Flight Centre is a long-haul, tailor-made holiday specialist offering amazing travel experiences. They’re so much more than your average travel agent, and a big part of that is down to their Travel Consultants.
They are passionate, well-travelled, and are all about getting to know their customers’ holiday style to deliver 5-star, personalised experiences.
Since launching their first store in the UK in 1995, their troop of experts has grown immensely and, with more than 80 stores countrywide, they’re proud to offer anything from a family holiday or city break to a honeymoon or point-to-point flight. Today, Flight Centre is one of the world's largest and most successful independent travel retailers with over 1,300 stores around the globe, located throughout the UK as well as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the USA, Canada and more.
To better understand how the business has been using Trustpilot reviews for the last six years, we spoke with Liz Mathews, General Manager at Flight Centre, and Imogen Altmann, Manager at the South Kensington branch. Here’s their story.
How Flight Centre use reviews as part of their marketing strategy
“We started using Trustpilot because we wanted to take a very honest look at ourselves and get some very honest feedback from our customers. We find increasingly that it’s not enough just to have financial protection and trade body memberships. The thing that really gives customers the confidence to purchase from us is hearing from real people about their actual experiences,” explains Liz Mathews.
To increase consumer confidence throughout the decision-making journey, Flight Centre leverages Trustpilot reviews absolutely everywhere in their marketing. It features all over their website and social channels, but also on their brochures and inside their stores.
“I use Trustpilot in a lot of my consultations. You’ll find that a lot of customers will ask you “Why should I book with you?” so showcasing our reviews everywhere is such a good opportunity for us to show that we do deliver 5-star service, we don’t just promise it,” adds Imogen Altmann.
Since showcasing Trustpilot throughout their marketing, Flight Centre found that Trustpilot reviews articulate almost better than any of their marketing materials what they do for their customers, because they are both firsthand and very personal.
Learning from Trustpilot reviews
Receiving 5-star reviews is great. That’s why Flight Centre aims to deliver 5-star experiences every single time, but let’s face it, it’s almost impossible to get it right every single time, and so 3 and 4-star reviews can happen.
When they first joined Trustpilot six years ago, the Flight Centre team wanted to take a very honest look at themselves. So today, the occasional negative feedback gives them the opportunity to go back and find out what went wrong, or at what point the customer felt like the service delivered by Flight Centre wasn’t up to 5-star level.
Their dedicated customer experience team looks at every single review that comes in and flags any that they believe require action. This allows the business to either fix the issue this time around, or improve the process for the next customer. This has proven to be a successful method as Flight Centre’s TrustScore jumped from 8.8 to 9.8 in the space of just one year.
The company also uses reviews to get an idea of how their shops are performing, and to make sure that all of their travel consultants are operating at the right level, so that we can reward the people that are excelling.
"If someone was thinking of partnering with Trustpilot, then I would tell them to go for it. There’s nothing to lose, all you’re going to do is show your customers why they should be booking and buying with you. We have progressed and developed so much thanks to our Trustpilot reviews, and I would certainly recommend it to any business."
Imogen Altmann, Manager at Flight Centre South Kensington
If you’re looking to build trust, stand out from the competition and gain consumer insights to better your business just like Flight Centre did, request a free Trustpilot demo below.