June 24th, 2009
This is a follow up post to my experience with ClearTrip during my trip to Kuala Lumpur. Please read the first part if you are new to this. Also read the blog post by Hrush, Cleartrip’s co founder. ( Apologies for the delay in writing the second part.)
After a harrowing experience at the Chennai Airport and a thrilling last minute rush, me and my wife were on board the Malaysian Airlines flight to KL. As soon as I landed, I had to rush to the conference venue. This kept the bitter memories off my head as I was fully occupied with the conference.
Once the conference got over, later that evening, I wrote a detailed post on Cleartrip’s Customer Forum. I knew that forum posting will have to meander through layers of authority and hence I followed it up with emailing Hrush, the co-founder and Nikhil Godbole, Senior Manager, Operations.
Prior to this, I also made a tweet venting my frustration. I wanted to make a detailed blog post but a combination of complete lack of sleep the previous night and a draining day at the conference left me with little energy. That’s when I realized the importance of Twitter. You get to say what you want to say in quick time. No wonder Twitter is cannibalizing blogs!
I wasn’t expecting a prompt reply. Cleartrip surprised me here. Nikhil wrote an apology email and confirmed that my tickets for both me and my wife will get taken care of. I was asked for my hotel phone number and soon enough, he gave me a call.
The next day, I received an email with the PNR details for our return flight. Nikhil called me up once again to give me the confidence that they had double checked the tickets.
To me and my wife, having a confirmed return tickets was a major source of relief. We could now enjoy our vacation without worrying about nasty surprises.
On the morning of Day 5 in KL, the day we were to fly back, I received an email from
Cleartrip saying that they have bumped us up to Business Class. They explained that they were sorry for spoiling our Wedding anniversary and wanted to make up.
We were spoilt bad on Business Class. Pampered would be an understatement. There were just two other passengers in the entire Business Class. This meant that the stewardesses out-numbered us.
I consciously ordered Champagne. As we toasted, we couldn’t help but think of the stark difference between the two experiences. What started on a disastrous note ended on a fairytale.
Important lessons learnt.
It’s natural to screw up. But it takes courage to admit one’s mistake.
I’d give credit to Cleartrip for following up and resolving the issue. The phone calls and prompt reply helped.
Before making the blog post on Cleartrip’s blog, Hrush wrote to me seeking my permission to take this incident as a case study and to explain the reasons. I agreed. He earned my respect for following this simple courteous gesture.
I will continue to use Cleartrip to book tickets. But from now on, I will take the extra effort to make a phone call to the airline to confirm the tickets. Definitely so, if its an international one.
Twitter is indeed powerful. I no longer look at it as a ego-massaging, narcissistic tool. It’s a fantastic community tool. Just this morning, I had requested for an illustrator for children’s book and I got over 20 personal references via email and Twitter. Now, that’s usefulness.
Twitter is useless if it is used as a PR announcement tool. It’s strength comes in when corporates engage in genuine conversations. Cleartrip gets a thumps up for that.
You need balls of steel to point your customers to vent their frustration and complaints on your corporate website in full public view. At first sight, it looked like having the public Customer Forum on Cleartrip’s site is like shooting your own feet. At least that’s what most PR folks at a conference in Bangalore said when I took Cleartrip as a case study. But look deeper and you will notice that they use it as a transparent tool to show resolution of complaints. And they are using the public scrutiny to their advantage to resolve issues.
I’m looking forward to the reimbursement of the ticket money from them. I’m assuming that’s under process.
Also, looking forward to the changes that Cleartrip said they will be making based on the learnings from this incident.
Like they say, Alls well that ends well.
30 Responses to “The Cleartrip Experience – Part 2”
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Wonderful post again, Kiruba. Is fantastic to see that Cleartrip took so much effort to ensure that your return experience was better. Kudos to them, really!
As for Twitter, I think the PR industry especially in india, is stuck in a time warp. They are very used to giving information and feel exposed when the start to receive some back in return – this, in my opinion is the old way of advertising – via older mediums. Thankfully, sites like facebook and twitter have changed all that and its about time the PR folks come to realise this.
