Pat-downs, Packed Planes and Surviving the Online Travel Season

"2010 will be the busiest holiday travel season in years."

"Don’t bother trying to find cheap airfare during Thanksgiving, it doesn’t exist and never will again."

"Get ready for the pat-down of your life at the airport..."

National Opt-Out Day?

These are just a few of the horrifying predictions that we're being bombarded with in anticipation of the dreaded Thanksgiving holiday travel week. After just having traveled from California to the East Coast for the holiday, I can assure you that the worst part of my trip was not the crowds at the airport (nor in the plane). I didn't pay a lot for my ticket and there were none of those new security body scanners in sight. No, the real horror began over a month ago, when I went online to book my ticket.

My poor travel experience started when I logged into my account on the airline's website. It didn't recognize my login (the same one I have been using for three years), so I called customer service to resolve it. They reset my password but were not able to tell me why this occurred. Next, I searched for flights and was delighted to find that they were moderately priced; however, when I reached the end of the buyflow and wanted to purchase my ticket, the price had gone up by $150. I called customer service again, but they were unable to see where I found the lower-priced ticket and couldn't give me the original rate because they had no record of my experience on their site. Thus, they couldn’t detect when and where I found the original lower fare. Frustrated, I decided to try another website. I was able to purchase my ticket for a good price on a competitor's site, but it wasn’t without minor flaws — the site went down as I clicked "submit" to buy my ticket and I had to complete the transaction over the phone. All in all, my actual travel experience was far better than my booking experience.

As consumers, we largely depend on travel companies to make sure that their websites are operating smoothly so we can reserve and purchase our tickets, hotel stays and other travel needs hassle-free. We hope for a seamless online experience, but it's not typically in our control. However, there are some things we can do to improve our experience (or, as we say at Tealeaf, reduce our online struggle), especially when turning to customer service for help.

Whether you're speaking with customer service live or sending an email, here are some tips to help make the experience more satisfying:

• Tell them where you came from — Clicked through an email ad/invitation, referred from another site, etc.
• Name drop — Include the name of your browser if you know it
• Confess — Did you press the "back" button? It's ok, and it's helpful information to diagnose problems
• Account for yourself — Tell them if you have an account, did you log in first? During the checkout? Not at all?
• Ask for what you want — Customer service can't always tell you why you had a problem, but they can help fix it. What do you want? A discount? Free shipping? Just a completed order? Be sure to let them know how they can make you happy.

Of course, for companies in the travel industry, we have another set of suggestions for optimizing websites based on a keen understanding for customer behavior.