The appalling customer service offered by UK online travel companies
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When Darren of Travel Rants asked me to guest blog, I thought great, a chance to rant, why not live up to the name. What aspect of travel makes me want to rant, it’s poor customer service. I looked at Travel Rants and saw that Darren had recently blogged on this topic. Darren reckoned that a high percentage of online travel companies would fail a basic customer service test and they would probably take around 48 hours to respond to an email. I found the Transversal customer service study of top websites in the travel, banking, insurance, consumer goods and telecoms sectors, which can be downloaded if you register at Transversal.
Guess what 60% of emails to travel company websites did not receive a reply. Of the remaining 40% companies who did manage to respond, the average response time was 42 hours. Darren was very close with his estimate of 48 hours! The travel websites were asked ten pretty basic question e.g. can I fly from this airport to that airport, do I need a visa for that country, what is the duty free allowance? 80% of travel websites could only manage to answer 2 out of the 10 queries.
I think we can now say that the evidence supports Darren’s remark that many online travel companies do fail the basic customer service test. You wonder how they get away with it, given that Britons are the biggest online shoppers in Europe and the credit card company VISA recored a 159% annual increase in online spending in travel and tourism.
My belief is that it is because so much of travel is sold on price. If many customers do make travel buying decisions based mainly on price then companies may decide that providing good customer service is too expensive and doesn’t increase sales enough to justify the cost of providing good customer service. Ryanair immediately springs to mind as an example of this business rationale. However Ryanair does have a pretty good website, I have always been able to find the answer to my queries on their site.
I think if companies have a well designed, content rich website with a frequently asked question section and a search facility where you can type in questions and relevant answers come up then they can provide pretty good customer service without needing to employ many staff to answer emails or phone queries. What is your experience of the customer service offered by UK online travel companies?
October 2nd, 2007 at 11:41 am
Earlier this year I booked with Jet2 for myself and my elderly mother, 92. They said the flight was full if I wanted wheelchair assistance (she would have difficulty getting on the airport bus and the high boarding steps) so I had to book without it. They told me my booking ‘had failed’ - my card wasn’t accepted. So I immediately booked again using another card. To my horror I then discovered that they had made 2 bookings. I tried to ring the Call Centre immediately but the number is not accessible from abroad, I live in Portugal. My brother telephoned for me within an hour and they said the mix up would cost me £50. I have written to them, also to their head office,the Dart Group, and - guess what! - had NO REPLY. I haven’t travelled with Jet 2 since, I travel to the U.K. regularly but prefer to travel by Monarch now - free newspapers, reserved seats at checkin, no hastle.
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Denise, you are right to vote with your feet and not use an airline which has not offered you good customer service. Did Jet2 tell you in writing that your credit card wasn’t accepted so you have written proof of this?
December 5th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
[...] improvement in the standard of customer service offered by online travel companies since I wrote on this topic in February 2007. According to the latest research carried out by Transversal, 60% of email queries [...]
July 25th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Anyway, a good customer service offered by online travel companies should be answer any question on time in 24 hours.