17 November 2009

Customer service online travel industry Ã¢â¬Ëœweak pointÃ¢â¬â¢

The travel sector needs to invest more in online customer engagement if it is to encourage people to return and re-book, a new study shows.

It is important to ensure that the complete end to end online experience from first impressions to the booking is seamless.

The travel sites that win loyalty will differentiate themselves on best practice customer service, according to the latest eTravel Benchmark Study by market research firm eDigitalResearch

Top ten performing travel companies:

1. Thomson

2. P&O Ferries

3. Thomson Airways

4. First Choice

5. P&O Cruises

6. Travel Republic

7. Virgin Holidays

8. Bmibaby

9. Lastminute.com

1. Virgin Atlantic

The survey explored the end to end website experience from first impressions to the booking process across 29 leading travel websites including cruise lines, cross-channel ferries, package holidays and airlines.

Overall, package holiday travel sites led the way with Thomson Holidays achieving a consistently high performance with a further four package holiday sites in the top ten including lastminute.com.

Customer service was the lowest performing survey section. Email customer service was particularly poor with only a quarter of people happy with how their query was handled.

Customer service is a clear industry weak point which has meant that the industry’s average net promoter score, which ranks sites on their likelihood to be recommended by consumers, lags behind other sectors including retail and finance that have been benchmarked recently by eDigitalResearch.

Head of research Derek Eccleston said: "The online customer doesn’t differentiate between market sectors and the travel sector still has some way to go to compete with ‘best of breed’ companies for website engagement and customer service.

"Consumers want a site that is simple to purchase from, but at the same time has the inspirational ‘wow’ factor that keeps them engaged. After all, reputations are built on the end to end customer experience, not just having the best site.

"It is clear from the survey that the travel sites that win loyalty will differentiate themselves on transparent pricing, an efficient booking process and best practice customer service."

For a full breakdown of results, go to:

https://ecustomeropinions.com/survey/survey.php?sid=339432297

Post your comment

Your Comments (1)

No surprise there, then

Well it isn't really is it? My students reviewing technology applications in leisure and tourism ten years ago were saying exactly the same thing and little has changed. Far too often the internet distribution mechanism has been predicated upon the stripping out of costs in the distribuition system rather upon a systematic approach to using the web to add value. Fundamentally I fear that the travel and tourism industry (if there is such a thing as a tourism 'industry' - that's another debate we might have) from traditional high street travel agencies to new online operators have generally failed to answer with any conviction the question: what is the value of the human in the service value chain, and how may such value best be delivered? People have thus been stripped out of the system (or simply never added into it) to keep costs low without much regard to the impact on service quality and the client experience. It is about time the industry at large woke up to this. I suspect the research is pretty much on the proverbial button but why have we been hearing the same story for so long?

By Tony Jolley, Tuesday, November 17, 2009