Thomas Cook Netherlands Deploys Tealeaf To Eliminate Customer Struggle And Increase Bookings

Fast-growing Dutch travel provider to use website visibility to optimise online properties and increase bookings

London, 30 November 2010 - Thomas Cook Netherlands has deployed Tealeaf® Customer Experience Management software on its two primary Dutch travel websites — Neckermann.nl and Vrijuit.nl — to help uncover customer 'struggle' and enable optimisation based on actual behavioural insights. Tealeaf will provide Thomas Cook with a common 'view' of its online customers as they navigate the sites, allowing the travel provider to understand how to deliver a better online experience based on real-time quantitative and qualitative data.

Providing holidays to 1.3 million customers every year, Thomas Cook is one of the largest leisure travel organisations in the Netherlands. The online channel is a major focus for the company, with web sales now accounting for 35% of all revenue, up from only 10% three years ago. Thomas Cook is committed to ensuring that each one of the 22 million unique visitors to Nekermann.nl and Vrijuit.nl every year has the best possible online experience. However, travel bookings are complex by nature and the competition is always only a click away. So, Thomas Cook will use Tealeaf to identify and eliminate customer struggle, thereby helping to increase online revenues.

"Recently, we started an ecommerce acceleration programme to focus on getting the most out of our online channels," said Finbar Hage, Director of Ecommerce for Benelux, Thomas Cook Group. "It soon became apparent that without really understanding the behaviour of our online customers, we were unable to optimise the web sites based on concrete evidence and were merely stabbing in the dark. Tealeaf gives us unparalleled insights so that we can confidently make enhancements and take steps to convert and retain more customers."

Thomas Cook will use Tealeaf to build a true online customer experience competency across the business. Tealeaf captures and records what each customer is doing and seeing in real-time on every page and across all site visits — right down to the page-by-page, browser-level experience. Tealeaf records both the quantitative and qualitative details of every single interaction, allowing the travel provider to identify and analyse customer struggle as well as explore opportunities for improvement and innovation.

"Thomas Cook Netherlands understands that the web is fast becoming the most important channel for its business," said Martin Hucker, Country Manager Europe at Tealeaf. "However, for a company that is used to providing high levels of customer experience in its offline travel agencies, creating the same level of excellence online was proving a challenge. Tealeaf will give the company the visibility it needs to ensure the site is performing to the best of its ability and eliminate sources of customer struggle in real-time."

About Tealeaf

Tealeaf provides online customer experience management solutions and is the unchallenged leader in customer behaviour analysis. Tealeaf's CEM solutions include both a customer behaviour analysis suite and customer service optimization suite. For organizations that are making customer experience a top priority, these solutions provide unprecedented enterprise-wide visibility into every visitor's unique online interactions for ongoing analysis and web site optimization. Online executive stakeholders from ebusiness and IT to customer service and compliance are leveraging Tealeaf to build a customer experience management competency across the organization. Founded in 1999, Tealeaf is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and is privately held. For more information, visit www.tealeaf.com.

About Thomas Cook

Thomas Cook Netherlands is one of the largest travel organisations in the Netherlands and includes the operators Neckermann and Vrij Uit as well as retail brand Thomas Cook Travel. Thomas Cook provides more than 1.3 million holidays annually to Dutch travellers. There are about 800 employees at Thomas Cook Netherlands, with around 450 employees working in the company's 150 Travel stores.

Thomas Cook Netherlands is part of Thomas Cook Group PLC. The Group has a total turnover of 12 billion euros. Every year more than 19 million people choose Thomas Cook Group PLC as their travel provider. The Thomas Cook Group has over 33,000 employees and a fleet of 97 aircraft. It is the second largest tour operator in Europe and third largest in the world.

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