Wednesday 20 June 2012

Limited Availability In July

We are about to hit the peak season for coach hire and it is important customers realise that availability is limited. This is then going to be followed by the Olympics which will also reduce availability.

The important thing to remember is that ideally you should always plan your trip in advance, the old saying to book early to avoid disappointment is true.

If you do need a trip then you have probably got to work harder than ever to find a suitable supplier and don't just go for someone who will just try and take your money.

Service levels are just as important as price when comparing coach hire companies.


Tuesday 19 June 2012

Continued Growth For Coach Compare

It is interesting to see the continued growth on CoachCompare.Com; Google just loves the semantic mark up and the fresh content that comes from the reviews.

The CTR levels on the CPC are really good and it just shows how customers want the combination of coach hire reviews and detailed company information.

It also goes to prove the belief that customers want to be able to select quality coach hire and the market needs to stop this focus on cheap coach hire.  If you keep on selling a cheap service then what else will people expect when they buy from your business.

Coach hire is a service and not something to be ran into the ground by coach hire comparison websites pretending to sell cheap leads but they are just damaging the market.

The creation of long term value comes from investment in marketing and technology innovation.

Remember you always get what you pay for.


Monday 18 June 2012

The Reasons Customer Give Reviews

This is an interesting infographic for anyone wanting to understand the value of the customer reviews on coachcompare.com and the benefits you get when comparing coach hire companies using the system.


Friday 15 June 2012

Review Websites & Coach Hire Comparison

I was looking at a number of review sites this week for general market research and a few things really struck me. 

1. It is amazing how many company generated reviews are live on the websites, customers always complain about service and praise people.  Talking about business models and over elaborate descriptions are a sure sign of spam. 

2. The companies providing the review websites make a big noise about the usefulness of reviews but don't take any real care about where the reviews are coming from. 

3. How useful are the reviews? We often find that the reviews are from both extremes, very happy or very unhappy but 80% of the customers get a satisfactory service and don't feel the need to talk about it. 

4. It is said that happy customers will generally tell one person and unhappy customers tell 8-16 people; so the simple maths give you an idea of the distortion people see on review sites. 

Customers are making decisions based on a small percentage of people making a lot of noise. 

So we have a market open to exploitation by business, full of spam and one that is distorted by a small group of people making a lot of noise. 

CoachCompare.Com only collects coach hire reviews for customers we know have actually booked a coach trip with the company.  We also make sure that the overall score reflects the customer feedback but that the review is useful for the customer. 

So when customers use CoachCompare.Com they can compare coach hire companies on service, price and quality. 



Friday 1 June 2012

What A Difference A Driver Makes

I have just been looking through some of the latest coach hire reviews on CoachCompare.Com and the perception of quality service.


'The driver Hue, was a lovely man.'


'Nick our driver was brilliant. Very helpful and constantly contactable.'


'The driver was very nice to the children.'


'Waiting for us on arrival, drivers were very helpful and friendly.'


'Driver helpful with disabled passenger.'


'The driver was great - looked after us very well and got us to destination in good time. Thanks'


'The coach was on time the driver pleasant and knew where he was going.'


All the good reviews always come from customers experiencing good coach drivers.