A survey of travel consumers has found a third would be less likely to use a mobile travel website or application if the service malfunctioned during use.
The poll of nearly 800 US travellers, conducted by mobile platform firm Kony in conjunction with research firm PhoCusWright, also found that a quarter would would tell others about their bad experience.
A fifth claimed they would find another mobile application to use.
It’s not all bad news for app providers. Some 36% said they would switch to the company’s website as an alternative and 33% would simply ring the provider.
Interestingly, PhoCusWright research director Caroll Rheem says the percentage of users that would tell others about their bad experience increases from 25% to 32% for smartphone owners.
Mobile is clearly becoming an important area, as most studies indicate and as travel companies earmark resources to executing on a mobile strategy.
The study found that a over quarter (26%) had engaged with a travel company via SMS text message and 20% used email on a mobile to do the same.
Using mobile to reach a travel company on a social network is less advanced it appears. Just 11% had done so on their handsets, compared to 35% that engaged with a travel company on a traditional desktop or laptop computer.
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About Kevin May
Only a third?
Look at this another way and I think the results are much more interesting.
- 66% of people would carry on using a mobile app that didn’t work.
- 75% of people would keep the bad experience to themselves
- When faced with a mobile app that doesn’t work, 80% (4 / 5) of people wouldn’t bother looking for a different one.
I’d say that makes us surprisingly forgiving.
Forgiving, or maybe we just have low expectations to start with and are prepared to put up with rubbish…
I also think a poor mobile connection can mask many app (native & web) errors – users will blame crappy connection, not the app and will give it a second chance.
As always with these surveys, the outcome is skewed by wording of the questions put to the survey recipients. Is the original questionnaire in the report ? I couldn’t find it on phocuswright to check.
[Disclaimer - I do write mobile travel apps for a living]