Classic Collection has hailed the results of a survey among more than 2,000 agent partners about its customer service as “hugely encouraging”.
The Worthing-based operator polled agents in July, as the survey was a requirement of Classic’s recent membership of the Institute of Customer Service (ICS).
The ICS is the independent professional membership body for customer service, working across all business sectors to drive performance through service excellence.
Si Morris-Green, Classic Collection’s director of customer care, agency sales and marketing, has had experience of working the ICS team in the past and knew that membership would be important for the operator.
He commented: “We joined the ICS at the start of 2022 and a score of 84.9/100 from our initial survey is hugely encouraging – within the ICS classification, it’s recognised as world-class.
“The survey process involved us canvassing a representative sample of our external travel agent partners on all aspects of our service.
“It’s a high score and we’re obviously delighted with these initial findings, but it also leaves a small amount of headroom for improvement.”
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He said the positive feedback showed that the operator’s staff were “personable, friendly and quick to resolve queries”, along with the fact that the on-the-road sales team was retained during the pandemic.
“Introduction of our Classic Commitment also gave clarity to the agents about our policies during Covid,” he added.
Turnaround times was one area which emerged as needing to improve and the operator has implemented technology to improve this aspect of its service.
Morris-Green added: “Against the backdrop of the pandemic and the disruption over the summer we are really pleased with the results achieved. It demonstrates that all the actions we have taken to continue to deliver a high level of service to our agent partners have been welcomed.
“During the past 18 months, Classic Collection has put in place many measures to improve its service levels, from investing in new technology to streamline processes, to taking on more staff in our contact centre and bolstering our on-the-road team.
“We have and will continue to make significant investments in people, technology and agents going forward to ensure we are continually making improvements in our service delivery.
“At a time when the travel sector in particular has been hit by service issues resulting from the fall-out of travel restrictions during the pandemic, offering the best customer service has never been more important.
“We are determined to safeguard the strong reputation of our brands by ensuring we have the highest levels of customer service and our membership of the ICS will help us to achieve this. Excellent customer service delivers proven results time and time again.”
Morris-Green will be speaking about customer relations at Travel Weekly’s Future of Travel Conference in London on Thursday (September 22), along with Jo Causon, ICS chief executive, and Miles Morgan, chairman at Miles Morgan Travel.