PHOENIX, AZ — (November 21, 2016) — Execs In The Know, a global network of customer experience professionals, together with COPC Inc., announce the results from their first travel industry survey, CXMB Industry Insights: Travel & Hospitality. The survey focused on the customer care experience, the purchase experience, and customer loyalty.
The findings show that both leisure and business travelers are using multiple customer service channels to resolve issues. However, customer satisfaction is higher when travelers self-select a channel that they want to use rather than being forced into one. Furthermore, a consistent experience across channels is so important among travelers that it ranks higher than competitive pricing and a personalized experience.
Survey participants were U.S.-based individuals traveling for business only, leisure only or both. Here are some key travel and hospitality industry findings for both leisure and business travelers. See the infographic for more details.
– Business and leisure travelers still prefer to talk to someone in person or on the phone to resolve their issues. Both groups were equally open to using new channels of communications — social media, text, mobile chat and smartphone app — at 27 percent for business travelers and 30 percent for leisure travelers.
– When multichannel communication is a choice rather than a forced approach for issue resolution, customer satisfaction increases. Conversely, when forced into a multichannel approach to resolve an issue, both business and leisure travelers stated a dissatisfaction rate at nearly 50 percent.
– Both business and leisure travelers consider a consistent customer experience across communication channels significantly more important than competitive pricing. In particular, 60 percent of leisure travelers stated a consistent experience was important.
“We are pleased to provide the results of this survey, showing how a multichannel approach to meeting customer needs can affect the traveler’s experience. For companies focused on providing excellent customer care, our findings reveal a choice of communication options is the key to customer satisfaction. Travel and hospitality brands should not only be present in the channels their customers prefer, but also need to be capable of resolving their issues through these channels,” said Kathleen Jezierski, chief operating officer, COPC Inc.
“CXMB Industry Insights allows us to dive deeper into different industry segments and provide the important insights that our community members in each vertical are looking for,” said Chad McDaniel, president, Execs In The Know. “Our findings provide a better understanding of the customer landscape in the travel and hospitality sectors, and hopefully will spark some ideas for brands to improve the customer experience and enhance overall customer satisfaction.”
This travel survey is the first in the series of industry-specific research, and is part of the larger Customer Experience Management Benchmark (CXMB) Series, also published in partnership between COPC Inc. and Execs In The Know.
Download http://ow.ly/OxT3306onPG, or sign up to receive future survey results produced by COPC Inc. and Execs In The Know. Other industry-specific reports will follow in early 2017.
To hear a further discussion about CXMB Industry Insights: Travel and Hospitality, join COPC Inc. and Execs In The Know on Tuesday, December 6,at 1 p.m. ET for a webinar. To register, visit http://ow.ly/yYyY306onpY .
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About Execs In The Know
For over 15 years, Execs In The Know has built a reputation of excellence in the Customer Management Industry and a worldwide community of over 50,000 Customer Experience Professionals. Execs In The Know connects people to engaging industry content, thought leadership, current trends, peer-to-peer collaboration, networking and industry employment opportunities. Examples of this can be seen at their Customer Response Summit events, roadshows, webinars, workshops, Blog Talk Radio segments, Industry Benchmarking Series, blogs, thought papers and social communities. For more information visit www.execsintheknow.com.
About COPC Inc.
COPC Inc. is an innovative global leader that empowers organizations to manage complex customer journeys. The company created the COPC Customer Experience (CX) Standard and provides consulting, training and certification for operations that support the customer experience. Founded in 1996, COPC Inc. began by helping call centers improve their performance. Today, the company works with leading brands worldwide to optimize key customer touchpoints and deliver a seamless experience across channels. COPC Inc. is privately held with headquarters in Winter Park, Florida, U.S. and has operations in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America, India and Japan. www.copc.com
