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Customer complaints are an emotive issue.As an industry we must manage expectations while also dealing with a growing group of consumers who are keen ‘try it on’ with the trade

Customer complaints are an emotive issue.As an industry we must manage expectations while also dealing with a growing group of consumers who are keen ‘try it on’ with the trade

RICHARd CARRICK

LITTLE did I think that, in outlining my thoughts on customer complaints and compensation to Travel Weekly last week, I would spark off so much debate and publicity.

The major tour operators have invested millions in the quality and delivery of their holidays over the last five years, partly as a result of external pressure.

I for one am very proud of what we have achieved at Airtours. We sell great holidays at great prices and do it more consistently than ever before.

And yet complaints, while down, are certainly not down by as much as they should be.

We’ve restructured our overseas teams to create customer service representatives, given them devolved authority and budgets to solve problems on the spot. And it’s working!

When a customer decides, for whatever reason, not to tell us about a problem in resort and waits until they get home, our increased level of contact over the phone has yielded equally impressive results.

Yet our efficiency is impaired by an admittedly small but growing group of consumers who are ‘trying it on’.

Where we fail to deliver any element of the holiday that we have promised, there is no doubt we are fully liable and should pay out accordingly.

But it is in that very grey, subjective area of ‘disappointment’, where the holiday ‘fails to come up to expectations’ that we need to tread carefully.

Have we failed to deliver a promise? Has that failure fundamentally affected the enjoyment of the holiday?

It is in these areas that we must clearly manage customers’ expectations.

Ideally, we’d like our customers to feel they have nothing to complain about.

But when they do, we would like to speak to them during their holiday and try to recover the situation.

Failing this, we would like to give genuine complaints the level of service they deserve but we can’t do this if we’re also handling letters from people who are “on the make”. They simply clog up our handling systems.

A holiday is different to other purchases.

It can’t be inspected in advance. It can’t be taken back if it doesn’t work.

As an industry, we have to deliver great holidays while managing expectations, solve problems overseas and address the issues that really matter.

After all, you would take a ready meal back to a supermarket because it had gone mouldy.

You wouldn’t if, having got it home, it was not to your taste.

“A holiday is different to other purchases. It can’t be inspected in advance”