CX lessons from Trip.com

Even though it may be barely known in the West, Trip.com (formerly Ctrip) are the biggest travel agency in China, with about a million daily active users and almost 50% of their customers from overseas pre-pandemic. Their ambition is to become the number one globally before 2025, and it seems that they are close to overshadowing both Booking.com or Expedia.

But what is it that makes this company so special? I have picked out the lessons we can all learn from them.

Have a strong experience-driven purpose

Trip.com’s see their purpose as making travel a smooth, fun and educational experience. Travel in the West is either business-related or fun, but Chinese people want to be guided into an entertainment and educational environment. This is something you feel through their entire app and all their services.

A great example is that they offer lessons – in their offices or in the app – for the Chinese on how to behave overseas and improve their way of travelling with respect for the local environment and culture. They will enable their community to learn from each other as well, allowing them to share tips and tricks in the app.

Use data for good (for the customer)

Trip.com is extremely tech-driven. But what’s special about that is that they offer quite a radical promise to their customers, one of honesty and transparency. They thoroughly rely on data, feedback and AI algorithms to get to the heart of what customers want in order to give them a fantastic experience. But at the same time, the promise they make is that they will never abuse this data.

It’s about creating a culture of trust between them and their users. If a person has more money, they will never recommend the most expensive hotels, unless they feel and know that they would want that. And if you’re on a super tight budget, they will recommend very low budget hotels that still are ok in terms of quality.

Everything in the app, too, is in the open. And what’s also impressive is that they use the data they have to help their partners – hotels, transportation, insurance, restaurants etc. – offer their customers a better experience as well. The insights from their data help their partners make better choices so the end-customer has the best experience.

Think like a superapp

Travel has so many facets, and it seems that Trip.com tackles them all. It makes perfect sense from a CX point of view, actually: it’s a real hassle to reserve a hotel somewhere, then book air travel, then look for a car to lease, then find a provider for your travel insurance when you have to move in different websites and apps. So imagine how much smoother the ride is for the customer if they can do all of those things within the confines of one app.

Not only do they offer about 60 different products, like hotels, air transportation, trains, busses, medical travel and even an exclusive niche product like a 200,000 dollar tour around the world, but their app has an incredible amount of additional functionalities. It’s in fact really a superapp, like WeChat, but specifically focused on the travel industry: from applying for a visa to Thailand to insurance to borrowing money, getting vouchers or tax redemptions, Trip.com helps with all of them.

Always solve the problem

The travel sector is a very emotional industry: people really want their holiday or their business trip to be perfect. Most of us won’t be too bothered if an Amazon package arrives late, but if there is an issue with air travel or our ride to a business meeting is late, we get very frustrated.

So Trip.com’s strategy is very much focused on being ultraconvenient and on solving problems. No matter where you are, at what time, their customer service department will always pick up the phone within 20 seconds. Despite the fact that more than 90% of their service solutions are software chatbots, they still have more than 10,000 employees picking up phones 24/7 anywhere in the world. They’re fast, friendly and will do anything to help you.

This “people helping people” approach has always been at the heart of their offering, but they also integrate these interactions in their data so as to make their app, chatbots and services even better at the same time. Everything is measured and then the learnings are integrated back into the offering.

Treat your employees like your customers

Trip.com may be a CX leader, but they also do everything in their power to offer a great employee experience. Jane Sun, the CEO of Trip.com, for instance, is a big advocate of diversity and female empowerment and she makes sure that 50% of the workforce are women.

They also do everything they can to make life easier for employees who want to get pregnant (where other companies are often stressed about this). They don’t want them to have to choose between children and their careers. In fact, they want every employee to feel good and empowered: team spirit is for instance continuously stimulated with awards and other incentives.

Written by Steven Van Belleghem

Steven van Belleghem is one of the world’s leading thought-leaders, speakers and authors on customer experience. His latest e-book, The CX Leader’s Manual to Customer Excellence can be downloaded for free at www.stevenvanbelleghem.com