<B>BTS Guarantees Service</B>
By Jay Campbell
Sabre BTS in early July said it had become the "first corporate travel management system to initiate a satisfaction guarantee," and detailed eight points for which BTS will penalize itself for poor performance.
The points include reliability, call center service and support, lower air travel costs, traveler satisfaction, airfare guarantee, efficient implementations, individualized attention and "a commitment to co-evolving the next generation of corporate travel management."
Not surprisingly, competitors panned the announcement.
"We really feel it's more of a gimmick than anything," said Oracle E-Travel spokesman Rob Wald. "We have similar commitments with our customers and didn't feel the need to market them."
"Anything they guaranteed, we built it into a customer contract," said GetThere Inc. spokesman Dan Toporek. "We just didn't turn it into a marketing program. These are all things you should be doing as a standard part of business and should be part of your contract."
But for the stronger sales pitch, Sabre is putting its money where its mouth is, albeit the still-low trip fee revenues.
In terms of reliability, Sabre said customers would be able to access BTS systems at least 99.9 percent of the time, or would pay 50 percent less in trip fees for the month. Sabre also said its BTS Customer Service Center would answer 80 percent of calls within 20 seconds and will resolve issues "promptly."
Customers that have a 20 percent deployment rate among traveler profiles and do not recognize at least 15 percent savings on airfares booked through BTS would not be required to pay any monthly trip fees, following an audit.
BTS will measure traveler satisfaction several times a year, cutting fees by 25 percent if the overall traveler satisfaction is lower than 3.5 on a five-point scale (assuming 25 percent deployment and a statistically significant survey).
BTS will guarantee all airfares it prices once ticketed, or it will refund the difference, and BTS promises to implement new customers within 30 business days of receipt of all profile and policy information or it will refund fees for three months.
Moreover, customers who are not satisfied with implementation will not pay trip fees until they are satisfied.
BTS said it would reassign a given account's point of contact if the account is dissatisfied, and said it would share ideas and collaborate with customers, including an annual User Group Conference where buyers can vote on product and service development.
Sabre said clients would receive additional details over the next few weeks.
The guarantee will be provided as an addendum to all customer contracts.