Posts Tagged ‘ customer satisfaction. ’

Communication with customer seemed sadly lacking. That is what travel companies need to learn

If you want to encourage passengers to genuinely provide feedback you should put satisfaction forms somewhere obvious and well frequented.

If parliamentarians take such little notice of customer service (other than in individual speeches) to support a committee is it any wonder that industry at large takes just lip-service about it?

There is one glaring omission in the Visit England awards: not a single one for customer satisfaction or service.

If there is so much dissatisfaction why are the majority of rail passengers saying that they are satisfied?

Norstat announced the winners of its Destination Satisfaction Index and the overall winner was Barbados. Second was the Seychelles and third, Bermuda.

Next year as the World Travel Awards reach their silver anniversary maybe the organisers could remember the missing feature and the person on whom the travel industry relies for its very existence – the passenger, traveller and holidaymaker!

Visit England says, “The VisitEngland Awards for Excellence are different to other quality standards as they recognise and celebrate excellence across customer service and the quality of the experience.”

Those who fly with United will have a greater influence on how staff will be rewarded. Bad service and bad customer satisfaction ratings should mean lower pay cheques.

Over the years, by my reckoning, we have written 104 stories about customer service and satisfaction. When a story appears there is reader comment yet the industry seems to shy away from extolling their successes in delivering customer service and satisfaction.

“Generally speaking, it’s been a great year for customer service in the tourism sector,” said Jo Causon, chief executive of the Institute of Customer Service.

Readers will know that Ryanair has adopted a friendlier stance to customers than they seemed to do in years gone past. This is their “Always Getting Better” customer experience improvement programme Now the airline crows at the high level of satisfaction that passengers have with the airline. Look more closely however and it seems that Ryanair is putting the best spin that it possibly can on what it releases. This week it released  its ‘Rate My Flight’ statistics, which “show that 94% of surveyed customers
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As I pointed out many months ago this is customer service on the cheap and is just a sop to passengers to make them believe that the provider is really interested in what people think.

It is hoped that the British government would adopt a revised EU261 act but one a bit fairer to both sides otherwise we shall be back to the bad old days of relying on courts or alternative dispute resolution systems to resolve problems.

Why aren’t we welcoming the fact that Liverpool John Lennon Airport has, in its Twitter account, introduced a customer satisfaction measurement tool called the Net Promotor Score

Visit England has announced the winners for the Awards for Excellence 2016. In order to have reached this stage, entrants had to win their local area awards as well

With this one award, AITO is reminding the travel industry that customer satisfaction is something that no travel company can forget.

Installing a machine with smiley/unhappy faces at airports seems to be the latest fad. What a waste of money!

Customer satisfaction is a fickle business and therefore, extremely difficult to assess from one minute to another. What pleases one person isn’t necessarily acceptable to another.

You may well have heard that Ryanair has announced bumper profits of €867 million. What is the reason for this large increase? Customer care, the airline will tell you, is the reason

HolidayTravelWatch would have you believe that we don’t complain enough about issues that go wrong we are on holiday.

In India, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has decided that airlines, airports and the whole process of air travel should be made more passenger friendly. Hurrah!

On the same day that Stonewall announced its Bigot of the Year award, we have Ryanair trying hard to win an award for “landing right in it up to our necks” award.

As you’ll recall, there was some industrial issues at Air Canada last week with check-in staff and call centre people. That has now been resolved. So Air Canada sent an e-mail to its customers thanking them for their understanding.

In the US holidays of a week are common. Here the week or fortnight is more like the norm. In winter some seniors go away for a couple of months. But how do you fancy a year long holiday? All in the one place.
One of Sydney’s Sunday newspapers, The Sun-Herald, has reported today that a couple, Chris and Sally Allison, from the Sydney suburb of Mosman liked the place so much that they have booked accommodation for a whole year at a B&B in Rhyl in North Wales.

In just under 5 hours the last ever service by the Wrexham & Shropshire railway will leave London’s Marylebone station on its final journey. Why get so concerned by a train service you might ask. After all, Virgin Trains run a direct service down to London even if it is only once a day.
The concern is because this little railway achieved so much in its short 3 year life. The satisfaction ratings given to it by passengers were better than anything ever seen since the ratings began. At 99% you can’t really get any better. And I doubt whether other train lines will. The service was good too. The staff would come through the train, address and treat you politely and then be there when you got off to thank you for travelling (at least on the few times I travelled with them.) And that’s part of the problem. I used them a few times; how often did others?

This isn’t the way that that the authors of a US report on hotels worded their announcement. They said that the satisfaction levels of hotel visitors had increased over the last year. Does it mean the same thing? But if hotel guests are more satisfied surely that comes as a result of feeling that they are being treated better?
The next question is whether we should believe what we read. After all how many of us have stayed at a place after checking reviews and then decided that the reviews must have been written by someone who was not too observant? Or as blind as a bat. The same applies with research. If we understand it then we can accept or reject it.

The media are fixated by best and worst lists, top 10 lists and anything that seems to imply a rating. Some are just the works of individuals, some have research behind them and some are people adding their thoughts to a website. And if one person says this destination is the best thing since sliced bread do you believe them?
In their July issue Which? have published the results of their survey into short-haul airline routes based on what their members think