Don't Thomas Cook it: Four Service Warnings for Big Business

As the travel industry gears up for the post-Christmas bookings, larger tour operators will be looking at the latest Which? survey on customer satisfaction with a measure of embarrassment.

The survey of over 4,000 consumers put large travel operators, such Cosmos and Thomas Cook, at the bottom of the pile in terms of customer service, compared to small, niche providers.

Thomas Cook's reps got a lower rating than any other tour operator and only 36 per cent of respondents felt the information in brochures accurately reflected reality at their destinations.

It's no surprise that the larger, more ungainly organisations in the sector have a more difficult time maintaining customer satisfaction compared to smaller rivals, where internal communication of company messages and monitoring of frontline staff will be much easier. But in the eyes of consumers, that makes no difference.

Holiday companies are in the spotlight now, but this problem is suffered by all big players in any sector.

One bad customer experience is often communicated to loads of other potential customers and that third party review holds a tremendous amount of weight in consumers minds.

So, what can big companies do to level the playing field? The gripes mentioned by Thomas Cook and other big operators' customers actually point to the root of the problem.

Customer service specialist Cape Consulting director Lyn Etherington outlines five issues that affect customer service in B2C providers like tour operators:

1. A bad reputation, once gained, takes time to remedy, even when steps have been taken to improve customer relationships. Customers have long memories.
2. There is also an expectation of satisfaction with the product itself, which is affected by the sort of customers the company is trying to reach. If there is a mismatch between the proposition and the target customer, dissatisfaction is the likely result. It's vital your messages to consumers are as clear as possible.
3. The ease of doing business with the customer has to be efficient and reliable. Any hidden surprises for the customer are going to damage their perception of that company.
4. Customers put a huge amount of weight on the warmth of the touchpoint they have with the company. That personal touch is much easier to achieve in a small business, which probably echoes the same thing within its internal culture.
5. There is a strong tri-partite relationship between the company's strategists, frontline staff and the customer. The company promises to deliver a proposition to the customer, who bases their satisfaction on the success of that delivery. It is frontline staff who accomplish this, but only if they are well managed. Most companies invest heavily on presenting that promise to customers, but few put the same emphasis on ensuring staff are able to deliver it.

1. Staff need to have a clear definition of what the customer expectation should be like.
2. The customer expectation needs to be constantly communicated by management. Not just in the end-of-year company statement, but in those weekly meetings, too.
3. The focus on customer experience needs to fit well with other priorities. Too often, when times are hard, service takes a back seat in favour of concentrating on cost-cutting and sales driving. Customer expectations don't drop just because you need to fix your balance sheet.
4. The whole organisation needs to feel the same at every stage of the customer relationship. Customers expect to be treated the same way before they buy as afterwards and the same face to face as when online or looking through a catalogue.

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