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Travel website transaction problems highlighted
Monday, 14 Oct, 2009
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More than three quarters of people who spend money on travel websites have problems with their transactions, a new study shows.
The research found that 79% of those who conducted an online transaction on a travel site in the past year said they experienced problems when doing so.
Almost half (47%) of these said they would abandon the transaction as a result, with 43% saying they would switch to an online or offline competitor.
The most common problem on travel sites was found to be receiving error messages (43%), followed by difficulty navigating (34%) and being stuck in an endless loop (29%).
But travel customer service teams are still unable to efficiently deal with website enquiries.
Forty nine per cent of British adults who contacted a call centre after encountering a website problem were unable to have their issue resolved, and 76% reported that the agent was not knowledgeable about the website or about their particular online problem.
The results come from a survey of online consumer behaviour by 2,223 adults, conducted by Harris Interactive, commissioned by Tealeaf Technology, which found that 60% say they are now conducting more transactions online than they did in the past.
This is due to the current economic climate, with the ability to compare products and prices cited by 80% of these as the main reason.
With problems on travel sites still existing, consumers, empowered by social media, are increasingly likely to share experiences and opinions about companies, rather than with them.
Fourteen per cent of those who encountered problems conducting online transactions said they shared those experiences on a blog or social networking site, twice as many as in 2008 (7%).
And direct communication with a company declined, with a quarter (26%) of people experiencing problems conducting online transactions then posting a complaint on a company website (down from 30% in 2008) and 42% contacting a company’s call centre (down from 45% in 2008).
“This shift in consumer behaviour extends the business impact of customer experience issues beyond any single transaction to an overall long-lasting negative impact on brand reputation, with 79% of online adults saying negative comments they read online influence their likelihood to do business with a company,” the survey said.
The research reveals that social networking sites can be highly influential, with 55% saying social media content had directly influenced how they conduct online transactions and 79% of those saying it had affected their choice of vendor.
The survey also found that people whose transactions have been influenced by social media content actually respond to positive reviews (37%) more so than negative ones (28%). This means that good online transaction experiences are amplified online just as much, if not more, than bad, according to Tealeaf.
The percentage of consumers who experienced problems (81%) when conducting online transactions improved compared to last year (92% in 2008), with many companies realising the benefits of becoming more ‘customer-centric’ and investing in usability or customer experience management solutions.
Tealeaf CEO Rebecca Ward said:“Over the past few years, companies have increasingly focused on the online customer experience as the impact of that experience on their business results has become apparent.
“The focus on the online customer experience accelerated in 2009 as the economy drove more transactions online and the web became an increasingly critical channel for organisations.”
A Forrester Research report, "Best Practices: Five Strategies For Customer Service Social Media Excellence,” (August 2009) stated that “when companies blatantly ignore product or service issues, customers now can use the internet as a medium to broadcast, very publicly, their frustration to millions. This has switched the balance of power from corporations to customers…The risk of corporate reputations being ruined by poor customer service interactions has greatly increased as consumers have gained the ability to share their opinions directly with each other."
by Phil Davies
Phil Davies
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