Once again, kudos to Cleartrip for getting it right.
yeah sure it’s fairy tale..
I doubt if Hrush would have cared if it’s not for “Kiruba”, the blogger and his connections.
It would be too idealistic to expect that. The thing i didn’t like in the whole episode is the way the Customer Service spoke to you…
Thanks for sharing the experience
To err is human but as you have mentioned it takes a lot of courage to own your mistakes & rectify it. Cleartrip shud get kudos for the way in which they went bout the issue after the incident. Im very impressed. So much so that Im planning to try out Cleartrip next time when I book my flight (Now I use Makemytrip)
Well, I am not sure if the same thing would have happened had it been a ‘not-so-known’ guy.
I think running a popular blog, having connections to pass-on the issue to, etc definitely played a role.
They probably realized your popularity and if you blogged/tweeted about the experience, it would screw things up badly… and they bumped you to business class.
I would be impressed if they did it for everyone.. and not only for the people who have ‘influence’ to help make or break their name.
But anyways, thanks for sharing your experience.
Prem
http://www.premsagar.net
Hmm… I was thinking of a similar ending…
lets all take a leaf out of kiruba’s book by making our tweets powerful and make sure we get followers that retweet our good tweets…. in this way we can really create a revolution in the way media functions.. this way cleartrip will respond to any customer that gets this situation as they know that their brand name will dilute if they don’t
I agree with every one here. If it was not for the ever famous Kiruba Shankar there is no remote possibility on planet earth that Clear Trip would have made amends. I cant think of me getting any sort of response or help if i was in your place, kiruba.
Well, being famous does help you out of these kinds of situations. So, its not a surprise that Cleartrip cleared the famous trip. Considering ‘only’ the famous persons, the case explains the penetration of the internet in the present world.
Did Cleartrip improve the quality of customer service interaction after this incident? Did they teach their CS reps to be REALLY solicitous and NOT CASUAL, which really irritates customers no end?
If they didnt, obviously it was a massive damage-control exercise to assuage a famous customer.
so how much are they paying you to advertise ?
Kiruba,
Thanks for sharing your experience. It was nice to see Cleartrip own up to the mistake and make it up to you.
Your status as a ’social network media star’ may have helped with the business class upgrade, but their actions went a long way in convincing me to do business with them. In fact, we got a couple of India-US-India tickets booked on their website today and it quick and easy. The prices were also competitive.
Kribs – more than 50 comments on u’r negative post about cleartrip and only 10 on the positive one and most of these 10 are also sceptical and untrusting. Lesson – Human beings instrnsically do not like businesses, even if it is a small little startup
Respectfully disagree with most of you here (Anonymous, Prem, Dilip, Python et al).
Have you ppl browsed through Cleartrip forums? Each and every post if answered and resolved, many by Hrush himself. Have you tried requesting customer service using Twitter (@cleartrip). You get a @reply without fail.
I don’t think it would have mattered if Kiruba is famous or not.
I agree with Dev. Companies are usually vilified. There is always an element of suspicion, and companies treated like cults.
My suggestion would be to buy ticket always from the Airlines and not thru agents/intermediates. I always use ixigo.com for flights within India. They allow you to book directly at the Airlines website.
Zishaan,
when you have a problem at hand which needs to be resolved in an hour, do you sit before a computer, post in some forum and wait for response ?
Well written, Kiruba.All is well, that ends well.
Nice post.. ClearTrip does seem impressive even after considering that Kiruba had contacts & that he is popular. Keep posting..
Just for the record : I had a bad experience with cleartrip once and had blogged about it and I am not a popular blogger or anything but I did receive a mail from Hrush and we had the issue resolved and this was more than a year ago i think. I think Cleartrip is different and makes an effort, so guys maybe the bump up to business was due to Kirubas popularity or maybe because of the scale of mess up, but I think the actions from cleartrip would have been same.
Theriyun di..nee intha maathiri part 2 poduvenu…nokia, cleartrip..who next, krishna paramathma? un leelai ye leelai
@anonymous
“I doubt if Hrush would have cared if it’s not for “Kiruba”, the blogger and his connections.”
