September 12 2007

Travel industry rushes to improve customer experience

A surge of customer wins within the travel industry for customer experience management company Tealeaf indicate the growing strategic emphasis on improving customer experience online.

More than twenty travel providers and portals, including Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), Aloha Airlines, Bourne Leisure, Continental Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Holidaybreak, hotels.com, Starwood, VEGAS.com, and TUI UK, have implemented Tealeaf's solution recently to proactively identify, understand and eliminate online obstacles and ensure successful customer experiences.

"Tealeaf provides us with unparalleled insight into each customer's online experience," said John Keast, COO, VEGAS.com. "We are able to immediately gain visibility into any online issues, improve the overall usability and conversion of our websites, and make business decisions influenced directly by the customer point of view."

While the travel sector continues to grow online (from $142.2 billion in the US and Europe in 2007 to $213.8 billion by 2010), Forrester Research reports [Humanising the Digital Travel Experience] that travel companies "digitally disappoint" travellers by not meeting their expectations, resulting in a series of "noticeable performance gaps," with the ultimate result that "travellers' satisfaction with most digital channels is, for the most part, tangibly inferior to using offline channels."

Emma Herrod