Tealeaf enables UK hotel-booking website to recover thousands of pounds of lost revenue through proactive outbound calling

London, December 8, 2010: Tealeaf’s® Customer Experience Management (CEM) software has been selected by Hotels4U.com to help identify, analyse, and resolve customer struggle on its website. This enhanced customer experience has increased bookings and helped the company recover thousands of pounds of lost revenue every week.

The Hotels4U.com website allows customers to book hotels, apartments, villas and transfers in over 30,000 locations worldwide. Since 95 % of revenue is driven through the website, Hotels4U needed to improve its customer experience to meet a growing demand from customers expecting a seamless online experience. Now, instead of hypothesising about site trends, Hotels4U uses Tealeaf to quickly identify customer struggle on the site and immediately take remedial action to uphold the customer experience.

The value of Tealeaf extends across the enterprise at Hotels4U. For example, the call centre team uses Tealeaf insights to proactively contact customers that have abandoned their reservations. After Tealeaf was deployed, Hotels4U.com was surprised to find that approximately 30 customers every day received a card payment error.

Using Tealeaf, Hotels4U.com created real-time alerts that notified the outbound call centre team when customers struggled to complete a booking. Call centre agents can then contact customers to retake credit card details or ask for an alternate form of payment. After employing this approach, Hotels4U increased conversion rates significantly and for certain errors were able to recover 95% of the orders that were impacted. This process enabled the company to improve customer satisfaction and add thousands of pounds in otherwise lost revenue each week.

Steven Moore, Head of E-Commerce at Hotels4U.com, comments: “Tealeaf has supported our commitment to excellent customer service. The travel industry is an incredibly competitive one, but by providing exceptional user experience and customer service we can differentiate ourselves and stand out from the crowd. Using Tealeaf we can ensure our customers have a great experience on the website and, even if they do struggle due to an specific problem or a usability issue, we can use Tealeaf to proactively get in touch and not only recover the sale, but also their loyalty to our brand.”

John Lillie, Vice President of Tealeaf adds: “Booking a hotel online is a complex process with numerous forms to fill in and different options to select. Making this process as simple as possible for the customer is critical to a company like Hotels4U.com, but without visibility into the web channel, it’s impossible. With Tealeaf, Hotels4U.com can really get to grips with what its online customers are experiencing and make any necessary changes to the site as a result. Extending this insight to the call centre means the company can also recover substantial lost revenues and gain significant competitive advantage.”