Customers are becoming more expectant of the brands they interact with. Whether they’re searching for their favourite show on Netflix or booking a five-star beach holiday, they want a seamless experience with no barriers and complete transparency.
As a travel brand, you find yourself in an enviable position, able to strike an emotional chord by offering something everyone loves to do: go on holiday. But you’ll soon lose that momentum if you haven’t curated a fluid process for your customers.
Simplicity is key, and each step of the customer journey with your brand should keep them interacting right up until checkout. But how do you make their experience as simple as possible? Read on and find out below.
1) Chatbots 🤖
The importance of artificial intelligence is growing in the travel industry, and chatbots are becoming increasingly more common. The number one predicted implementation of chatbots is to get a quick answer for a query. That means customers finding answers to questions they have with minimum fuss.
And even when they can’t get a resolution straight from the chatbot, it can put them in touch with the relevant person. Overall, the use of a chatbot makes the early stages of the customer journey more straightforward. It’s no surprise that 55 per cent of businesses using chatbot generate higher-quality leads.
2) Use smart tools ⚙️
Before you can provide customers with a simplified experience, you’ll need to set one up for your team. Putting the right tools in place for employees can allow them to excel at their job and provide a better experience for customers due to better working practices.
Fortunately, there’s a range of tools that easily integrate into your company workflows and help streamline processes. From task management platforms to social media planners, travel brands have a litany of options that can empower team members to perform better at their job and offer a better experience for customers.
3) Flexible payments 💳
Basket abandonment is one of the most significant issues faced by travel brands. Holidays can be costly, and seeing the final amount when you reach the checkout stage can deter customers from completing their transactions.
Having flexible finance options, such as buy now, pay later, increases sales and removes friction. Buy now, pay later has increased by an impressive 39 per cent year on year, and offering greater financial freedom to your customers at checkout simplifies the most critical stage of their journey, offering more options to pay for a holiday.
4) Think about the customer journey 👩🦰🧓👨🦱🧑🦰
How often do you put yourself in the customer’s shoes and imagine what it’s like to interact with your brand? Does the journey you’ve designed for them provide a seamless experience and solve their issues without any barriers to entry?
These are questions you should ask yourself regularly as you test and retest how customer’s experience buying with your brand. Customer journeys should be simple and provide support in the right places. A clunky user experience will put them off using your website before they’ve even had the chance to see what you can offer.
5) Have a great customer success team 🙌
While chatbots are great for answering entry-level questions and helping to get customers to the right place in their journey, it’s hard to argue against the importance of real-life customer success agents. The customer experience is a continuous one, and success agents play a vital role in ensuring all runs smoothly.
It should be easy for customers to contact your team members, and each one should be well trained to handle problem-solving while setting expectations and listening to and understanding your customers. With a five-star customer success team in place, you will find your brand in a strong position to simplify the customer journey and offer a great experience.
Keep it simple
Buyers today are part of the on-demand economy, people who expect instant solutions to their problems and straightforward processes. If your brand can meet those expectations, offering seamless solutions that simplify the customer experience, you can position your brand as an option for the modern-day customer. And in doing so, you’ll simplify their experience while seeing your status grow as an industry leader. It’s that simple. 😉