Director of Melbourne-based etail market research firm Global Reviews, Dr Adir Shiffman, said most major Australian airlines failed to respond to any email enquiries submitted via their own Web sites.
He said customers wanting to inquire about ticket bookings made via the Internet were often obliged to phone airline customer service representatives who -didn't know anything about the Web site".
-You almost can't surpass that kind of damage to a brand," he said. Shiffman said the usability of most Australian airlines' Web sites was -well below the rest of the world".
Global Reviews conducts market research on Internet customer service based on around 400 quantifiable criteria.
Shiffman said many Web sites operated by overseas airlines delivered faster, and more thorough, customer service than other ticket sales channels.
He believes Australian airlines have been slow to develop comprehensive, user-friendly Web sites because Australian airlines rely heavily on travel agents to provide customer service. He said airline Web customer service was better in the US than in Australia because US airlines competed with travel agents for business.
Shiffman urged Australia's airlines needed to act immediately to improve their online customer service because most airlines had indicated -a preference for as automated a channel as possible".
Ansett recently launched a customer service -live chat" facility on its Web site, a facility the company's e-commerce vice president, Jochen Bonitz, said successfully serviced over 1000 customer enquiries in its first week of operation.
Bonitz said customer service representatives, operating via telephone or Internet, were able to access relevant information on all bookings - except for -Web specials" bookings.
-Web specials are by nature very inflexible," he said. -You can't change them and you can't refund them."
This is exactly what happened to my partner yesterday when she tried to book a flight on the Qantas site. First she searched on flights by "value", entering in a whole lot of info about dates, preferred times, destinations, the name of our pet dog (only joking Qantas people!) etc, only to find none of the times were any good. To change the search criteria to "schedule" she had to start again from scratch. Ten minutes later, she gave up and called on the telephone. The operator knew nothing of the fares quoted on the Internet, so she had to start from scratch again. I say, shut your site now and stop pretending you are doing business online Qantas. You're not fooling anyone!