At last the on-line travel industry is talking a lot about customer service. At last it openly admits what it long realized but rarely discussed: that it isn’t enough to try to sell, sell, sell unless you can guarantee prompt responses to consumer questions and complaints.
According to a recent report by PhoCusWright, a Connecticut-based research firm, 76 percent of wired travelers — those who use the Internet to see what’s there — won’t buy on-line, largely because of lack of human contact. They want someone who will quickly answer questions and provide authoritative advice.
This is especially true with vacation travel. When you begin shopping for an air ticket, you know at least where and roughly when you want to go. But when you start looking for a dream vacation, you may not have decided even among Paris, Walt Disney World, the mountains or the beach.
Many of us, therefore, still fervently rely on vacation advice from a human, such as a travel agent or knowledgeable friend. We prefer a give-and-take chat, face to face or on the telephone or, better yet, a meeting in a brick-and-mortar (as opposed to electronic) travel agency where there are heaps of brochures, directories and well-traveled personnel for reference.
Gradually, airlines, hotels, on-line travel services and even brick-and-mortar agencies that maintain Web sites are developing human-to-human contact in cyberspace. Like Internet chat rooms, they allow you to exchange questions and answers with live travel agents.
I tried this at the site of Uniglobe.com of Renton, Wash. (www.uniglobe.com), a travel agency network that emphasizes cruises. After 1 minute and 40 seconds on electronic hold, my Internet call was picked up by “Eric,” a Uniglobe agent. I asked about the possibility of cruising the Panama Canal in mid-February aboard a Princess “Love Boat.” He put me on hold while he looked.
“I’m sorry,” he said, half a minute later. “Cruise line computers are not very fast. Be just a moment.” Finally he produced a cabin on the Sun Princess, leaving San Juan for Acapulco on Feb. 15 and urged me to book quickly, before all the cabins were sold. I promised to consult my wife.
A month later I tried Uniglobe again, this time chatting with “Bonnie.” Transmission was quick, but with all the typing, I could have accomplished much more in less time by telephone.
On-line agencies, airlines, hotel chains, auto-rental companies — all are pledging better customer service and facing the challenge in many different ways. Some rely principally on FAQs — frequently asked questions — and load their sites with replies that they hope will satisfy almost everyone. (Among other things, that will save costs in staffing phones and computers). Others still depend on toll-free phone service, often with voice-answering systems that tell you how important your call is, then put you on hold indefinitely. Relatively few have live chat facilities, but their number is growing.
In fact, chat facilities have conceived a new industry of customer service outsourcing. For example, Renaissance Cruises (www.renaissancecruises.com) doesn’t operate its live customer service itself, but depends on a young New York City company called LivePerson (www.liveperson.com), whose specialty is chat technology. But the service is electronically linked to Renaissance so that the responses you get are from a cruise agent.
To some travel Web sites, customer service still means providing written or graphic information on-line that it hopes will satisfy most travelers. This means airport maps, currency exchange tables, weather forecasts, excerpts from guidebooks and the like. Web technology allows such information to be provided easily and cheaply.
Often there is a “contact us” section where you can leave questions and complaints, but frequently you’ll get no reply for days or weeks, if at all. So you turn to the telephone, where you’re put on interminable hold.
At many sites, you have to register a user name and password before proceeding. I personally have signed on to 32 such sites. Against strong expert advice, I use the same user name and password for most of them, so that I don’t have to carry a long list, which may or may not be handy when I need it. Yes, I suppose I’m jeopardizing my privacy and personal security, but except for credit card details, which I withhold, who cares what I tell Travelocity, anyway?
Poll after poll have shown that shoppers don’t like to tell much about themselves, particularly before they agree to buy. Like the lack of a human touch, unease about privacy is considered a major deterrent to on-line sales. Apparently aware of that, the on-line agency Expedia (www.expedia.com) recently announced that it was dropping preregistration.
Said Erik Blachford, Expedia’s vice president of marketing: “Customers have told us that registration of any kind, including a guest account, feels like an unnecessary barrier, and we agree. When you walk into a department store, clerks don’t ask for your name and password before letting you shop.”
Expedia does, however, offer to save the personal information provided upon purchase so that a customer’s airplane seating preferences, meal choices, credit card and billing information, etc., can be stored to speed future purchases.
As an example of what it considers to be good customer service, Expedia last Nov. 4 sent an e-mail message to everyone who had purchased travel to the Caribbean within the following four days. The message said:
“We wanted to let you know in advance of your trip that Hurricane Jose may disrupt your travel plans. The hurricane — the seventh this season — is picking up speed in the Caribbean, forcing flight cancellations and hurricane watches or warnings across much of the eastern Caribbean.”
Passengers were urged to check flight status at expedia.com/pub/eta.dll
