Lies, Dam Lies and Customer Review Websites

It is about that time of year for my normal rant abut review websites and how customer feedback is handled.

I have just been doing the regular trawl of Review Centre for Momentum Coach Hire (a sister company to coachcompare.com and not as some people think some hidden link) to respond to genuine customer complaints and get the spam posted by competitors removed.

Now Review Centre are great and always handle issues we have really well ... they offer to pass on our details and we also respond to all reviews asking people to contact us directly.

We have been doing this for about six months now and I have had two responses from customers.

I have noticed that you need to submit proof of booking before submitting reviews to Trip Advisor these days and this is a big step forward.

Customers want to make informed decisions but if they were to look at some of the reviews on Review Centre they would think we are a bunch of crooks.

We ask all customers what they think of us on every trip we do. This has resulted in an overall rating of 4.05 out of 5 for the Momentum network. Out of the last 40,000 trips we have a customer dissatisfaction level of 1.6%. Or more importantly a customer satisfaction level of 98.4%. We have taken the unprecedented step of publishing all complaints warts and all on two website www.momentumcoachhirereviews.com and our sister website www.coachcompare.com (which shows reviews of individual coach companies). We show all adverse rating scores and only modify the ratings for the libellous or personal comments. It should also be noted you can only publish ratings if you have actually had a trip. 94.8% on time and satisfied – please take note airline industry.

So let's put the issues into context - a sample of 1.6% of customers have issues and I would actually say it is only the occasional individual (or competitor) complaining from this 1.6% it does not really give an insight into the company. 

That is why coachcompare.com gives customers an insight into good and bad reviews from a wide range of customers - they can make informed decisions and not be swayed by the noisy minority. 

Coach Hire In August and For The End Of 2012

So we are over the crazy season in the coach industry and we have all enjoyed the Olympics.

This is a great time of year for the coach hire industry because we can focus on getting everything done for 2013, planning our marketing, looking at customer service improvements and general business planning.

What would we say the industry needs to look at doing in 2013?

1. Continued focus on customer service, improving service levels and complaint handling on the day.

2. Customers will keep on getting more demanding and they are more likely to complain online, so get a good complaints process.

3. 2013 is going to be an important year for the coach industry with changes to the way we market ourselves, more comparison websites, more social media activity, mobile and data integration.

An interesting time to be in the industry.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

149 Coach Hire Quotes In The Last Week

CoachCompapre.com has sent 149 coach hire quotes to coach companies in the last week.

The last time I blogged about the number of quotes we were doing was in April and we did 31 coach hire quotes.

The performance of the SEO and PPC accounts is outstanding and it just goes to show that customers want to be able to the quality of the coach hire company and then get the best price.

Talking To Customers

I have been talking to coach hire companies since the launch of CoachCompare.Com and it is interesting when we see the success they have had.

• Coach companies who respond quickly to customers get the best conversion rates
• Customers are making decision based on price and the quality of service they see from the reviews so coach companies who improve their service are getting better results
• Conversion is due to the overall quality of the response, quote through the system, confirm through email and call the customer

Putting Customers At The Heart Of Your Business

It is interesting when you look at the perception of the level of service provided by coach hire companies, we have great insight into it from the reviews on coach compare.

Apparently the reason most people complain is because of an attitude of indifference from employees and we see this in feedback from customers.

Here are a few tips for coach companies that I picked up at a conference the other week for businesses looking to improve customer service;

You must unearth the root causes and value criticism in the business.

Involve employees in the change and improvement cycles and make sure employees have the following;

• Give people actions that they can own 
• Let people understand what is within their control to change 
• Make continuous improvement part of every ones job

It is a cultural journey and consistency is the key to putting customers at the heart of your business. 

Talk To The Coach Company

I have been looking into a number of customer issues with coach hire over the last few days and something really jumps out at me.

A lot of the problems with a coach trip when communication breaks down between the coach company and the customer.

Always talk to the coach company before you make the booking, get a feel for the company and make sure you feel happy with them.

