Clearly Good Experience

Cleartrip has been my favorite travel booking website since its launch. In fact, I’m so happy with the entire experience on the website that I haven’t even tried any other travel site. Last week they did two small things that reaffirmed my faith in their focus on customer experience.

First, they gave me a Rs.500 voucher for being a regular customer. When I saw the email in my inbox, I half expected some convoluted scheme where I could redeem it only if I was booking a flight to Bhubaneshwar or some such rider. And I expected some complicated way of redeeming the voucher with messy codes etc… But their offer was surprisingly simple. No voucher codes, no riders. Just book your next ticket by June 5 using the same account and Rs.500 will be credited to you in a week. No need to copy-paste voucher number or claim rebates etc… Couldn’t have been simpler!

The second thing they did was something I had been thinking of for a while. They added a ‘book a cab’ option once you book your ticket. Makes complete sense, most travellers in cities like Mumbai need to take a cab to the airport. Why not tie this in with booking the ticket and in the process get a little extra revenue? Their share of a customer’s total spend on travel increases and it offers the customer the convenience to book everything related to a trip in a single process.

However, there are some obvious improvements which I hope they’ll make quickly. For one, their rates for a cab are much higher. A ride from my home to the airport in a Meru Cab costs about Rs.225, but their minimum fare is Rs.350 (for within 15 kms) For a difference of Rs.125 I expect a lot of people would rather make a seperate phone call to Meru and book a cab. I haven’t tried the service yet (and probably won’t, I take a Rickshaw which is much cheaper), so I don’t know if they’ve tied up with a cab service. But that would make perfect sense. Just book cabs for an existing service like Meru and get a commision.

Right now, the way it works is: you give them your number, they call you in a while (actually 4 hours) and make your booking (however, its been about 48 hours and they haven’t called me yet!). With their history of creating good experience, I expect they’ll soon move this process online. Just put in your address and when you want to leave. They send this information to a cab service (which is basically what they ask over phone) and you get a SMS confirming the booking and cab driver’s number.