Founded over 70 years ago, ABTA offer travel guidance and advice to the public by providing protection and expertise. With over 4,300 travel brands as members, they are customers’ first port of call when their travel is threatened by unforeseen issues. As well as this, ABTA ensure health and safety standards are met within the travel industry and promote responsible tourism both home and away.
The nature of the solution provided by ABTA to its members and their customers is typically manageable in house. In the event of a travel company collapsing, or a major incident oversees, customer contact volumes can rapidly, and without warning, increase. In these circumstances, it is crucial that ABTA are be able to continue to offer support and guidance.
In September 2019 Thomas Cook collapsed. ABTA engaged with MPL Contact to implement support within 24 hours, ensuring customers could access reassurance as to the guarantees and responsibility of ABTA to Thomas Cook.
Following conversations held over the weekend immediately preceding the announcement of the collapse, MPL Contact mobilised a team of dedicated agents who were briefed and supported by a knowledge base of material to respond to customer calls. Over a period of 2 months 41,000 calls were handled, with callers being reassured and directed to their next steps.
Close relationships were formed with the team at ABTA from MPL to ensure that updates and response times to customers from the in-house team were accurate and up to date.
With more travel companies subsequently collapsing, such as STA travel, MPL Contact were again called upon at short notice to implement a solution. Due to the pandemic, ABTA’s members faced enforced restrictions by governments around the world, meaning that delays and flight cancellations were unavoidable. Again, this created a need for agents to be on hand to answer incoming calls from concerned travellers whose travel was protected by ABTA.
Benefits
Having MPL Contact on hand allowed ABTA to cope with a mass influx of calls at short notice, which otherwise would have been incredibly challenging. Not only does MPL Contact’s service ensure calls are answered, but it filters all the callers to the correct services, provides accurate and up to date advice, and handles customers empathetically and with understanding.