This is untrue. I had a similar experience with Cleartrip.com which I blogged. They responded quickly with help and also changed their website with inputs from my feedback.
I’m sure you will agree that my blog is completely off the maps when it comes to readership.
So please don’t shoot of your mouth. And P.S – Add comments with a proper name instead of “Anonymous”, I have no respect for someone who can’t comment with even a dummy name.
@kiruba
I completely vouch for cleartrip’s sincerity towards solving customer problem. They not only helped me with the problem, but they made changes to their website with inputs from my feedback.
Almost a year ago, I was trying to find the cancellation charges for my ticket when I accidentally cancelled my ticket. This happened because I was expecting the website confirmation page before cancelling the ticket.
Although this was my fault for not being alert while browsing through my account, I felt that the website should have been much more intuitive or user friendly with respect to the cancellation procedure.
I could say that with authority because one my projects involved testing travel portal.
This was a bitter episode for me and I and my colleague blogged about this incident. I informed cleartrip about this post.
Subsequently I exchanged mails with Hrush regarding this episode and cleartrip refunded half of my cancellation fare (Rs4000/-)
This was a very fair deal as part of this problem was because of human error, mine! But the extraordinary thing was that, in a few weeks, cleartrip modified their cancellation procedure with inputs from my feedback.
So here is a company which decided not to ignore a customer, helped relieve the burden (by sharing fare) and decided to improve their product. That’s amazing!
With that gesture ClearTrip clearly won over my Loyalty again (I always like their website). In fact I’m actually very proud of this company which is making sincere attempts to stand apart from corporate crowd.
Thank you Hrush!
Details of the incident. Link to my blog post http://www.keshavnarla.com/2008/05/cleartrip-4k-and-
Also @kiruba Cleartrip blog mentions that you booked tickets with an incorrect name. Is that true?
http://blog.cleartrip.com/journal/2009/6/16/the-kiruba-incident.html
While I am happy to hear Clear Trip sorted out your problems and also compensated with a free upgrade, I’ll take it with a pinch of salt if they indeed do these kind of amends for every one of their unsatisfied customers, especially those who dont Blog and Twitter at all.
I am sure some will disagree and praise Clear Trip for their large hearted remedial actions but I see it simply as a damage control PR exercise.
Yet, lets hope Clear Trip evolves and is able to offer a consistent and happy customer experience in the future for every Aam Aadmi!
Keshav,
Don’t blame anons. At least they have courage to tell that they are anon. We don’t know whether you are really Keshav or someone who have created an account in the name of dear Keshav.
Coming back to your incident; you would have got just because you blogged about it. Everyone who support CT mention that they blogged about it and got help. No one mentioned that they didn’t blog but got help. This is what that anon tries to tell.
Hi Kiruba,
I would say you were lucky to have the acquaintance of the Head of ops for Cleartrip, and hence the damage recovery and pampering that followed…I’m doubtful if the subsequent events would EVER happen to any other traveller who would’ve just vented their anger through the online forum…give it a thought..
I understand that you’re writing from your perspective, but it’d be more wiser to see if such reconciling customer service would be provided to other travelers – the ones that donot know the head of operations and key people in such places…If this is something that gets you thinking, I’d appreciate if you could pass this along to your friend at Cleartrip in order to ensure this happens to everyone..
Cheers!
Kiruba you didn’t file a case ?? loser.
- winner
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I had very bad experience with yaatra.com before two years ;-(
All this is because of the “Kiruba” factor. I emailed the customer service department weeks ago asking for their position on their privacy policy…I am yet to hear back…lousy customer service as always…
I was surprised when I read your last post! I have been using cleartrip and they have been nice to me, a ‘not famous’ guy!
The power of twitter is great and I have seen it come to life with @windowslive, @microsoft for a couple. They have been providing support to consumers using twitter. Now that is the power of 140 chars!
@ranaonline
I saw you at The symbosis footprints prog. last year.can i have an id in kiruba.com? arjunrajdps@rediffmail