Customer experience matters much for any business be it a coffee shop around the corner or a company providing neighborhoods with renewable energy. In fact, 84% of businesses succeed in increasing their revenue after a solid improvement of their customer experiences. Moreover, 72% of satisfied customers are likely to talk about the company they’ve dealt with to at least 6 people.
But in the travel industry, customer experience means even more. It is the holiest cow because travel companies sell trips that are the experience themselves. That’s why tourists are particularly sensitive to customer experiences they get: from booking a trip to flying back.
And there is no better solution to improve customer experience than digital tools. By giving a digital touch to customer experiences of your travel agency, you’ll be able to unleash many powers: from offering personalized travel options to educating your clients. The Btravel Online team are no strangers to harnessing digital solutions for improvement of digital customer experiences for more than 10,000 travel businesses worldwide. In this article, we would like to share with you several thoughts on how you can take the customer experience strategy of your travel company to the next level using robust digital solutions.
Giving everything a digital touch
We don’t deny the fact that the list of customer experience solutions is almost endless, which is why we focus on the most prominent tools that will deliver a quality value to your travel services. Let’s take a look at them:
No-brainer booking process
Any good trip starts with booking flights, hotels, activities, and the like. To make customer digital experiences truly delightful from start to finish, you should bother yourself with offering an easy-breezy booking process.
For example, you can use Btravel Online engine that is an all-in-one platform for booking accommodation, flights, transfer, activities, car rental, and even the entire travel packages. You don’t have to look for every component of the trip itinerary separately as everything is rolled into one platform. The booking process takes a couple of clicks to make your customers jet-set for a vacation that satisfies their needs and expectations.
There are different ways you can leverage the booking engine to delight your clients. You can just register an account at Btravel Online portal, and have an access to our booking platform via a web browser.
The second way is to connect our booking engine to the front end of your website with an application programming interface (API). You’ll be able to provide your clients with a myriad of booking offers under your brand name. And the last option is a white-label solution which means that you purchase the ownership of the entire platform and can supply other travel businesses with the booking database.
All three options involve a user-friendly interface, search filters, and a convenient price comparison tool, so you’ll be able to find booking options according to the preferences of your clients. By having a simple, fast, and flexible booking system, you will ensure that your customers don’t feel worried and exhausted by selecting the right travel itinerary.
That’s what our booking system offers
Going mobile
It is difficult to ignore that adapting your travel agency website to smartphones is not an option but a necessity. In fact, 92.3% of users access the Internet with their mobile devices.
For that reason, going mobile is another way to advance the experiences of your customers. To begin with, you may just adapt your website to mobile browsers, so it is easy to read, navigate through, and even make a trip reservation.
On top of that, developing a native mobile application for Android and iOS can be the next step. There are several benefits of building a native mobile app for your travel company.
First of all, you’ll make interaction with your service more convenient. A customer just needs to make a couple of clicks to book a trip, check their insurance, or see the departure time. In other words, a mobile app can include a variety of features that will make a customer’s travel experiences hassle-free: fast access of a travel itinerary, support chat, purchase of additional services, creating custom travel routes, storage of documents for travel, you name it.
The second important aspect of going mobile is marketing and retaining customers with your brand. Since customers have your mobile app installed on their devices, they can send them push notifications with special offers, discounts, hot tours, and surveys to get the feedback. In such a way, you have customers’ attention at your fingertips even when they don’t use your application.
Educating clients with digital travel guides
Educating your customers is another reliable way to improve their experiences because they get valuable knowledge about various travel destinations and can make a more informed decision. Additionally, your travel guide may include various tips and hacks that can be useful during a trip to a particular location.
You can significantly enhance digital experiences by integrating virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) technology in your digital travel guide. Both VR and AR can provide your customers with virtual walkthroughs of various travel destinations, activities, 360-degree observation of accommodation they would like to book, or even get access to various events that take place in a virtual space.
You’ll immerse your clients into the environments of a location they would like to visit, thereby making sure that they make a weighted decision about booking a trip. You will ensure that your clients get the travel experience they wanted and leave positive feedback on your travel company.
Aside from that, travel guides can become a part of your content marketing and social media management strategies. By sharing useful information with your customers via these channels, you’ll not only educate them but also build a strong awareness of your services. The clients will feel more confident in ordering a trip with your company as they trust you and know you’ll be able to satisfy their needs.
Chatbots for customer service
Customer support is one of the most important aspects of delivering quality experiences but is the most ill-equipped one at the same time. You may have tons of customer requests, so your small customer support team won’t be able to process them well and fast enough.
Instead, you can delegate customer support to chatbots. Smart algorithms can easily guide your customers and help them navigate through your website, app, or a particular service.
But it’s just a basic solution, while you can go digital in full force: integrate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to make your chatbot truly smart. In the age of language-based AI models such as ChatGPT, the ability to develop a chatbot that delivers prompt and pertinent responses to customer inquiries is an opportunity that every business strives to seize.
We won’t lie, embedding AI into your chatbot will require a huge investment upfront. But the long-term effect on digital customer service your company will be able to offer outweighs all the expenses and challenges you may face during adopting a smart algorithm within your website and mobile app.
Level up travel experiences of your customers together with Btravel Online
Customer experiences play one of the most important roles in the success of your travel business, which is why you should not take it for granted and make the least priority. Instead, a continuous improvement of digital experiences creates a strong competitive advantage and ensures retention of your clients within a long term.
With the help of tech solutions we’ve described in this article, you’ll be able to significantly improve customer satisfaction, since your clients will get a personalized, smart, and flexible approach to their needs. You can start with integrating Btravel Online's powerful booking engine with your travel company. Our all-in-one platform offers 300,000+ accommodation options, 17,000+ international airports, 6,000+ car rental services, and 18,000+ activities. Whether you need extranet access, API integration, or a white-label solution, rest assured that you will receive access to the finest deals with real-time availability and round-the-clock multilingual support.
Take the first step towards improving your digital customer experiences strategy today. Contact Btravel Online and let our team of experts guide you through the transformative power of digital solutions. Together, we'll redefine customer engagement and unlock the full potential of your business.