No Call Center? No Problem! Why Call Centers are a Waste of Time for Travelers
I’m guessing this has happened to you before in your life. You got angry at a company because something went wrong and you needed help right away. You call up that company and then this annoying robotic voice comes up saying something like this, “Thank you for calling the so and so company, if you’re calling to place an order press one, to reschedule a reservation press two, to make a reservation press three, to learn more about our products press four, to learn more about our services press five, and if you have a question press six otherwise stay on the line and somebody will be with you in a moment.” At this point you don’t know what to press. You press six and wait 10 minutes for somebody. Now that somebody answers and then says to you that they can’t help you so they transfer you to someone else. At this point you are asking your-self if this is good customer service. You wait another 15 minutes. The robotic voice tells you that its peak calling time and they say to stay on the line. Finally, you get to someone else. Problem is, you’re already mad and you start going off on them. They try to help you out, but because you’re stressed out from waiting for almost 30 minutes that customer representative starts to get stressed out too. That representative is able to help you within 15 minutes and the problem is resolved but you just spent a good 40 minutes on the phone listening to a tune and hearing that annoying robot saying, “Please stay on the line, your call is very important to us.” Important? You know what I would’ve done? I would have just hung up the phone and never bought anything from that company again. So you are wondering where I’m going with this. It’s because at EWA we don’t believe in remote call center environments. In fact, if you ever call during our regular hours, I can assure you that your phone call will be answered by a live EWA travel agent within three rings. It’s actually one of the company values and it ranks the list at number one.
In the travel industry, we know that anything can happen to NGO and corporate travelers. When an emergency situation occurs and your flight gets delayed or cancelled, you’re most likely to call your travel management company (TMC) that your organization uses. Now if a robotic voice comes up, things are going to go wrong for you. You’ll get mad, the problem won’t get resolved immediately, and a lot of time is taken away from you as well. So here’s the catch on why we don’t have a remote call center at EWA:
It doesn’t provide good customer service.
Everybody has a busy schedule and they want to stay on top of their schedules.
Call centers provide too many departments. You might not get connected to the right department/person and that causes you to wait even longer.
And most importantly…IT’S A WASTE OF TIME!
Having a call center environment could make things worse for our clients. It would take a lot of time away from them and problems wouldn’t get resolved in a timely fashion. Overall, respond times can be slow and nobody likes that. As a travel management company, we believe in providing a quick response time. A lot of things can happen when you travel and to help avoid you from getting stressed out or even angry, we answer our phones immediately so you can get on your way as fast as possible. Even during peak calling hours when a specific EWA travel counselor is requested and is not available to take the call, either that travel counselor will call you back immediately when available, or if urgent another available travel counselor will assist with the requests and needs from that client. As we stand by our creed, “Service is delivering what we promise and quality is doing it right the first time." And by providing a no remote call center environment, we can communicate with our clients faster and resolve their travel problems/needs instantly.
Paul Kacoyanis
Director, Social Media Marketing, EWA Travel