Automated Customer Service At Orbitz Leads To Bad Customer Experience

[mandy]

I think a lot of us assume that it makes sense to do business with the big commerce site. After all, there have brand and name recognition which makes them seem like a sure thing. I remember in the early days of on line travel sites that there were organizations that would sell you a ticket and forget to send it. When you tried to track them down, their phone would be disconnected. Big sites like Orbitz, Expedia, Hotwire, and Travelocity spend a tremendous amount on advertising and marketing to create the persona of a large respectable entity – and some of them are indeed everything they say they are. However, there is a dark side to ecommerce that will have to be solved or the whole industry will suffer...

I think the problem is that these commerce sites make money by automating as much of their customer service as possible and adhering to very strict policies. I think these companies have a long way to go before the level of on line customer service is up to what many of us expect from a company we pay a lot of money to. I for one will think twice before I order a hotel or plane ticket from one of these guys – at least until they learn to improve the customer experience...

full article: http://www.it-director.com/blogs/Judith_..._los_.html