ALL ABOUT YOU — COMMENT
JO CAUSON chief executive, Institute of Customer Service
The latest UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) sector report for tourism revealed that it is once again one of the best-performing sectors, maintaining third position behind the retail food and retail non-food categories. The good news is welcome,
but carries with it the risk of complacency. So how can the sector improve and loosen retail’s stranglehold on customer service excellence in the UK? For each of the 28 metrics of customer satisfaction in the UKCSI, tourism performs better than the average across all 13 sectors. But it’s not all good news. Over the past year, tourism’s overall score fell by 0.4 points; that may not sound much but it’s a bigger drop than the all-sector average.
Areas for improvement Further analysis of the results suggests areas for improvement, the most notable in ‘professionalism’ and ‘loyalty’. Customers are saying that ‘ease
of doing business with’ and ‘complaints handling’ are key areas that affect performance. Frontline staff are an important
ingredient in delivering special customer experiences and our research reveals they should be informed, friendly and empowered to make decisions. Tourism is ranked fourth for
‘professionalism’, behind banking, retail food and automotives. Improving training and driving a customer-service culture from the top would help boost this score. Loyalty is an important
element for long-term business success. It is critical to customer retention, repeat business and
recommendations; a crucial component in building trust, making it the most effective way to grow organically. Increasing transparency and dealing with complaints efficiently could offer the biggest return on investment.
Make it easy Another important element for retaining customers is ‘ease of doing business’. This is highly relevant for tourism because customers in this sector are more likely to access products and services online than any other sector. If the online experience can be developed by adopting best practice from the retail sector,
Improving training and
driving a customer-service culture from the top will help boost the score for professionalism
customer satisfaction will improve. While tourism scores well for
problem-solving, there is still a long way to go. Some ‘complaints handling’ metrics receive a score of around six out of 10, the lowest scores for the sector. Working on empowering staff with soft skills and real authority would help to increase these numbers. The tourism sector faces challenges familiar to other sectors as we shift from a transactional to a relationship economy with companies working together to deliver on customer experiences. Tourism organisations must collaborate with each other and learn from other sectors. Collaboration and co-creation
are important elements for tourism, but this approach must extend outside the sector if it is to challenge retail’s dominance. The rewards are huge.
For more columns by Jo Causon, go to:
travelweekly.co.uk
34 •
travelweekly.co.uk — 16 April 2015
JO CAUSON
How can tourism challenge retail?
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