Customer Service Matters More to Us than Ever

TravelBank just wrapped up another great year of innovation and recognition. In May, U.S. News & World Report named us the Best Booking, Travel, and Expense Tool. When we commissioned Forrester Consulting to study our ROI, we learned TravelBank saved the average organization ~$482k. Yes, really. And our incredible travel agent team achieved a CSAT score of 4.9 (out of 5). It’s no wonder Software Advice said we had the Best Customer Support of 2024.

Simply put, we’re delivering value for our customers every day. Much of that is thanks to our round-the-clock travel concierge support via Slack, phone, chat, and email. When flights are canceled, hurricanes make landfall, and travelers get sick, our customers need help immediately – from a GDS-trained travel agent.

I’m grateful for our support agents, who have provided assistance to thousands of corporate travelers over the past year. Their remarkable CSAT score of 4.9 reflects the dedication and expertise of this extraordinary team. They consistently deliver fast, effective solutions, with an average response time of 2 minutes and average time to resolution of 7 minutes (source: TravelBank platform data).

I wish this were the universal experience in our space. But most of our competitors push users to self-serve via help articles or in-app chat. If they get in touch with a real person, often the agents aren’t trained on GDS to assist travelers. Some even charge $29 for every live agent call.

(Source)

Here’s a sampling of grim reviews from G2 for other expense and travel management providers:

”We’ve had problems with every agent interaction. We have lost time, money, and countless hours trying to clean up their mess. There is also no apparent way to contact agents other than through chat in the app, which is very inefficient when flight conditions are rapidly changing.” (source)

“Their support makes your neighborhood cable company look like a saint. Several travelers at my company have complained about the inept support.” (source)

“Completely unresponsive and unhelpful, a truly abysmal experience. Their CSMs don’t respond.” (source)

“It’s impossible to speak with a human.” (source)

“The implementation was a nightmare, issue after issue.” (source)

“Terrible customer service. Response time is days, if they respond at all. Only available via email. Chat is a bot and phone support is non existent. It’s impossible to get an answer from them.” (source)

“This company has the worst customer service. From changing processes and not communicating it to their admins, for waiting months for a response to tickets, and eliminating dedicated CSMs… I’ve been calling, submitting tickets, sending emails for months and received minimal responses.” (source)

The benefits of T&E management software are to take the burden off traveling employees, and relieve overtaxed admin teams. And that includes ensuring every customer service interaction is meaningful and productive.

Is staffing a travel agent team the cheapest option? Of course not. But it is great for business: our 24/7 live support is consistently one of the top 10 reasons finance leaders switch their T&E management to TravelBank. We hear it loud and clear from our customers:

“Customer service is an area that differentiates TravelBank from other solutions out there because the responses to inquiries are from real people – and very quick and helpful,” said Cameron Hartman, AP Supervisor at Structural Concepts. “We get a response from a real person within minutes. There are no problems that are lingering for hours or days or months.”

“TravelBank really cares about their customer experience. It’s delightful to actually have a company that’s listening,” said Ursula Atkins, the Director of Procurement at Christian Brothers University.

“The TravelBank team spent a lot of time understanding how we wanted to use the platform and how our IT team could make it work. Our implementation specialist stuck with us through the entire project. He understood our problems,” said Paul Schlorholtz, Controller at Duncan Aviation.

Our customers have always been central to the TravelBank mission, from delivering time savings and value to delighting with innovative solutions for mundane T&E tasks. What’s good for our customers is good for us. Whether we’re planning our product roadmap or delivering best-in-class customer support, we do it because we deeply value our customers and the community we’ve built with them.