In Netomi’s latest Customer Service Benchmark Report, we dug deep into how 3,000 of the world’s largest and most well-known airlines, hotels and resorts, online travel agencies, cruise lines, car rental companies, rail and bus companies, as well as venue and event spaces provide email and social support. We found that travel and hospitality brands are failing to meet the expectations of guests for effortless, quick support across their channel of choice.
Surprisingly, 55% of companies don’t have Twitter profiles, while 38% of companies do not offer email support. Shockingly, the companies that have email addresses or enable direct messaging on Twitter often completely ignore their customers – 70% of emails and 46% of social messages are never responded to.
Even if companies respond, customers are left with unanswered questions: 97% of email responses do not provide a meaningful, thorough answer, compared to 72% of responses on Twitter.
Here are the highlights from the Customer Service Benchmark Report – Travel and Hospitality edition:
• Omnichannel is rare: Only 12% of companies offer support on both channels, nearly 38% companies don’t offer email support and only 46% have Twitter profiles
• Email and social support is hard to find: 38% of companies don’t offer email support and 55% of companies don’t have a Twitter profile
• Customers are ignored: Nearly 70% of all emails are ignored and 46% of direct messages on social media are never responded to.
• Travel companies are not empathetic: Only 11% of travel and hospitality companies show empathy in email responses and 26% don’t show any empathy on social media support
• Email response times are fast; social responses are even faster: Of the companies that respond, 57% of travel companies that prioritise email respond within the first 3 hours and more than 1 in 5 companies respond to direct messages within the first 15 minutes
• Responses are not thorough: 97% of email responses do not provide a meaningful answer in the initial email response and 72% of companies don’t provide a relevant response on social media.
• Larger companies provide faster support on social compared to email: The largest travel and hospitality companies (5,000+ employees) were the slowest responders on email, with an average response time of over 27 hours, but the quickest on Twitter, responding to social messages in 5.8 hours, on average.
• The largest companies are the slowest on email: The largest travel and hospitality companies (5,000+ employees) were the slowest responders on email, with an average response time of over 27 hours.
• Response times differ around the world: Travel and hospitality companies based in North America have the fastest response times on Twitter, responding, on average, in just under 13 hours, while companies in Latin America are the slowest (average 27 hours).
• Personalisation is lacking: 28% of companies did not respond to a customer by their first name in email responses or on social media.
