Websites offer certain advantages over phone contact. First, people can gather information much more rapidly by reading than by listening. Pictures also say a thousand words, and imagery can convey concepts in a more compelling way than conversation. Moreover, the website can hold dozens, even hundreds, of conversations concurrently, and can do so 24/7. It never gets tired, distracted, and it doesn’t care if three people are at the desk trying to get its attention. Lastly, a website delivers its message consistently.
It is this last reason that brings up perhaps the most interesting point. Should the initial booking interaction be static, or should it be collaborative, a human-to-human exchange?
Our data shows that some consumers prefer the person-to-person contact. The data also showed that consumers like having all of their questions answered, and they really appreciate a sense of customization; a feeling that the offerings have been crafted for them, guaranteeing a delightful outcome. We have learned that some clients really prefer calling over booking online and some spas don’t have any other option.
So with all the limitations a telephone call presents (with limited hours to accept reservation calls dictated by the spa’s operating hours) shouldn’t the process be outstanding? At least it should do what the internet can not yet do, which is conduct dialogue in the way that dialogue is most effective.
After nearly 100 calls made to spas worldwide by Coyle-referred professional evaluators, we used the data to measure the interactions and asked the evaluators their impressions about the best and worst parts of the call.
In addition to asking evaluators to respond to specific yes/no questions, Coyle also asked on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being extremely unfavorable and 10 being extremely favorable) how the evaluator would rate their impression of the spa based on the reservation call. Below, we have taken those responses and provided the scores for each standard overall (not considering the rating); for the very unfavorable calls (ratings of 1-2); and for the very favorable calls (ratings of 9-10).