Check all of your booking information and raise any questions you might have with the company, just like booking a seat on a plane.  Mistakes can happen but make sure these are picked up quickly and don't rely on the 'it will be okay on the day' attitude.

Talk to them before the day, on the day and during the trip to make sure everyone is in the same place, try to keep clear lines of communication and if anything goes wrong then keep yourself calm.

When booking a coach remember that things can go wrong, traffic, breakdowns, human errors but planning for every eventuality helps on those occasions when something does happen.

Over 6000 Coach Hire Reviews

CoachCompare.Com has now received over six thousand (6,000) reviews on coach hire from real coach hire customers.

For any customer looking to plan a coach trip the reviews are an invaluable resource to help people pick the right coach hire company.

We always advise people to research the coach company and to talk directly to the coach company to get an idea of the right people you want to work with.

Unfortunately a lot of the review sites are full of spam from competitive coach companies trying to use negative reviews to attack competitors.  

Coach Compare Is Now Delivering Thirty Quotes A Day

CoachCompare.Com is now delivering over thirty coach hire quotes every day and it keeps on getting bigger.

It is an interesting mix of customers coming from across the country through a mix of pay per click advertising, natural search engines and social media.

We can also see the difference with the growth in coach companies contacting us to find out more information.

It is exciting for the industry and it will make a big difference to the market by opening up the issues of quality, price, service and compliance for all customers.

No smoke and mirrors at coachcompare.com just people trying to help people pick the right coach company through coach hire comparison.

Coach Compare Traffic Growth

Traffic for coach hire is doubling every two weeks on CoachCompare.Com. 

New Customers On CoachCompare.Com

We have the following coach hire customers signed up for CoachCompare.Com.

• Snowdrop
• Heatons
• AC Travel
• Vision
• Tudor
• Ava Coaches 
• GM Coaches
• Truck And Bus Engineering

Many thanks and welcome from the Coach Compare team.

CoachCompare.Com Contra System

Coach companies already working with Momentum Hub can contra the CoachCompare.Com quotes against the Momentum Coach Hire (MCH) jobs.

This new process will help coach companies to improve the cost effectiveness of lead generation because they will not have to pay by invoice or credit card.

Face lift of CoachCompare.Com

We have just released a new version CoachCompare.Com.

There are a number of performance improvements and a few bug fixes. But the most noticeable change is a visual cleanup.

We have worked hard to make the visuals more consistent and a bit fresher. Also, the unreliable popup dialog has been replaced with a fancybox plugin.

Here are some impressions:

CoachCompare.Com Marketing

We are about to turn on the marketing for CoachCompare.Com and next week is going to be very interesting, the first week with sales and marketing working together to start building the customer base.

It will be interesting to see the feedback from both sides of the industry, customers and coach operators.

Customers Need Quality Coach Hire Reviews

I have just had to write a letter complaining about the quality of the reviews on Review Centre.

Competitors have been going to the site and filling it full of spam to try and reduce the average quality score and to attack the brands of coach companies.

This is the problem with the open review system that Review Centre and the likes of Trip Adviser use, the reviews are distorted by spam and people who just like shouting.

On CoachCompare.Com we only publish coach hire reviews from real customers, people we know have actually booked coach hire with our affiliate companies.

It is not that we have a problem with open forums but the publishers of these forums need to make sure that they either edit, allow brands the right of reply or verify the booking in some way.

If something is not done about the issue users will work out  that the reviews are useless and get bored of the sites.

Now in tribute to spam a little piece of Monty Python

Coach Hire Mapping

The mapping feature in CoachCompare.Com allows people to look at the location of the coach company and see the overall customer rating for coach hire.

49 Seat Coach Providers London

Coach Compare Commercial Development

We are about to start the process of calling our coach customers to talk about CoachCompare.Com.

Initially we are going to be introducing the product and looking at starting to increase the awareness within the industry.

It is going to be interesting to see what the coach hire companies think of the concept and the product.