If you are managing your firm’s customer service, you most likely believe that you are providing your customers with good service. In fact, the statistics show that 80% of businesses think they provide a superior customer service experience. However, since the word
"Vrbo, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, and Trivago are all owned by Expedia" I wonder how much the technical debt (and customer service 'debt' if that's a thing), of what were presumably acquisitions, is causing them to burn BTUs managing complexity rather than improving the customer experience? Almost daily I'm reminded that many of us don't see outside our own silo and I challenge those I work with to walk in the shoes of our end customers. When we are managing a lot of complexity seeing that customer experience becomes even more difficult. And hasn't someone in a position of power at Expedia tried to do the same thing you did, been as frustrated as you, and said "dammit, let's get this fixed"?
I really like it when hotels, dentists, doctors, and other service providers offer SMS communications since many requests don't require synchronous communications.
Professor Allon, I'm going to soon be writing about something similar but here is one thing I wanted to add after reading your post. You alluded to it when you referred to "Waste" but I wanted to point it out vividly. It makes FINANCIAL sense to solve these issues so that you don't have to make a call.
In addition to the fact that consumer expectations are increasing in regards to digital experiences you have the fact that a phone call into a call centre is expensive!
The only thing that may be happening here is that un the grand scheme of things they may not be seeing that many requests and calls with what you experienced.
Unfortunately with monopolistic behaviour showing up given the vast empire that Expedia has, it is expected that consumer experience will decline.
I've had similar experience with an airline, which operates in a relatively high competitive environment, and it was truly frustrating.
"Vrbo, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, and Trivago are all owned by Expedia" I wonder how much the technical debt (and customer service 'debt' if that's a thing), of what were presumably acquisitions, is causing them to burn BTUs managing complexity rather than improving the customer experience? Almost daily I'm reminded that many of us don't see outside our own silo and I challenge those I work with to walk in the shoes of our end customers. When we are managing a lot of complexity seeing that customer experience becomes even more difficult. And hasn't someone in a position of power at Expedia tried to do the same thing you did, been as frustrated as you, and said "dammit, let's get this fixed"?
I really like it when hotels, dentists, doctors, and other service providers offer SMS communications since many requests don't require synchronous communications.
Professor Allon, I'm going to soon be writing about something similar but here is one thing I wanted to add after reading your post. You alluded to it when you referred to "Waste" but I wanted to point it out vividly. It makes FINANCIAL sense to solve these issues so that you don't have to make a call.
In addition to the fact that consumer expectations are increasing in regards to digital experiences you have the fact that a phone call into a call centre is expensive!
The only thing that may be happening here is that un the grand scheme of things they may not be seeing that many requests and calls with what you experienced.
Unfortunately with monopolistic behaviour showing up given the vast empire that Expedia has, it is expected that consumer experience will decline.
I've had similar experience with an airline, which operates in a relatively high competitive environment, and it was truly frustrating.