how to set up an affiliate correctly
• Partners
  • Settings > Partners
  • This will pop up when the charter Dashboard has also become a reseller
  • This lists any company they are currently the reseller for
  • In the FHDN Dashboard, you can see all clients resold through the FHDN by clicking on Settings > Partners
• Price Sheets
  • Settings > Price Sheets
  • This is where the direct and online pricing lives as well as affiliate and invoice pricing
  • You should be familiar with how to set up a correct price sheet
• Reports
  • Settings > Reports
  • This is useful for gathering information on bookings that have been made through the FareHarbor Distribution Network
  • Booking Reports (specifically bookings by item) will be the most useful report for the Strategic Partnerships team.
  • If you visit www.fareharbor.com/fhdn > settings > reports you will be able to see all bookings made through the Distribution Network
• Book Buttons and Embeds
  • Settings > Book Buttons and Embeds
  • This is where we create ASN buttons for affiliates and charters as well as ASN links for the * FHDN
  • FHDN example link: https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/clientname/?asn=fhdn&asn-ref=reseller&full-items=yes&flow=12345
• Booking Flows
  • Settings > Booking Flows
  • This is where we create specific booking flows for affiliates
  • If they are only selling specific items, you can create a new booking flow and name it the affiliate company name.
  • As a general rule, we will want to have Gift Certificates and Gift Cards hidden on flows used by FHDN partners.
• Hide ‘Call to Book’ Availabilities
  • If you want to hide Call to Book Availabilities from the generated link, this syntax ?bookable-only=yes can be added to the end of book buttons and embed links, hiding any availability with a “Call to Book” from the calendar view.
  • If you have multiple queries on a link or embed, be sure to start all queries beyond the first with an ampersand &. Example: https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/exampleco/?full-items=yes&bookable-only=yes.
  • Note, full-items=yes is the first query, so it starts with a question mark ?. bookable-only=yes is the second query, so that starts with an ampersand &. Any additional queries would also start with an ampersand &.
  • For example, https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/cooltourlisbon/?asn=almalusa&full-items=yes&flow=170507&bookable-only=yes only the “&bookable-only=yes” has been added because ? exists in the generated link already. The URL leads to specific flow and the syntax has been added to it to hide the “Call to Book” availabilities.
  • Another example that the ASN link leads to the general items view would look like this https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/cooltourlisbon/?asn=epicsana-euro&bookable-only=yes
  • Note Until this is included in the embedded generator, please add manually to the end of every book button we generate.
• Info and Policies → Confirmation Notes (or confirmation notes on item level)
  • Settings > Info and Policies > Notes and Policies
  • This is where we will add an ASN book button in confirmation emails if they are wanting it on every item, if they want it on a specific item, you can go to Info and Policies on the item level and input the button there.
• Add Branding
  • To add a company logo to the integration you will need to include &branding=yes to the embed URL

Airtable can store information in a spreadsheet that’s visually appealing and easy-to-use, but it’s also powerful enough to act as a database. Our team has it’s own Airtable base called Strategic Partnerships. We use it for task and project management, tracking inventory, team specific forms and submissions. Airtable is a great tool to keep track of team projects, your individual projects and displaying information to other FareHarbor teams.

Important Airtable bases

Strategic Partnerships Airtable – this is the Airtable base of the Strategic Partnerships Team. It contains both API & FHDN related projects and information. Most notable tables in this Airtable are:

• Strategic Partnership Inquiries – all partnership inquiry submissions for potential API or FHDN partners from other teams are going into this table.
• API Partner List table contains live API Partners
• Projects – individual or team project
• Weekly team meetings questions and notes
• And many more!

FareHarbor Activity Site Airtable – this base is used by our team, FH Sites and Marketing teams to coordinate projects and steps for our existing and new FareHarbor Activity Site websites. You can read more about what a FareHarbor Activity Sites is in this help page here.

FareHarbor uses DocuSign to manage our electronic agreements with clients or partners.To set up an account and get access to DocuSign, ask your Manager or a member from the Operations Team. Below are the documents that we used to send in the past in DocuSign. Although clients and affiliates opt-in to the FHDN through the FHDN Compass page, we sometimes still need to send a contract in DocuSign. Here are the contracts available in DocuSign for our team:

• FareHarbor B.V. NDA
• FareHarbor B.V. Mutual NDA
• Paid FareHarbor Affiliate Website agreement
• FareHarbor Distribution Network | Provider Participation Agreement – for clients
• FareHarbor Distribution Network | Affiliate Participation Agreement – for partner/affiliates

Tableau is an interactive data visualization software used for internal and external reporting. The Strategic Partnerships team uses Tableau to better understand the FHDN portfolio of clients and their inventory as well as to monitor the revenue generated through the FHDN and the regular ASN partners. To receive access to Tableau:

Once you receive your login credentials, you can access Tableau via this Login URL.

