Quality performance

Once again we very much appreciate the trouble taken by those many clients of the 250 contacted, who kindly responded to our request to complete our November 2009 Quality Survey. The results have been carefully analysed and are a useful guide to our future development.

For the last few years we have run the same questionnaire and the results have been very consistent. However, I am pleased to say, this year we have edged slightly ahead.

Responders were asked to score a number of aspects of our service on an advised scoring scale of 1=unacceptable, 5 = good and 10 = excellent. (Please click here to see the survey itself) The results gave a score across all responders and all 14 elements of our service, of 9.26. This compares with 9.10 in 2007 and 9.18 in 2008 – so we are making headway even though it gets progressively more difficult the nearer we get to 10!

Corporate Travel

Perhaps the most satisfying aspect in the results is the tight range within which all the scores lie. The two lowest average scores were given to “Our quotes are competitive / good” and “Our accounting procedures are accurate and helpful” each of which scored an average of 8.4.

All others elements were given an average score over 9.0, with the highest going to:

· “Our response is friendly and cheerful” at 9.73,
· “Our staff are knowledgeable and friendly” at 9.64 and
· “Our travel documents are accurate and informative” at 9.52.

In addition to the quantitative analysis, many of our respondents were generous in their appreciative comments. For example one respondent said:

“I am very pleased to say that I have no suggestion on how to improve general performance of Medway Travel, every enquiry or actual booking has been dealt with efficiency, friendliness and we always feel that we get the best possibly price available.”

And another:

“I have always had superb service and have particularly appreciated the pro-active approach, searching out deals that will be useful to us. All arrangements have always worked beautifully.”

Leisure Travel

We are please to see a very similar result applying to our leisure travel services, as to that above. The overall score across all 12 elements of the service was 9.03 out of 10. with the range even narrower than in corporate travel.

· The highest was “our staff are knowledgeable and friendly” at 9.4, and
· The lowest was “our quotes are competitive and good value” at 8.5.

We would therefore encourage everyone who has not yet tried our leisure service – which specialises in carefully researching and giving detailed professional advice about alternative solutions to creating your ideal holidays - to do so. You will be glad you did!

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Far from making us complacent however, these results spur us all on to even greater effort and we will be trying to raise the scores of those elements of our service which scored less than 9.0 this time, to achieve 9.0 or more across the board in our next survey!

We would like to thank all of our clients who took the time and trouble to respond to our November Quality Survey. We had a record number of respondents, providing us with valuable feedback.

As an incentive to clients to complete the survey, all respondents’ names are entered into a prize draw and this time the prize offered was an M&S Christmas Hamper. We are pleased to announce that the winner of the Christmas Hamper was Barbara Laird of ISG Technology.

The feedback from each of our Quality Surveys is thoroughly analysed and the results used to provide guidance on which areas we should concentrate on in order to improve our service. Clients are asked to mark our performance in 14 specific areas, using a scale of 1 – 10 where 1 = unacceptable, 5 = good and 10 = excellent.

As in previous surveys, we were very pleased with the results, with the average score for overall performance being 8.89.

The results were as follows:

    A    Our staff are knowledgeable and friendly    9.07

    B    The information we provide is accurate    8.98

    C    Our fare quotes are accurate    8.56

    D    Our fare quotes are competitive / good value for money    8.07

    E    Our travel documents are accurate and informative    8.91

    F    The timing of our fulfilment service is reliable    8.86

    G    We provide proactive support    8.91

    H    We respond effectively to any reported problem    8.75

    I    Our response is friendly and cheerful    9.23

    J    We answer the telephone promptly    9.23

    K    Our visa service works efficiently and speedily    8.42

    L    We provide a solution during the initial call wherever possible    8.93

    M    Where necessary we call you back within an agreed timescale    8.93

    N    Our accounting procedures are accurate and helpful    8.32

As you will see, our highest scoring elements were “Our response is friendly and cheerful” and “We answer the telephone promptly”. This reflects our mission to provide a very personal, friendly and helpful service to our clients at all times, as we believe this is key in forming a lasting relationship.

Our lowest scoring element was “Our quotes are competitive / good value for money”. Whilst we do always try to be as competitive as possible, we do not claim to be the cheapest nor attempt to price match internet-site quotes. Medway Travel provides a quality service (please see Client Concern reporting, below) which we will not risk undermining in an attempt compete with those who provide little or no service. Nor will we use, on behalf of our clients, unknown and possibly unreliable, sources for our travel products.

Our staff are dedicated to continue to strive for higher scores each year, so please do let us know if at any time we fail to meet excellent service standards.

We were also much encouraged by the number of appreciative free-style comments volunteered by may responders to this survey. Some of these may be found on our corporate testimonials page.

Whilst fewer people responded in the leisure section, the average score was 9.2, with the spread between an excellent 9.67 for "we respond effectively to any reported problem", down to the lowest (8.62) for "our quotes are competitive and good value".

With this snapshot of our excellent overall Leisure Travel Service experienced by others, if you haven’t yet tried it, why not contact us for your next holiday requirements, so you can make a direct comparison with the agent you have historically used? We are sure you will be pleased you did!

We treat every report of any client concern regarding any aspect of their travel experience with which we have played a part, as a valuable opportunity from which to learn for the future.

The issue may be about the performance of a travel vendor, in which case we try to obtain compensation or at least an apology, with a view to ensuring the vendor is properly aware of the problem.

Alternatively it may result from an error in our own office - we are all only human, after all! But, rather than try to hide it or make an excuse for it, as some organisations would, we explore in depth how or why it occurred and extract as much from the experience as we can. Not only do we then try to identify improvements in our procedures or the need for some additional formal training, but we also communicate with the client, outlining our findings and actions. Of course, we also apologise for any inconvenience/stress the issue may have caused, as we well understand how tough it can be on a busy traveller when any aspect of their travel arrangements, does not go according to plan.

One advantage of treating Client Concerns so seriously is that we have data to analyse. This is followed avidly by our staff, who are proud of their record and are always trying to improve on the last results.

Because (thankfully!) the numbers are so small, our trend data is based on half yearly figures, and I am pleased to announce that the 2^nd half 2009 figures show a pleasing improvement on the first half, as follows:

     -  Client Concerns resulting from a Vendor fault :     5.2 per thousand bookings (down from 6.5)  - ie 0.52%

     -  Medway Travel fault :                                              4.2 per thousand bookings  (down from 4.9)  - ie 0.42%

These figures show that over 99% of the bookings we made in the second half of 2009 were free of any reported concern or error and that this rises to over 99.5% when considering those resulting solely from errors made by Medway Travel staff. 

These figures include Medway Leisure Travel and our accounts department, as well as our corporate travel department, so you can, with great confidence, rely on a very high quality of service, when you place your travel in our experienced hands.