Customer Satisfaction is one thing. Customer Delight is a different level altogether!
Folks at Cleartrip.com have pleasantly surprised and even delighted me recently with the user experience on their site and their innovative features. After quite a while in my personal experience have I come across an application of technology which I would have been proud to call ‘My Creation’ as a software engineer!
I first took notice of Cleartrip when they launched Train Reservations recently. I was so fed up of the IRCTC’s painfully unusable site (you really have to use it to feel the pain!) that I was sure cleartrip would be better – that was expected. However, cleartrip exceeded my expectations with its simple, clean, clutter-free and fast interface. Here are just some of the things I liked about the interface:-
- As already mentioned, it’s Clean, Simple, Clutter-Free and Fast
- You don’t need to register to be able to book a ticket (unlike irctc)
- Even if you decide to register, registration is simple requiring you to provide only a valid email-id to start with. All the other profile details are optional and you can fill them up later, out of band
- The ‘All Stations’ option in the station selection drop down (wish they added “All Classes” as well)
- Availaibility Calendar for train bookings is cool
- Air Fare Calendar for flights
Then, a few days ago, they bowled me over again with the Cleartrip Chat-Bot for train bookings. I immediately invited the bot to gtalk and played with a few commands and queries and voila! It was simple, fast and fun!
I also discovered that they exposed web api’s for Flights and Hotels. I guess they are probably the first Indian travel services company to do so.
Frankly, I did not expect such sophisticated and innovative application of technology from what I thought was, primarily, a travel services company. (And was I wrong! How could I forget Amazon!)
Kudos Cleartrip! Keep it up!
P.S.
Even as I was typing this, cleartrip came out with Dynamic Fares. Haven’t tested this yet but sounds like another cool feature.
