In the latest Amadeus
snap poll of more than 300
travel agents and industry professionals, the majority of respondents (75%)
felt that travel call centres provided a similar or better level of service
than other industry call centres. Those agents who thought they offered a worse service (25%) had some key
comments to make. One agent stated, “The products are relatively complex and
the training is woefully inadequate, along with too high levels of staff
turnover”.

Another agent added, “Queries to travel industry call centres may not be as
straightforward as routine queries made to financial call centres, such as
banks. This has implications for staff training and the creation of
knowledge databases.”

The other key result from the snap poll was agents believe that in the
future, 43% of travel agents will provide their customer service online,
with call centres taking second place on 39% and high street outlets a
distant third with 18%.

“I think more and more clients will use online for simple flights and
holidays,” said one of the agents surveyed.  “If it is more complicated then
they will come to the high street agent to have a face-to-face conversation.
Call centres will probably increase for business travel, as more and more
airlines are changing to e-ticketing, so branch location is not an issue.”

Reflecting on the poll results, Rob Golledge, communications manager at
Amadeus UK commented, “Travel industry call centres are frequently in the
news, and not always for the right reasons.  However, it was reassuring to
see that the majority of agents felt that travel call centres do not fare
badly compared to other industry call centres.”

He continued, “The Snap Poll shows that it can be a challenge for call
centre staff to ‘paint a picture’ and present complex travel options in an
easy to understand manner. High street agents have glossy brochures while
online agencies maximise the visual impact of multimedia to help clinch the
sale - imagery that is missing when using the telephone. Both traditional
high street and online agents need to look at how to maximise the
convenience that call centres offer without diluting their customer
service.”
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