Agencies uncovered

Ethos Consultancy Introduction

Background

Originating in the UK in 1995, Ethos Consultancy relocated to Dubai in early 2003. The Middle East has welcomed Ethos' expert advice and customer service solutions with open arms. A team of five has matured to a team of 50 and we're still growing. Consultants have been handpicked from some of the most mature customer service markets in the world, ensuring experience and best practice is built into everything we do.

Our focus

Through years of experience, Ethos has developed a unique combination of products and services to help our clients understand exactly how their business is performing through the eyes of both the customer and their employees.

We strongly believe that unless you are measuring performance, it is extremely difficult to manage performance. Our customer service measurement solutions include mystery shopping, satisfaction surveys as well as local and international benchmarking against competitors and best practice. Once our clients have a clear understanding of how they are performing, we help them improve by way of training, consulting and implementation of The International Customer Service Standard. Our solutions support a complete customer service improvement cycle.

Ethos prides itself on being at the forefront of cutting edge online customer service solutions and was awarded Most Innovative Small Business in the UAE at the 2008 Lloyds TSB Small Business Awards.

Contact: Call +971 4 332 6315, visit www.ethos.ae or email This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Summary of conclusions and recommendations

This month's Agency Customer Service Challenge winner is Qatar Holidays, with an overall score of 92%. Qatar Holidays performed well in all three measurement criteria - outlet appearance, travel advisor and the overall customer experience. Etihad Holidays came in a close second, also performing well across all three categories with an overall score of 86%. Placing third, Dnata Holidays scored a total of 77% which is also a great achievement, leaving Emirates Holidays with this month's lowest score at 68%.

This month's top two agencies (Qatar Holidays and Etihad Holidays) were both extremely close when comparing outlet appearance and travel advisors. In fact, all four agencies deserve to be congratulated for achieving 100% in the outlet appearance category. All agencies were clean and tidy, had brochures clearly displayed and had their room temperature set comfortably.

While handing out congratulations, Etihad Holidays travel advisor Nurul Alam deserves an honorable mention. Nurul, your mystery shopper was so pleased with their experience they awarded you 100%! Well done. You were friendly, well presented and provided your customer with all the information they required.

Some shoppers experienced confusion identifying where they should wait to be served, some had difficulty parking, some were not completely satisfied with the agency signage and some shoppers reported incidents where their travel advisor could not provide the information they requested.

Ethos Consultancy recommendations for this month are as follows:

• Travel advisors should avoid speaking among themselves about anything unrelated to their customer's needs. Our reports tell us that customers notice this type of behavior and immediately feel unimportant or assume the travel advisor is not interested.

• Visa requirements differ from country to country and can be quite confusing. It is highly likely a customer will ask about their visa options and if they don't they most likely forgot. Use this as an opportunity to exceed expectations and initiate this discussion. Even if a customer doesn't need your advice, they will appreciate you took the time to clarify this. If your customer does need help sorting out their visa it's possible you may not have all the answers on hand initially, which is fine; however this creates another great opportunity to ask for your customers contact details so you can follow up their enquiry (within 24 hours is best).

• Unclear agency signage is very confusing for customers and continues to appear on our mystery shopping reports. Make sure your customers know they are in the right place by ensuring your agency's name is clearly presented.