High-street travel agencies are way ahead of the rest of the industry in embracing multi-channel selling, exclusive research by Travel Weekly’s sister title Travolution has indicated.
Research consultancy Foviance followed a customer’s journey through the purchase cycle when booking a holiday with three online travel agencies and three airline websites.
Each one was assessed on the multi-channel customer support it provides – via its website, email and telephone –and were found to be performing poorly.
“Few have a single view of the customer or a clear understanding of how their customers want to interact with them when booking a holiday,” said Foviance chief executive Paul Blunden.
“Companies that ignore how customers want to interact with the brand and how they move between channels are not only missing opportunities but also are in danger of losing their audience.”
High–street travel agencies set the bar in terms of embracing multi–channel.
“Switched on independent travel agents put a lot of effort into multi-channel because they understand the buying habits of their customers,” said Blunden. “Often people don’t know where they want to go on holiday and independents can deal with that, whereas airlines are out of their depth.”
Multi–channel gives agents an opportunity to compete, because customers want to go online then visit, phone or email to get reassurance.
“This is a rapidly changing market and the product is increasingly similar,so organisations will have to create an experience that’s memorable,” said Blunden.
The big two operators set the standard, providing a seamless multi-channel approach,Blundenadded. However, they must be aware that it is difficult to assess how much the customer is using each channel.
“It is hard to measure interaction with each channel –a customer might speak to an agent then book online. Agents should not dismiss any [channel].“