Travel is split down the middle when it comes to customer service levels

Travel is right up there with the scattering of customer experiences which can have a profound impact on our lives.

 

A sector which sets the highest bar when it comes to consistently delivering distinctive signature moments which differentiate the customer experience, turning customers into lifelong fans.

 

A sector which has produced some of my all-time customer experience heroes and yet it’s also a sector responsible for some of my most disconcerting and disappointing memories.

 

Last month I flew with my parents to Turkey and we got caught up in the Heathrow baggage handling saga.

 

Like most sensible and travel savvy customers, we took it on the chin. This was beyond our chosen airline’s control.

 

My mother’s clothes, cosmetics and medications would turn up sooner or later, the airline would keep us updated and any costs would be seamlessly reimbursed.

 

I will spare the carrier the embarrassment of recounting what actually happened, but let’s just say things didn’t go quite as we’d hoped.

 

Despite the efforts of large swathes of the travel sector to lower customer expectation, the customer still hopes that their most basic needs for respect and transparency will be met.

 

They hope that, however much or little they’ve paid, they will still feel like a customer. We live in a world where despite the staggering investment in technology, to join up, speed up or brush up the customer experience, data from the Institute of Customer Service confirms that customer satisfaction levels across all sectors have been in steady decline for the past 10 years.

 

Contact centres with endless menu options, hopelessly ineffective chatbots, obscure complaint-handling processes or disempowered and disengaged frontline teams, have all conspired to blight something which was once seen as the greatest business differentiator.

 

The travel sector has not been immune to these shifts in customer perception. How the customer buys things might have changed irreversibly, but the needs which drive customer behaviour haven’t changed in the slightest.

 

We feel good when our needs are satisfied and frustrated if they are left unmet. Every holiday we take starts with a need for exhilaration, escape, renewal or relaxation. Our satisfaction hangs on the operator’s ability to deliver on it.

 

If your core need is pampering and renewal, you’ll judge the holiday on the quality of the pillows and the treatments at the spa. If your core need is rest, you’ll probably value a quiet room away from the evening entertainment. That is why great travel businesses know their customers’ needs, meet them abundantly and make every decision with them in mind.

 

It strikes me that travel might be a sector which is split down the middle. Those that put the needs of their customers at the heart of all they do and those who do the opposite.

 

Those who know that the only test of the customer experience which really matters is how their business responds if things ever go wrong and obsess over their ability to deliver a fair and satisfactory customer outcome.

 

Those who take a few steps back from what they are selling, to understand what their customer truly expects from them. Who know that any customer complaints lurk in the murky gaps between their expectation and lived experience.

 

Those who set their cultural default to yes and those who set it to no. Those who run away from their customers if something ever goes wrong and those who run towards them to learn from their complaints.

 

Those who empower their teams and those who feel safer giving them a rulebook. Those with a leader who cares passionately about customers and those with a leader who pretends to. Those who’ve built a service culture focused on seeing the world through the eyes of their customers and those who rely on high level data and an annual customer round table.

 

My latest book, ‘Start with the customer’, draws an unambiguous distinction between the two; two quite different types of travel business. On the surface they are superficially similar, but for the customer at least, worlds apart.

 

Those who start with the customer and those who don’t.

 

Start with the Customer, written in collaboration with Jo Causon, chief executive at the Institute of Customer service, is due to be released on September 8 and can be pre-ordered now.