At Egypt Escapes we take great pride in our customer satisfaction feedback and reviews, after all, that’s what we are here for!
I mean, if you are providing a service then you want to make it a good one. On top of that, if you are providing tours and holidays (a fun thing, let’s hope) then surely that’s easy to be doing it good. And… on top of that, if you are providing tours and holidays to the amazing, inimitable country that is Egypt then well… it’s home runs for fun on the review stakes surely.
The review platform that we work most closely with and collaborate with firstly is Feefo. This review platform is available to validated customers only, whereby a personalised invitation is sent to our customers after they book (to review the booking process) and again after they have travelled (to review that actual trip). If you haven’t made a transaction with us, then you cannot leave a review.
We pay Feefo a monthly subscription for their technology and service. They hold our reviews for us and offer us advice on how to gain more reviews. When we get feedback, we can contact that customer straight away as we have all their details held on Feefos and our system.
Another platform we are happy to work with is Trust Pilot. Almost a household name, Trust Pilot is considered by many to be the market leader and poster boy of company review sites. This review site is open for anyone to leave a review about anything and the reviews are not validated by Trust Pilot. People can leave as many reviews as they want, under as many obscure usernames they can think of. Although, we do have an account with Trust Pilot whereby we can reply to reviews as we receive them so that we can thank customers or try to offer them help and guidance as required.
Our partnership with Trust Pilot is also reciprocal, as a secondary review site that we are happy to work with and we do so on a free subscription basis. So we have the basic package with them but we are happy to receive reviews on there from genuine customers and we appreciate being able to contact them from the free subscription package back office that Trust Pilot supply us.
We also like to speak to our customers via social media. The most popular platform that we communicated through on social is good old fashioned Facebook. Customers contact us via posts, walls, comments or instant messenger whereby we can reply directly to their Facebook profile. It is great to be able to communicate directly with our customers this way. They can see we have faces and we always enjoy seeing theirs. Especially if they tag us in a photo while they are on holiday in Egypt on a Nile cruise or beach in the Red Sea or at the Pyramids or Sphinx in Giza, Cairo, they are always favourites.
Facebook is free to use and is a fab way to receive, see and react to reviews directly with people.
Search engine reviews, (Google reviews is the main one, Bing don’t have their own…) are useful when they are considered and constructive but they can be very frustrating. There is no validation process again, so anyone can review anything but added to that, there is no minimum amount of characters required to construct a review, so you can just go on there, click a star rating 1 through to 5, write absolutely nothing and post it. We can’t really see how much help that can be, good or bad, feedback is brilliant but there needs to be something to work with surely.
Google reviews is a free to use platform and you can create an account and work with them to try to build your reviews but we are happy prioritising the two main platforms that we currently do and don’t want to invest more time, effort and money in this.
Trip Advisor are also a review platform but we are still not sure how we qualify for this. They have us listed as an ‘attraction’ and whilst we are a very attractive bunch that work in our office in Farnborough, Hampshire, we are not sure that is enough to be listed. I mean, people that arrive expecting some pyramids or at least a Cleopatra’s needle will probably be disappointed. Perhaps that is why there is a ‘review’ on there that describes us as a ‘scam’ as they were expecting something else when they got here! Obviously we are not a scam, we are very proudly a bona fide fully ABTA & ATOL regulated and protected operator.
Egypt Escapes still scores 3 out of 5 on Trip Advisor which is a miracle really considering 🙂
We don’t work with Trip Advisor other than asking them to classify us more appropriately but you just get through to bots that direct you to their office in California which is not much use. The ‘reviews’ on there are unqualified, unquantified and unwanted really. It is useless as they all have obscure usernames, don’t really review anything in enough detail and are uncontactable. They are slanderous, defamation and wholly inaccurate. We do not even know if they have indeed travelled anywhere or had any contact with us at all, they are totally untraceable. There, we got that off of our chest… 🙂
Again, we love our customers dearly and work (and live sometimes… sad) to send them on incredible experiences in Egypt. Whether it is that bucket list trip of a lifetime to the Pyramids of Giza or a 94 winter sun escape on the Red Sea Riviera, we are always here and truly love doing it. All feedback is an essential part of our business and drives us forward but we can only benefit from it when it is a two way street. So, Feefo, Trust Pilot, Facebook, we love you and implore you. Google, you’re ok, just ask for some minimum characters so we can actually establish a review. Trip Advisor, do one… lol, not really, we love you too, just sort it out. Your platform works so well when it is administered correctly like reviewing hotels etc… but the way it works for us currently, stinks. I mean, we get good reviews on TA too but why is it just the negative ones that appear at the top? Why not in date order? How do we know where these reviews come from? It could be a competitor trying to give us a kick. It seems strange too that sometimes when we get these fiercely bad reviews we then receive unsolicited emails from ‘companies’ asking us if we would like help in removing these bad reviews, for a fee £$£$. Has that crossed anyone’s mind?
Phew. Get in touch if you would like any further clarification on this and hey, maybe leave us a review if you liked or hated this article? 🙂
Love always, Egypt Escapes.
*This article was written on and with the perspective of 2nd October 2024 and a very bad mood with lack of coffee breaks.