FHDN Tableau Reports

• Specific ASN Companies – report contains information about ASN bookings per booking voucher, company or Distribution Sales Owner, as well as revenue generated from ASN links
• FHDN Items – report shows all items on the FHDN, item names, and top destinations where we have the most FHDN items. This report is used to prepare a list of clients/items in a partner’s area. This is part of the Distribution Lifecycle process and you can read more about it in this help page here.
• FHDN – ASN Links – report is used by the team to pull FHDN links from providers on the FHDN to send to resellers. The data is organized by region as well as per state in the US
• FHDN Performance and Monitoring – report shows FHDN bookings details and revenue generated through the FHDN and can be filtered per date

In your Google calendar you must add our team’s calendar – Strategic Partnerships OOO Calendar. This calendar shows the days team members are on vacation and you’ll use it in the future to add your vacation days too. Please contact your manager to receive a link to add the Strategic Partnerships OOO Calendar.

Chrome bookmarks let you easily mark down the pages you want to revisit and help you stay efficient and organized in your day to day. Bookmarks can get a little out of hand, so we recommend you to create different folders. This way it will be super easy for you to find all the pages you need and use frequently later on (see screenshot below). Learn more about this here or ask your Strategic Partnerships Ops to help you with this. Organizing your bookmarks from the start will help you navigate through your day and through the websites listed in the following sections!_

General help pages to read

• FareHarbor Teams – overview of all FH teams
• Quickstart – read a quickstart guide to FareHarbor
• Strategic Partnership Team Overview

FHDN-related recources to bookmark:

• SP Team – FHDN Interface – Bookmark this page! This page has links that you would be using on a daily basis.

• FareHarbor Distribution Network INTERNAL Presentation
• FareHarbor Distribution Network EXTERNAL
• FareHarbor Distribution Network for RESELLERS
• Affiliate Sites

• Just Book It Hilton HeadJust Book It Hilton Head
• FareHarbor Inn “Demo Things To Do Page
• FareHarbor Demo Activities page
• Kona Concierge (FareHarbor Website)
• Hotels & Resorts
  • Zion Ponderosa Ranch offers their own activities
  • Wild Dunes Resort is a page build for a Hyatt Property
  • Turtle Bay offers their own activities as well as uses independent tour operators
  • Key West Hideaways is a page build.
• Tourist Information Center/ Tour Agency
  • VInow
  • Destin Florida
• Blog Integration
  • 365 Atlanta Traveler

Request your vacation

• Plan in advance and let your manager know of any vacation requests.
• Vacation requests must be submitted through Workday.
• If you have to leave early, come in late or have an appointment during the day, you must let your manager know.

Before/ During your vacation

1. Mark in the team’s Google Calendar – Strategic Partnerships OOO Calendar the days you will be out of office (OOO).

2. You must change your Slack status. Choose one of the following options (sickness, vacation, etc.) and include:

   • OOO
   • Back [Date]
   • Buddy: @strategic-partnerships
   • Adjust the “Clear Date” to be for the date of your return.

3. Set up an email auto response in your Gmail. It is important to make it clear for other contacts, if you won’t have access to your email and thus cannot respond to emails while you are away. Here is an example:

   Subject: Out of Office through Date

   Thank you for your email!

   I will be out of office till Tuesday, 11th of August. For anything urgent, please email strategicpartnerships@fareharbor.com

For those with a thirst for learning, here are some great resources to try.

• FareHarbor Compass Articles
• Interesting Courses to Try!
• Skift
• Arival – great content and webinars
• Tourpreneur – sign up for their newsletter
• PhocusWire

Now that you’ve read all of the information in this help page there are two things left for you to do! Check and complete the Strategic Partnerships New Hire Checklist:

• Your Slack profile is complete
• You have access to all tools – Close, Zendesk, DocuSign, Tableau
• You have set an email signature in your Close
• You have added the team email address to your Close account
• You have created an email signature in Zendesk
• You have organized your bookmarks
• You have added the Strategic Partnerships OOO Calendar to your Google Calendar
• You have access to Docusign
• You have access and permissions to create records in our Airtable base
• You have joined all slack channels important for our team

1. Fill out this feedback form and share your opinion with us. Your feedback will help us improve our resources and information that we present to new team members.