Yesterday I saw a classic example of integrated marketing that is almost great, but falls down as the customer experience online isn't quite thought through. We received a piece of direct mail from Eurocamp, the travel operator that offers family camping holiday packages in France. It offered us a discount to book our 2008 holiday before the end of the month. This was perfect timing for us, so we visited the Eurocamp website (www.eurocamp.co.uk) to decide which holiday to book. Everything went fine whilst we were choosing our main destination and we were offered a large discount to complete the booking online. But then the problems began.
Travelling down from the North West of England meant that we couldn't complete the journey to our chosen site within a day, so we needed an overnight stop. Relatively straightforward, you would think, as a large percentage of Eurocamp customers would need this option. Unfortunately though, you couldn't book this online. Nor could you book a ferry or Eurostar crossing. You could complete the booking (and an agent would call you back to sort out all of the logistics), but Eurocamp were asking you to take a leap of faith - to book the holiday without knowing the total cost. So we tried to call and complete the booking, but all of the agents were busy so they had to call us back - clearly we weren't the only people struggling with their website!
This got me looking at a few other things around the Eurocamp site. The 3D views of accomodation didn't work on my Mac. They don't seem to do any Adwords, and the site isn't SEO-optimized for anything other than Eurocamp-specific terms - you can't find them on Google by searching for 'French camping holidays', for example. Fine if you know the Eurocamp brand. Not so good if you are researching this kind of holiday for the first time. You also can't comment on past visit to sites either, which I would think would be a great option for regular customers (of which there are many).
This got me thinking:
- How many additional agents do Eurocamp employ to cover enquiries from frustrated website customers?
- How many customers abandon their bookings due to the holes in Eurocamp's CRM process?
- How much new business do they lose through their lack of Search Engine Optimization?
Eurocamp are a great British brand in their sector. With a little more work, they could be a great brand online as well - and probably save themselves a fortune in unnecessary call centre resources...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Strange you should say that as I just searched for "french camping holidays" and "camping in france" on Google and Eurocamp are listed on the first page for both (and many other european countries, using this search).
The site seems very slick, although I agree that the ferry booking is a bit of a pain. Saying that, if the agents can then talk you through the remainder of the experience, then its not all bad
Hi Barry,
Thank for the feedback. I tried again on Google UK and still didn't find them under 'French camping holidays', but you're right - they are first page on 'camping in France'. They don't appear to be active in paid search, however...
My point wasn't that the site is terrible. It was that an OK customer experience could have been a great customer experience if the process from direct marketing through to booking online had been thought through a little better. I'm fairly internet savvy, and if I refused to complete my booking without speaking to a call centre agent then my guess is that many others do too.
It stand to reason that any e-commerce site on which you can't complete the key elements of your order without human intervention must lose business due to aborted transactions. It would be the equivalent of trying to book a package on the Thomas Cook site, only to be told that you can have the hotel but can't book the flights without calling the call centre. What do you think?
Post a Comment