A guide to support quality assurance in hospitality & travel

How do you know what defines customer service quality for your customers? While expectations can vary depending on the customer demographics and their history with your brand, a concrete factor is industry.

Customers expect healthcare support to be more empathetic; in the financial industry, confidentiality is a top priority.

For travel and hospitality industry companies—airlines, travel agencies, and accommodation services—accuracy and efficiency are generally considered the most crucial components of quality support.

“It is essential to provide fast and efficient service. The travel industry is complex, and we prioritize efficiency over just giving an answer straight away. You should be extra efficient in quickly finding the information you need and defining which alternative is best for your customer. Agents have to be prepared to think outside of the box and very efficiently place themselves in the customer’s shoes. After all, leisure travel typically accounts for around 55 percent to 60 percent of total travel, meaning customers expect to have a great experience for the entire trip. You have to be with them along the way.”

Simona Peneva, Quality Manager—Ferryhopper

In this guide:

• Support quality challenges for travel and hospitality companies
• Customer service quality assurance in hospitality & travel
• Improving customer service in hospitality & travel

Support quality challenges for travel and hospitality companies

1. The consequences of inaccurate information

When people are traveling, there are much higher stakes and, thus, higher consequences when customer support fails to offer fast, correct information. Different airlines, airports, hotels, jurisdictions, etc, all have separate protocols and rules by which to abide.

For example, taking a stroller for free with one airline may not be permitted by another. Your customer service team will often be dealing with frustrated customers. Misinformation can prove costly for the customer, cause delays, or at worst, cancellations. Inadequate support puts travel businesses’ time, money, and their reputations at risk.

2. Compensations are a high price to pay

Consider a scenario where construction work impacts the comfort of guests staying at a hotel. Several rooms are affected, with many guests requesting compensation for their inconvenience. Your support team must remain within the allocated compensation budget despite repeated complaints. Would you prioritize maintaining these guests as future customers and avoiding negative reviews, or would you be willing to absorb the additional costs?

3. The undertaking of onboarding new agents

In travel and hospitality, agents often need to swiftly understand specialized software and a comparatively higher number of products and policies than in other industries. This means a more demanding onboarding process and a longer time before newcomers are fully fledged agents. Due to the frequent turnover of customer service agents in all sectors, this remains an ongoing concern across the industry.

4. Unique circumstances that pose a challenge for AI and automation

Using chatbots, smart-routing, and other automation tools has really helped reduce the workload for many support teams. However, in the travel and hospitality industry, the wide variety of issues that can come up during a trip can be a challenge for these tools. AI needs to be trained carefully with high-quality data, and if it’s not implemented well, it won’t be able to handle the complexity of these problems. Some situations are just too complicated for simple solutions.

An Air Canada chatbot made headlines for erroneously telling a passenger they were liable for a refund. Despite trying to argue that the chatbot was responsible for its actions (not Air Canada), a civil-resolutions tribunal ruled in favor of the passenger. This set a future precedent and warning to companies using AI without safeguarding for untruths.

5. Customer data must be kept confidential

Data confidentiality poses significant difficulties for support teams due to the high regulation required in this industry. The systems that handle scheduling and bookings demand stringent adherence to privacy protocols. Even what could be seen as a simple error, like sending flight confirmation to the wrong address, results in serious breaches. Contact centers must take meticulous measures to prevent data from landing in the wrong hands.

There are three pillars that any customer support leader in the travel/hospitality industry should focus on that will improve customer satisfaction and Internal Quality Score (IQS):

• Thorough onboarding and continuous coaching

• Fluid communication throughout support tiers

• Quality assurance program

If you’re running a support department, you likely have all of the above in place, but are you following the best modern practices?

Customer service quality assurance in hospitality & travel

Customer service quality assurance (QA) is the practice of reviewing support conversations to improve performance and increase customer satisfaction. While customer feedback is vital, it only shows one side of the coin, as customers cannot assess agents against internal quality standards.

This is why support teams create QA scorecards and review conversations against set categories to track IQS.

What is IQS?

Your Internal Quality Score (IQS) is a metric that measures customer service performance against internal standards. By conducting conversation reviews, you can calculate and track scores by agent, team, and department levels. This is the perfect barometer by which to improve quality.

While smaller teams may tackle reviews and scores via spreadsheets, most larger and growing teams use dedicated quality management software to tackle QA.

Why is quality assurance important in hospitality & travel?

Accuracy is one of the most critical aspects of customer service in travel & hospitality. Yet, the customer cannot evaluate the accuracy of the information an agent is providing them. They don’t know the flight paths that systems like Galileo or Amadeus can provide—your agents should. They are not aware of package rates that travel agents are liable to offer—your agents are.

Quality assurance is also vital for measuring compliance. For companies to safeguard against regulation penalties and hefty compensation payouts. The role of QA in the travel industry regularly reviewing support interactions gives leaders and coaches a glimpse into agent adherence.

Best practices for customer service quality assurance in the tourism industry

1. Create a thorough, well-defined customer service scorecard to reflect company priorities and customer service standards.

2. Ensure every agent—in every tier and every location—understands the quality standards.

3. Choose the right conversations to review. Choosing at random is not going to provide the best interactions for learning purposes. Using a tool with smart filters, like Zendesk QA, can help you uncover hidden gems of information. Even better? Use a tool that automates conversation scores (AutoQA) to give your reviewers a very substantial head start.

4. Track and review data to continuously improve quality.

5. Use the quality assurance insights to coach your support agents. Product knowledge, process awareness, empathy, grammar, and problem-solving—the foundation of all these can be set up during onboarding and built upon with continuous coaching.

Improving customer service in hospitality & travel

In the travel and hospitality industry, where customer expectations are high and issues can be complex, delivering top-notch support is essential. By focusing on a solid quality assurance program, thorough onboarding and coaching, and clear communication both internally and with customers, you can overcome the unique challenges this industry faces.

Customers in this sector value accuracy and efficiency above all else. When your support team is well-prepared and well-connected, you’ll not only meet those expectations but also create positive experiences that keep customers coming back.