Providing customer assistance is always a delicate task, one that requires tact, empathy and skill in order to offer the right solution and strike up a rapport where necessary. The travel sector in particular throws up a range of potentially thorny customer care challenges: for example, a flight cancellation can ruin a long-planned, eagerly anticipated holiday, with the affected users understandably angry when they speak to an operator to get an explanation. The changing, unstable international panorama is another factor that can generate problems requiring quick solutions: events such as Brexit can alter the dynamics of a travel company, while terrorism is – sadly – another factor to take into account.
All of these potential pitfalls require professionals to be as competent as they are empathetic. When customers are in difficulty, especially if they are abroad, it is vital that we are able to reassure them and explain what they need to do. It is this mix of interpersonal skills and technical expertise that constitutes the very foundation of Transcom’s customer care team, enabling us to provide practical answers in even the most unexpected situations.
With experience in the travel sector stretching back to 2009, Transcom has developed specific industry expertise over the years and became a partner of the Lastminute.com group in 2015. The organisation, which brings together a range of booking companies, interacts with over 43 million users per month, considering both searches and actual bookings. However, added value is not just generated in moments of crisis like the ones we have mentioned here. It is the product of a constant, multi-level commitment to improving the Lastminute.com service for its customers and giving them a reason to keep turning to that particular booking company rather than others. The first element is the quality of service offered by Transcom.
We provide our services in a wide range of languages (13 in the case of Lastminute.com), covering 35 nations. The service is available 24 hours a day across a variety of channels, with telephone, email and chat support available to ensure users can get in contact in a way that suits them.
Operators are highly trained and familiar with websites and Customer Reservation Systems (CRS) that use specific processing languages and thus require specialist knowledge. Finally, as a company Transcom has extensive experience in customer care, having been operating in the travel sector for the past eight years. It is this experience that enables the company to anticipate and respond to the needs of users and provide pre- and post-sales services such as suggesting car hire options in their destination.
The other side of Transcom’s role in its partnership with Lastminute.com is to propose solutions designed to optimise processes. With 14,000 daily transactions to process, it is vital that workflow is organised efficiently. In the field of process improvement, Transcom has proposed a web platform designed to automate back-office activities which were once done manually, thus enabling to us speed up operations and reduce errors. The work undertaken by Transcom for Lastminute.com has resulted in an increase in the Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) and saw the company awarded top prize for Customer Service Management in 2017 on the recommendation of a panel of Customer Management Multimedia Call Center (CMMC) experts.
But don’t just take our word for it! Hear from our clients here: https://dreambroker.com/channel/flvx366a/cuu7yk4p