If you think customer service is a joke, you’ve probably been traveling recently.
I did. I lost my credit card while traveling last week. My bank, which had promised me a replacement card by the next business day, sent an emergency card to the wrong address.
As I write this, I am on the phone with my financial institution trying to sort this out. I have spoken to dozens of employees, some of whom barely speak any English, and we are no closer to a resolution.
The problem is easy to identify: none of the employees – at least not those who understand me – are authorized to deal with the problem. They cannot ensure that I get a new card. They can only read scripts.
Like I said, it’s a joke.
“I’m frustrated and angry,” says Houry Vitale, an accountant from St. Louis Park, Minn. She recently flew from Minneapolis to Madrid and had a series of “shockingly” bad experiences with her airline, including unhelpful phone representatives and numerous errors that left her worried and upset.
How bad is customer service in the travel industry?
The situation looks pretty bleak. Last year, the Department of Transport received a record number of complaints (excluding the pandemic year of 2020). We don’t have figures for 2024 yet, but last year’s customer service scores were nothing special.
Airlines, car rental companies and hotels all scored 77 out of 100, or a C+, on the authoritative American Customer Service Index (ACSI does not rate credit cards, despite them being a supposedly essential travel tool, but if the company did, it would likely score even lower).
“There’s been a shift,” says Mario Matulich, president of Customer Management Practice, a market research firm. “During the pandemic, travel companies were well staffed and really put the customer first. Now prices are higher and there are more customers – and more friction points.”
In other words, travel is booming and companies take their customers for granted – as they always do in good times.
“The attitude is ‘take it or leave it,'” says Adrienne Sasson, a Philadelphia-based travel consultant. She says poor customer service is widespread in the travel industry, from disinterested employees to outsourcing call centers to countries where no one understands English.
So what’s going on and what can you do about it?
Where is the bad service?
Fortunately, bad customer service isn’t everywhere. However, here’s where you’re most likely to encounter it:
Popular travel destinations. Some destinations are at capacity with visitors and can do virtually anything they want. “Incredibly popular countries like Italy have more tourists than they can handle,” says Rebecca Gade Sawicki, who offers specialty travel. Shortly after the pandemic, some of the four-star hotels she worked with in Europe were happy to accommodate guests with dietary needs such as vegans. “Now,” she says, “it’s hit or miss.” Sawicki expects this lower level of service to continue as long as demand is high.
Companies with little or no competition. Credit card payment systems, for example, have little significant competition, as do airlines at some popular hubs. These companies are always hotbeds of bad service. When travel picks up again, they slack off by outsourcing customer service, often with astonishingly poor results. My experience with my bank card and Vitale’s problems with Delta Air Lines in Minneapolis – where the airline enjoys a dominant presence – are warnings to every traveler: lower your expectations. Delta offered Vitale a partial refund of her ticket and an apology after she repeatedly complained.
Companies that misrepresent their prices. Companies that lie about their product probably don’t value customer service. Unfortunately, 2024 has brought with it many new fees and surcharges, some of which aren’t disclosed until you have to pay. “Consumers aren’t willing to blindly accept fees, whether it’s baggage, cancellation or service fees, that pop up at the last minute and often without explanation,” says Jen Catto, chief marketing officer at Travelport, a travel technology company. “Gotcha” fees are the definition of bad customer service.
This is just a partial list of places where customer service has failed. The point is that travel companies ignore customer service because they can. Now that the pandemic is behind us, it’s a seller’s market for travel.
Do you feel cheated?
Some travelers find the current developments – the terrible customer service and the skyrocketing prices – extremely unfair. After all, didn’t we support the airline industry with billions of dollars in government aid at the height of the pandemic?
And many travelers asked airlines and hotels to issue them travel credits instead of refunds (which they did not always use).
Is this a way of saying “thank you”?
No, it’s not. And that’s a lesson some of us learned after 9/11, to some extent during the Great Recession, and now in the wake of the pandemic: You shouldn’t expect anything from a company other than to maximize shareholder value. It won’t reward your loyalty with kindness or better customer service. Just ask Vitale, the passenger on that flight to Madrid. She achieved Platinum Medallion status for the first time this year. She says it didn’t do her any good.
What to do if the service is bad?
Customer service isn’t going to improve any time soon. But it can be done, experts tell me.
Question your loyalty. This is a good time to reflect on the last four years. What have you done during the pandemic to support your travel company, your credit card, your airline? How loyal has your airline been to you? This might be the right time to switch to a different airline – or credit card.
Improvise. If you’re worried about the fees, you may have to get creative. Frequent traveler Jodi Smith says her favorite hotel recently got super strict about late checkout fees ($100 if she misses her noon checkout). So she found a way around it: She negotiated with her housekeepers to clean her room last, which allowed her to stay in the room longer and avoid paying the fee. “I gave them a generous tip,” says Smith, an etiquette expert.
Vote with your feet. The best way to express your disapproval of ridiculous fees, negligently outsourced call centers, and outrageously high prices is to stop doing business with the company. And tell a friend. That might be the only way to reverse this unfortunate trend.
Matulich, the customer service consultant, says consumers have the power. They can bet on a company that provides great service, and they can end the relationship with one that has failed. He himself has shifted some of his business to hotels like IHG, Marriott and Hilton that have invested in customer-focused technology, and away from properties that don’t seem to care.
“If you don’t take care of your customers,” he adds, “they will leave you.”
If enough customers vote with their company, companies may finally understand that bad service is not profitable in the long run.
Christopher Elliott is an author, consumer advocate and journalist. He founded Elliott endorsement, a non-profit organization that helps solve consumer problems. He publishes Elliott Confidentiala travel newsletter and the Elliott Reporta news site about customer service. If you need help with a consumer issue, you can reach him here or email him at [email protected].
