Effective customer service in the travel industry
The foundation of a well-managed tourist attraction is effective customer service. It is an integral part of the visitor experience. However, this is not only about on-site service, but about comprehensive customer support: from the first contact and purchase of tickets, through the time spent in the attraction, to the establishment of a permanent relationship with the customer.
How to improve customer service in tourism and use it to build brand awareness and increase sales in your attraction?
Effective customer service — why is it essential in tourism?
In the broadly understood service industry, close contact with the customer is an important element of the purchasing process. A special role is played by customer service in tourism. It serves not only an advisory role when making a choice and purchase, but also serves to improve the experience when visiting attractions and even after it. Discover the greatest benefits of comprehensive customer service of a tourist attraction.
Increase sales a customer service
Good customer service translates directly into customer satisfaction, which leads to more conversions and increased sales. However, it is worth noting that this is not only about providing a contact channel, such as a hotline, chat or e-mail. Your attraction's website is the first line of customer support. A clearly designed website with a short sales path is a “must have” in our time. Through proactive contact with the customer, you can also avoid the “abandoned cart” effect. For example, displaying a chat window with the question: “Can I help you choose a ticket?” or “Help me make a reservation?”. The answer to it will result in a call to a consultant or guide the client through the script chatboot.
Collect more customer data
By contacting the client, you are able to collect a lot of useful information about the target groups of your tourist attraction and their specifics. You will learn more about the issues that interest them, their preferred channels of contact and sales. Based on this information, you can effectively optimize marketing activities and plan the development of the offer, following market trends and the voices of your customers.
Increase customer satisfaction and build loyalty
The goal of tourist attractions, as well as the tourism industry as a whole, is to provide experiences for their customers. It can be active entertainment (e.g. national parks, water parks) or educational and cultural experiences (e.g. museums, art galleries), but regardless of their type, you need to remember that customer satisfaction is made up of every detail. A fast and convenient sales system, friendly and efficient customer service are just as important as the attraction offer itself.
For example, a customer has problems when choosing a ticket, cannot reach the hotline, and the intuitive side is frustrated by them. In this case, you simply will not gain a new customer or lose a potentially regular visitor. Remember that a satisfied customer is not only your source of income, but also a living marketing and promotional tool. He will tell about the time well spent and recommend your tourist attraction to loved ones and acquaintances.
Also read: Survey of customer satisfaction in the Polish tourism industry
Ways of customer service. How to provide excellent customer service?
The modern consumer is extremely demanding. However, this is not a problem, since the general availability of technology allows you to meet most of the requirements without much effort and money. We present the most popular of the channels of communication with the client.
Tel
When thinking about customer service, the first thing that comes to mind for most is precisely the telephone contact. Currently, the hotline and telephone customer service is available in several versions, among them we find, among others:
- a traditional hotline, that is, the provision of one or more telephone numbers that allow customers to conveniently contact the company,
- callback and click-to-call button — waiting on the hotline is the biggest problem with telephone customer service. Callback and click-to-call button are its modern solution. These buttons are placed throughout the website and, depending on the selected option, clicking on them (and possibly entering a phone number) activates an outgoing call or in a short time the user receives an incoming call from the company's customer service department.
E-Mail a customer service
Email communication, as well as telephone contact, can currently be found in several forms. Traditionally, an email address is presented as part of a website, often in the contact tab or in the footer. A newer solution, but no less traditional for the moment, is to use the contact form on the website. This is a more convenient form for users, mainly because there is no need to go to another page or open a mail program to leave a message.
Social media and chat
Social media is definitely an integral part of our daily lives, which is why social media is an ideal channel for customer service:
- Chat — a quick, short form of contact, which is currently very popular among people of virtually all ages. Moreover, the popularization of chats has led to the fact that now you can put a button on your website, for example, to Facebook Messenger, so that consultants can operate both Facebook chat and chat within the website from a single panel.
- comments — don't forget to reply to your audience's comments. Often in this form are asked questions about the offer, prices and opening hours etc.
Chatbot — Customer Service Automation
The introduction of chatbot technology turned out to be a revolutionary solution in terms of customer service. Tools of this type are popular among users, as they imitate a conversation with a consultant. Entrepreneurs appreciate it because it allows to automate to a large extent the process of customer service. By defining different possibilities for the development of the conversation, you can create even the most advanced scenarios that will not only answer users' questions, but also help in booking tickets or choosing tickets to your tourist attraction.
summary
When running a tourist attraction, you must necessarily take care of comprehensive and effective customer service. In tourism, it has a direct impact on the satisfaction of your customers, thus affecting the amount of your income. When writing a message in a chat, composing an email or dialing a phone number — the user expects a quick, specific, exhaustive and polite answer to his questions. Take care of customer service in your attraction!