Customer Engagement Strategy for Travel & Hospitality (H1 2021 Stats)

Customer engagement traffic for our Travel and Hospitality clients has swelled beyond 2019 pre-pandemic levels. Despite the volume deluge, these clients reported greater success across both voice and digital engagement channels.

And how about this? According to the latest stats—presented in chart format below—you’ll cut costs 38 percent by deflecting voice contacts to the digital engagement channel.

Customer Engagement: Contact Volume Is Back Up

First-half 2021 contacts were up 4.4X year over year (YoY)—and up 120 percent over 2019. In March of 2020, we saw a huge spike in airline industry volume, principally due to queries related to booking changes, cancellation requests, refunds, and the like. Then things went quiet for nearly a year.

We expect to see travel and hospitality traffic continue its upward trajectory through the rest of 2021. Market research indicates consumer spending patterns and confidence levels are rising but … my crystal ball is a bit cloudy.

Customer Engagement: Containment Rate Is Strong

We applied various optimization initiatives that effectively increased containment rate, and reduced the cost per resolved contact, for both voice and digital engagement channels. YoY containment rate improved 17 percent for voice and 36 percent for digital. Digital containment rate is about 7 percent better than voice overall. 

Customer Engagement: Assisted Conversions Are Good

Assisted conversion rates returned to their pre-pandemic levels. The customer spend pattern doesn't vary much across voice and digital engagement platforms, though digital consistently outperforms voice by about 3 percent—which suggests customers are likelier to convert when using a digital engagement platform than when using voice.

Customer Engagement: 38% Cost Savings for Deflection

Our latest figures show airlines and hotels will save 38 percent in costs by deflecting voice calls to digital. Why? Most contacts (88 percent) in these industries are driven by just eight intents—and six of them can be 100 percent automated. In general, containment rates are higher in the digital engagement channel.

From the intent mix study, however, we concluded our clients emphasize the voice channel for new reservations and bookings (53 percent of overall voice contacts) even as customers prefer service-related intents on the digital channel.

Take the Next Step

To learn more about how [24]7.ai™ reduces your live agent workloads, increases your customers’ satisfaction, and lowers your operating costs , visit our Travel & Hospitality industry web page.