Hotels rank among the best businesses in Britain when it comes to their phone manner, new research has revealed.
The study of 1,000 consumers, conducted on behalf of PH Media Group, discovered that 50% are satisfied with the way the hotel industry handles their calls, putting it behind only dentistry (53%) in terms of Britain’s best performing businesses.
Average satisfaction ratings for the all businesses came out at just 23%.
Hotels scored particularly highly in the North West, where 57% of respondents were satisfied, while London (49%), Wales (48%) and East Anglia (47%) all dipped below 50%.
Mark Williamson, sales and marketing director at PH Media Group, said: “These results clearly reflect well on the hospitality industry and shows hotels are doing a good job of handling customer phone calls in a professional and efficient manner.
“But even though 50% of customers are pleased with the way their calls are being handled, there remains a significant proportion of callers who could have generated a negative perception through bad caller experience.
“Responding to calls more quickly or establishing a set practice for answering the phone both represent a good start but true best practice can be achieved by implementing tools such as on-hold marketing – bespoke voice and music messages that are played on hold – in order to establish top-class service and a congruent brand across all touch points with customers.”