Customer Sayings in a Travel Agents

I think that anyone who works in a retail environment or a travel agents in my case, must have the patience of a saint, so to speak. I wanted to give you an insight into how great it is working with customers and how much working with the public does give you job satisfaction, some of the questions we have to answer and some of the customer sayings that we hear. This is just a fun poke at the public and no malice intended. I hope you enjoy some stories I have and find it an enjoyable read.

So in my work place my job is to find a suitable holiday for customers and deal with any queries, questions and complaints along the way. One type of conversation with a customer that really makes me wonder how they managed to leave the house alone, goes a little like this:
Customer - got any cheap holidays? Me - certainly sir/madam, did you have anywhere in mind where you wanted to go? Customer - No, I will go anywhere. Me - Ok at this time of the year I can highly recommend Cyprus. Customer - I don’t want to go there, its too far. Me - right, southern Spain is a lot closer to home. Customer - No, its not warm enough. Me - What about the Canary Islands? Customer - Oh no, my sisters friend went there said it was awful, you couldn’t even pay me to go there. I’m sure you can see where i’m going with this. Why do customers say that they don’t mind where they go when clearly they do mind and do not want to go anywhere in the world apart from their trusty yearly holiday to Benidorm. Just tell us, it really does make it easier all round.

Now that was just a typical conversation that does happened on a daily basis. Do you want to hear another conversation which actually took place with myself and years on, I am still dumb founded to it. Customer came back from their holiday and came straight into the shop with a complaint letter, I asked the customer what had happened and the customer proceeded to tell me that a few days before travelling, torrential rain hit the island and corroded the beach and washed it away and it was my fault because I told them that the hotel was situated on the beach. “I’m awfully sorry Mr Customer but there was no way I could have known about this.” The customer then started shouting that I had lied to them just to “get a sale” and that I should have been able to prevent this from happening. Well I know i’m great but unfortunately controlling the weather is that one qualification that I haven’t quite gained yet (this is what I would have like to say, but I stayed professional). You think i’m joking - believe me this happened, I know because I took the brunt of the shouting and spittle in my face.

Natural disasters and weather are the starting point for any common sense to disappear and vanish into thin air. Take the Icelandic volcano that erupted back in April time (2010), all flights grounded in the UK for a good week, so all holidays and flights were cancelled. I had customers coming out of my ears telling me that this just wasn’t acceptable and that they wanted to complain about the volcano and that their holidays have been cancelled. “No problem sir, if you would like to address the complaint letter direct to the volcano, I’m sure it will be happy to help and stop spewing ash for you”, but what really made me chuckle was when a gentleman called me and asked about his holiday, I told him that unfortunately all flights cancelled and we are being updated every hour to the situation and if the situation changed, I assured him that I would get him on the next available flight, do you know what his response to this was? You will never guess, He told me that he was prepared to pay business or first class if it meant he could catch a flight. What part of “ALL FLIGHTS ARE CANCELLED” do people not understand? If I’m not explaining it properly then please forgive me but I don’t think there is a simpler way to explain it……..just a moment………….AAARRrrrrrrrgggggggggggg!

Right, I’m ready to carry on now, some shorter examples of “loss of common sense” would be, and remember these are all real examples, a cruise booked for a client with a cabin that had a porthole and they asked me whether I could guarantee a sea view, “Well sir I can guarantee you a whole ocean". Another complaint I had was that a customer wasn’t happy that all the food at the hotel was Spanish, no-one spoke any English and the weather was too hot, well this one baffled me as, of course, I have figured it out now, we go to a foreign country to hear everyone speak in English, eat burgers and chips all day, everyday and have rain all week, like home to home.....No we don't, you booked Spain you have to expect spanish things.

I have an endless list and could continue all day with examples of very strange complaints, requests and comments from customers and don’t get me wrong, my customers are what make my shop tick so you’ve gotta love them and I do, but come on guys, why oh why did you leave your common sense at home when you left the house? If anyone knows where it went, please share.