Guess what? Customers want the agent touch after all
Thursday, 13 Nov, 2009
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Agents at a World Travel Market seminar on the future of the industry could be forgiven for their wry smiles on Thursday as expert speakers suggested that selling had gone full circle on the web and the focus was now on personalization.
As online travel agents scrabble to make some useful sense of their data, utilize their metrics to understand their customers individually and present them with user generated content that will make them feel they are getting trusted advice before buying, it seems the key to turning lookers into bookers is recreating that bricks and mortar scenario where clients purchase from agents who know them.
Expedia Worldwide vice president product and strategy Graham Cook said: “We have a huge amount of information and content and customer reviews and we have lots of metrics that tell us how people are using the site. Now it’s about trying to replicate the human consultant in the shop so we can anticipate and service the customers’ needs in the same way a human who knew the customer would.
“Through intelligent segmentation and review gatherings, we can start to draw assumptions about a customer and decide what is relevant to them. We want to make sure that the content that a user sees is the most pertinent it can be to them as an individual. This is the way forward. It’s gone full circle now.”
But executive chairman of Cheapflights Hugo Burge told the seminar that he didn’t think the travel industry had got it quite right yet in the way that Igoogle had because it was difficult to predict what people wanted travel-wise as their needs varied from trip to trip, as they could be booking a business trip one minute and a family holiday the next. “There is some way to go yet in anticipating people’s needs,” he said.
By Dinah Hatch
Dinah
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