Consumer experiences with travel customer services
By Darren Cronian on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

It was my works away day today and one of the topics of discussion was around customer service. We were asked to write a list of companies that we had received poor customer care from in the last 12 months. Interestingly, both travel and telecommunication companies came out as the worst.

Consumer experiences with travel customer services

Hotels were the reason for complaints

Thomas Cook received four mentions of poor customer service, but the worst was Talk Talk. The issues with Travel ranged from no communication when a flight was delayed to hotels over booking and moving the customer to a less quality of hotel and probably most interesting, rudeness of tour representatives when dealing with customer’s hotel complaints.

Surprisingly 90% of the travel related customer service complaints were based on experiences with hotels, and how the hotel, travel agency, or tour operator dealt with them.

Fast and experienced response to calls

Consumers want a fast response, and not passed from pillar to post. We want less call centres abroad and well-trained staff at the end of the telephone. Rather than blame another part of the company or a third party, we want travel companies to be honest, and up front because we all make mistakes.

Airlines received praise

Rather than paint a completely negative picture on customer service they were a few who commented that they received a good experience because the airline had over booked, but they paid out compensation, from money, to seats in business class on a later flight. It was good to hear more positive comments on airlines.

I welcome your comments on your experiences with customer service in travel.


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5 responses to “Consumer experiences with travel customer services”

Andy Hayes | 15 October, 2008 at 6:45 pm

I’m an ‘elite flyer’ so I always get stupendous service from hotels and airlines – but then again they know I’m a frequent customers so….

Having said that, I do have a few hotels I’d love to blame and shame, but will digress by saying that indeed a hotel’s star rating does not always correspond to their customer service friendliness.

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Debo Hobo | 18 October, 2008 at 10:21 pm

I have to say, now that the economy is in a squeeze service providers have been on their best behavior. No complaints this year so far.

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Murray Harrold | 18 October, 2008 at 10:33 pm

I wonder what would be said if this was turned around? What do companies think about their cleints on holiday. The demanding ones, the ones that get drunk and abusive, the ones that have paid naff all and want the moon on a stick….. ! Worst offenders have got to be these Indian sub-coontinent call centres that operate of a flow chart, have parrotts on their shoulders that repeat everything back to you and generally have all the charisma of a road hump. It depends a little on circumstance in that customer service can be excellent when resolvable but there are few that operate in customer service front line, that have the power to take possession of your problem and resolve it, especially if it is a little unusual – the objective is then not to resolve the problem but to get rid of the problem preferably by passing it to someone or somewhere else. When I am dealing with customers, I try to think to myself, if I was asking this question – would I think, given my proposed answer, that I would think myself a right idiot/ rude/ useless. Have I resolved the problem or past it on? Have I taken possession of the problem? The best customer serive I have ever seen was from an Easyjet check-in person at Luton, dealing with my client (I had dropped her off and went in with her as she was an UNMIN ) – She was well overweight (luggage, not her!). The young checki in chap explained the issue well, summarised what had to be done (get another suitcase to split the amount) called the supervisor who took my young client to get another suitcase – and all this without making anyone feel stupid or small or ignorant. In fact, I even wrote to Easyjet about it (who, alarmingly wrote back saying “….we are sorry to hear your complaint”) That was world-class customer service which knocks spots of anything I have ever witnessed from any legacy airline.

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Murray Harrold | 18 October, 2008 at 10:34 pm

@Daren

Have we got any post-submit editing facilities? Can’t correct the spelling… That would be good customer service!!

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Darren Cronian | 19 October, 2008 at 1:27 am

@ Murray

I will have a look to see if there’s a plugin. I know in the new version of WordPress (that powers this blog) that comments are going to be radically improved including editing comments, making it easy to keep with the discussion, ie. replying to individual comments.

How about that for a reply at 1.27am. Not many travel companies could do that! ;)

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