The Travel Network Group is to introduce voice analytics technology to help its members monitor and analyse their conversations with customers in order to improve customer service.
The technology, already being used by major airlines in their call centres, picks up on key words, phrases and sentiments during communication with customers and gives a good indication of the level of engagement and how an employee has performed.
It is currently being trialled ready to be rolled out in the first quarter of next year.
At the same time, the consortium is going to employ mystery shoppers to measure its members’ customer service and to help them improve their standards.
They will go under cover, acting as clients, calling up agents or popping into shops.
"If you tie this technology into the new mystery shopper service, it will help you deliver consistent performances to your customers," CEO Gary Lewis told members at this week’s Monaco conference.
"You can measure the best sales conversations and benchmark them. It is very powerful."
But he stressed: "It’s not a tool to criticise anyone. It’s how we move good to great, and great to excelling expectations."
He said the technology costs around £800,000 so would not be given to members for free.
"We need to think now how we will make it scalable," he said. "It has to be affordable for every member of every size."
The initiative comes at TTNG received a Service Mark accreditation from the Institute of Customer Service.
Speaking at the conference, the institute’s chief executive Jo Causon said the award was ‘not something we give freely’ and was to recognise a company’s ongoing commitment to and achievement in customer service.
She said the independent agency consortium, which joined the institute in November 2014, has increased member satisfaction by over 15 points, and staff engagement by nearly 8 points since the start of 2015.
Causon also shared a list of top performing UK organisations based on the feedback from 10,000 British consumers on the service they received.
The only travel and tourism company in the top 10 is jet2holidays.com, which is number four behind amazon.co.uk, first direct and John Lewis.
Its sister company, jet2.com, is the next travel company in the list, coming in at number 54.
Data is currently being collated for the next report, due out in January.
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