I have read all the postings that have been received in the last couple of days about French Connections and have been startled to see such apparent disappointment with our new site by Lay my Hat members. This is rather contradictory to the direct feedback we are receiving in our offices here both by email and by telephone. Corroborating that feedback, we have also experienced a record month in receipt of new applications and in hits to the site during this period too.
The new features in our re-launched website have been introduced following extensive research with existing and (potential) new clients. The new site has incorporated all the functions that we have been criticised for previously, for not having deployed earlier. i.e. refined search facilities including search on dates and prices, personal update calendar, more owner interaction etc.
We are of course very disappointed to hear about any personal dissatisfaction and will take all comments received extremely seriously but it is gratifying to us that we are getting very positive feedback here, contradictory to what I am reading on the postings.
It would seem that members of the Lay my Hat forum have identified some important key issues, some of which are about the new features and functionality and others to do with enquiry rates and our customer service.
The 2 important key issues with our new features that Lay my Hat member owners seem dissatisfied with are the new AVAILABILITY CALENDAR and SELECTION BY AREA and I would therefore like to comment below on these criticisms.
AVAILABILITY CALENDAR
There have been a small number of people who have not understood how to complete their availability calendar. Where people have raised a query, we have responded with detailed instructions and received confirmation back that the client was then able to go on and complete without problem.
If you have any issues here, please do click on the following link which answers most problems.
www.frenchconnections.co.uk/for_propert ... ityfaq.cfm
If this information does not help you, please contact us and we will help you out personally. You can email
helpdesk@frenchconnections.co.uk or telephone us on +44 (0)1580 755888 (both appear on our website) and you will receive a personal human response to any problems that you are encountering.
SELECTION BY AREA
We have been specifically requested by our users to narrow the geographic searches as the list of properties contained in them was becoming unwieldy. The new searches allow users to search on many levels; by Region (22) and then drilling down by Department. Our research with holiday-makers showed us that the great majority required us to narrow our searches like this and that is why we have included the geographic searches in this way. That said, surfers are able to search purely on department – they do
not have to drill down to region.
The other two extremely important issues raised by Lay my Hat members are about ENQUIRY RATES and our CUSTOMER SERVICE that I would also like to address.
ENQUIRY RATES
We have noted that some people have remarked that their enquiries to their advertisement on French Connections have been reduced in the past few weeks. We are trying to balance quantity against quality of enquiries received so that our property owners receive a higher proportion of bookings:enquiry ratio. Unfortunately, the positive comments that we have received over the past few weeks, tend not to receive the same publicity as those comments which contain less pleasing experiences.
Every year we receive emails from people who say their enquiries are either less good than the same time the previous year, or we receive emails from those who report a greater level of interest than in previous years. This year, with the re-launch underway, it may be easier for those who fall into the former category to draw conclusions that it is the re-launch itself that has caused this effect.
Our web-design team carefully look at logs of enquiries going through the system and it is clear that some property owners are receiving far more interest than others. We are naturally investigating those who are reporting a downturn to see if there is any meaningful correlation and looking carefully at the way people are arriving at properties of choice.
We do recognise it is of small consolation to you if you are one of those people receiving less interest than others and it will not necessarily reassure you to know that we also receive emails from people who are reporting a good (better) response, in particular since the re-launch.
Naturally it is in all our interests to generate more and more traffic through the site, resulting in firm bookings, and to this end we are carefully monitoring all feedback.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
We certainly received a higher volume of emails during this migratory period and despite employing a team of additional staff to cope, unfortunately in some instances, we recognise that response time took longer than our normal service. The problem was compounded by the fact that some clients were emailing the same message to all our email addresses - this sadly resulted in protracting the response time further. However, all emails received were answered. If anyone has not received a reply to an earlier email, they should address their email to
helpdesk@frenchconnections.co.uk marking it URGENT in the subject title together with their name and property ref. no. It could be that we did not receive the email for some reason.
Other Companies who have taken the same path in upgrading their site have also received their share of criticism. We know this from emails received in the past year from the public who have subsequently come to French Connections as a result of disappointment with other advertising sources.
It is however, in both the interests of property owners and French Connections that all our clients are satisfied both with the level of service and enquiries. Having spent the past 8 years achieving the position we now have on the internet, our objective in the coming months is to continue optimising the website to the advantage of us all and we would wish to reassure clients that it is their interests we hold uppermost when taking decisions. Naturally if anyone has an issue we would want to be the first to know.
Please rest assured that, as always, we are endeavouring to build productively on the past 8 years established experience on the site. Whilst the equilibrium may have been temporarily disrupted in recent weeks, we are confident that future strategies and enhanced functionality of the website will continue to move us in the right direction, both from the "users" point of view and for our property owners.
We are also in the process of improving the search interface for complete beginners (i.e. people who know nothing about France) so that they can search by more than just area and activity.
We have carefully taken stock of all previous criticism of the old site and incorporated demands from both surfers and owners. Unfortunately, we know we cannot please all people all of the time but will continue to address where necessary, any constructive changes required.
