Travel agents have long bemoaned the amount of time they spend waiting on the phone to speak to the big tour operators.
Back in April, a number of independent agents told Travel Weekly waits of up to 45 minutes were holding them back from other work and putting customers off.
Several said waiting on the phone was the “most frustrating” part of their job. Agents accused the big operators of giving direct customers preferential treatment and making the situation worse by outsourcing call centres overseas.
Some claimed they were turning to small operators in a search for efficient service with a personal touch. Since then, Travel Weekly has put itself in the place of the agent.
Over the last three months, at random times on weekdays, we called the agent booking lines of Virgin Holidays, Thomas Cook, First Choice and Thomson Holidays to conduct our own investigation. Here are the results.
Who’s the worst culprit?
We twiddled our thumbs and hummed along to hold music during 72 phone calls at various times of day between May and July. The worst performer was Thomas Cook, which had an average wait time of 7.8 minutes.
The longest phone call was also to Thomas Cook, when we held for 35 minutes on May 8. The operator cleaned up its act in July, however, and answered within one minute on July 17.
First Choice performed slightly better (average waiting time 6.5 minutes) and Thomson (5.5 minutes). Best of the bunch was Virgin Holidays, with an average hold time of 3.1 minutes.
Our research revealed that afternoons are the best time to call and between 10am and 11am the busiest time. The most infuriating part of the experiment was being cut off while on hold.
Having experienced the aggravation felt by travel agents on a daily basis, we asked the operators what they are doing to improve their service to the trade.
Virgin Holidays
Virgin Holidays has been the target of heavy criticism in the past, but it has come out on top in our study with an average pick-up time of 3.1 minutes.
There was a marked improvement during the three- month period. In May we waited for 14 minutes, but by July Virgin was answering the phone after just one minute.
The operator has been working hard to improve its service to agents. It ran a poll of more than 470 agents over the last two months to find out what was working well and what could be improved.
As a result, a new switchboard system was rolled out across the business that ensures all calls from the trade are answered straight away, and by a human voice.
The system directs calls to the right department and keeps callers informed by announcing the remaining waiting time.
Virgin Holidays general manager for sales and distribution Chris Roe said: “We would attribute the difference from May to July to our new switchboard system. Also, there was the challenge of sheer demand earlier in the year. That – coupled with introducing new services – led to a temporary increase in wait times.”
Roe has noted an increase in online bookings, but admitted there is still a long way to go before all transactions take place online. “We noticed that, during our online incentive programme in May, more agents used our site.
“Currently, during peak times we are seeing a return to traditional booking methods. Given that 90% of our product is bookable online, we’d certainly like to see more agents logging on.”
Thomas Cook
Thomas Cook left us holding the longest, with an average of 7.8 minutes and the longest waiting time overall of 35 minutes.
The operator admitted it had experienced problems with its agent call centre following its merger with MyTravel last summer.
A spokeswoman said: “We are aware that our agent call centre faced some severely challenging operating issues during the months of April, May and early June following our merger last year and we offer our profuse apologies to those affected.”
Thomas Cook said it was putting “a number of measures” in place to address and manage the situation and has already seen the benefits of these.
The operator has launched agent website thomascookworld.com with a service called Ask Thomas, which allows agents to ask questions online.
“This will assist the overall service experienced by all agents. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our partners for their continued patience and reassure them that this remains a top priority to the business,” added the operator.
TUI Travel
Our research put First Choice ahead of Thomas Cook, with an average wait time of 6.5 minutes. Thomson came in at 5.5 minutes.
Both operators showed an improvement over the period from May to July, which could be attributed to July being a traditionally quieter booking period. Thomson in particular improved from 14 minutes on May 2 to just one minute on July 17.
Agents have claimed the service has worsened since the two operators merged to form TUI Travel last year. However, TUI UK contact centre and virtual call centre operations general manager Julia Sockett said the merger should have had no impact on call handling.
She said: “Although the wait time as indicated is significantly less than the figure quoted for May, we are always looking at ways to improve the service we offer to agents.”
Those improvements include the extension of the agent support call centre hours to seven days a week, from 9am to 8pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm on Saturdays and 10am to 5pm on Sundays.
TUI is also attempting to free up the telephone lines by pointing agents towards its viewdata system.
Sockett explained: “A further initiative is an improved telephone prompting service: when agents call through, our interactive voice response messaging system regularly prompts them to advise that certain bookings or modifications can be made directly on viewdata by the agent dialling in.
“This in turn ‘frees up’ the lines, meaning that our agents can handle more complex enquiries and amendments more effectively and efficiently.”