Can my staff make a booking for a customer over the phone, or does the customer have to do it themselves on the portal?

Yes, your staff can make the booking for a customer over the phone. A white label portal normally comes with a staff login that sits behind the same booking engine your customers see, so your team can search, compare, hold and confirm a flight or a hotel on the customer's behalf while they are still on the call. The customer never has to open the website at all.

The useful part is what your staff can do that a customer cannot. From the staff side your team can usually adjust the markup or give a discount on that one booking, type in the traveller details themselves, attach an internal note for their colleagues, and take the payment in a way you would not offer to the public, such as a bank transfer or an office card. Once it is confirmed, the customer receives the same confirmation email, ticket or hotel voucher they would have received had they booked it online themselves.

It is fair to be honest about the limits. Whatever the supplier or the fare rules say still applies, so a booking made by your staff is no easier to change, cancel or refund later than one the customer made online. Some payment methods and some suppliers also have to be switched on for your account before staff booking works from end to end, and that depends on your plan and on the agreements behind your portal.

The next thing to look at is which of your people should hold a staff login and what each of them is allowed to do with it, because the power to change a fare or cancel a booking is worth keeping with the few staff you trust with it.