Best Western Hotels achieved the highest score within the travel industry in the biggest ever benchmarking exercise for customer service within UK contact centres.
Best Western topped the travel industry list for the first time with a score of 91.72% including coming first in the’best newcomer for emails’ category, nudging ahead of Virgin Atlantic and LateRooms.
The study, part of UBM’s ‘Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service’ programme, shows the continuous raising of the bar by the UK contact centre industry, with the highest level of performances attained in its five-year history.
The Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service programme revealed that overall 96% of customers got through to call centres on their first attempt.
An impressive 96% of callers felt that their enquiry was completely resolved.
The number of calls put on hold fell by half from 2009 to just 9% this year, with only 3% of all calls being transferred.
Furthermore, 73% of callers to the programmes’ top ten performers said that the call enhanced their perception of the brand.
Research company GfK made tens of thousands of mystery shopping enquiries to more than 50 of the UK’s leading contact centres, across nine sectors – retail, e-retail, travel services, insurance/financial services, banking/credit cards, telecoms & media, utilities, service providers and public services.
Ashley Williamson, head of partnership at Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service, said: “The appetite amongst the top performing UK companies to outperform their service standards year on year is nothing short of inspirational.
“Over the last five years of running this programme I have seen UK companies raise the bar for service so high that Top 50 Call Centres really can demonstrate that they genuinely do put their customers first.”