Travel companies are delivering the worst online customer service in Britain, according to annual research from eService provider Transversal. Holidaymakers are being condemned to delays and frustration through a total failure to get their most basic queries answered by travel Web sites.

In a survey of 100 leading organisations, the travel sector came out joint worst at delivering answers to straightforward questions such as about flight destinations, refunds and visa information. Holiday and airline websites could on average only answer a very poor one question out of ten, with 40 per cent unable to answer a single question online.

To make matters worse, there were even more delays for customers with no other option but to send an e-mail for information - it took an average of 66 hours to get a response. One site took an appalling 149 hours to respond to e-mail - equivalent to travelling around the world twice by plane. In fact, travel companies are taking 24 hours longer to reply to customer e-mail than they did in 2005.

These are particularly shocking results, given the travel industry is rapidly shifting online. Research from Mintel (May 2006) found that UK holidaymakers booked 37 per cent (almost 16.4 million) of overseas holidays or components on the Web in 2005, and 20 per cent (7.9 million) of domestic ones.

“Holidaymakers looking for information online are facing long delays even before they set foot in the airport,” commented Davin Yap, CEO, Transversal. “We were amazed to find that despite highlighting these issues last year, little has improved and in many cases travel Web sites have gotten worse. These results show that the travel industry’s move online is at the expense of customer service.”

Transversal’s annual research spans the retail, banking, insurance, consumer electronics, utility and telecoms sectors. It aims to measure online customer service by searching for answers to common sector-specific questions, both on Web sites and via e-mail.

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BIOS, Jun 12, 06 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Internet