Holiday Extras
“Less Hassle” Holidays with Live Chat Services
20,000–30,000
conversations managed monthly
Nearly 99% answer
rate in peak months
Increased sales through faster,
human-driven resolutions
THE CHALLENGE
Effortless Travel Experiences
Holiday Extras is the UK’s market leader in travel ancillary services, offering everything from airport hotels and parking to travel insurance, lounges, and transfers. Their brand promise is simple: “less hassle, more holiday.” Delivering on that requires seamless, stress-free customer experiences, every time.
Travellers today expect speed and convenience, especially regarding customer service. Most prefer a real person over navigating an IVR system, particularly when booking multiple holiday extras or dealing with last-minute changes. As Holiday Extras continued to grow, it became clear that scaling without compromising their award-winning service would require a smarter approach.
“Our ambitions were to provide an epic customer experience and become synonymous with great service. We wanted to scale the business without compromising quality, and finding the right partner was key to that.”
Jarrod Wisniewski, Associate Director of Customer Service
The Solution
Smart Live Chat Support That Scales
Holiday Extras partnered with Open Destinations, drawing on their 25+ years of travel industry experience to design a Live Chat solution that could ease the burden on their call centre and support operational efficiency.
The pilot began with a small team focused on handling incoming queries via Live Chat with a channel allowing agents to serve 2 -3 customers simultaneously. This shift dramatically reduced wait times and increased resolution speed. Alongside email responses, a typical Specialist manages between 750 chats per month. 2023 went on to become Holiday Extras’ best year ever in terms of quality of service, thanks to the efforts of the ODL customer services team to satisfy and remedy customer queries.
“We treat our customers like celebrities. We want to be dependable. We asked thousands of potential customers what mattered, and the answer was clear: make things easy, fix problems fast, and keep it personal.”
Chat handling process enabled agents to access customer details before the conversation even begins, eliminating the need to look up or request information. This helped the team to focus immediately on addressing the customer’s needs, providing a faster, smoother and more personalised experience.
What started with just five ODL agents rapidly scaled to a 36-person team within six months, hitting remarkable targets of an NPS of 9.2, a quality score of 93%, and a first-contact resolution rate of 82%—all well above industry benchmarks.
“We’re all working together, and the results speak for themselves.”
“Nearly 99% answer rate in our peak month speaks volumes. Even though we’re not all in the same building, we trust the team to care for our customers and get the insights that help us make product changes.”
