COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

FOR
HANS TRAVELS & CHARTERED BUS

UNDER THE AEGIS OF

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

Dr. Rekha Attri Rajdip Dey

Ranjit Behera

Shiv Shakti Singh

Yashpal Rai
Approaches towards establishing customer bonds

HANS TRAVELS

[They have been operating on 50+ routes, which covers more than 70 cities across 8 states in
and around Madhya Pradesh, Indore being there headquarters.]

In terms of financial bonds, Hans Travels focuses on

generating better demand by providing cashback discounts
to their customers through the online website & mobile
app. They have also come
up with facilities for
prepaid cards, with which customers can book easily from
online/offline channels and avail additional discounts.
Financial bonds although are easiest to break but such
moves could indicate that they try to generate direct sales through their own channels,
instead of sales made through third party websites such as Redbus, Makemytrip. Hans Travels
typically focuses on providing convenient travel options for affordable fares, hence the above
approaches appear pretty much aligned with their goals. Talking about the social bonds, the
organization is connected with many partnering outlets in different operational cities to drive
offline promotions and sales. Customers are also able to take advantage of the Hans prepaid
cards through these outlets. They also provide moving services depending upon availability.
These added features or service offerings contributed towards establishing strong
customized bonds, also providing ladies’ washroom on board facility is another example of
their value added services. Hans
Travels’ mobile app is quite
responsive in nature, which
provides users with all required
information related to their
travel with different booking
options and options to convert phone bookings into e-bookings, tracking shipments etc. This
integrated system represents the quantum of structural bonds which Hans is able to possess
by integrating their online and offline booking channels with integrated information systems
and allowing uniform information sharing across all channels.
CHARTERED BUS

[They serve 80+ cities across central and western India with a customer base of near 3.2
million passengers each year, while being headquartered in Ahmedabad.]

In case of Chartered bus, the approach witnessed is quite different as the organization
differentiates itself in terms of quality service providing. Hence quite naturally, it is hard to
find evidence of financial bonds which are similar to Hans Travels. They do not really go on
to provide discounts or cashbacks through their official channels, instead the pricing is pretty
much fixed throughout the year. Although it was seen that Chartered bus’s payment gateway
appears more authentic with 3d secure frame network, which is to serve the customers who
are not really that budget conscious but definitely quality and security conscious.
Interestingly, Chartered Bus shares testimonials of the satisfied customers on their website,

which must help them to establish better social bonds. Another contributor would be the way
of handling the business. As similar to Hans Travels, Chartered Bus’s website also consist of a
feedback page through which customers could express their concerns, but in addition they
also consist of separate pages which talk about FAQs, Policies, T&Cs and even customer blogs.
In terms of customization bonds, looking at
Chartered Bus’s offerings it could be stated
that they have their competitive advantage
in this part as well. As similar to Hans, they
also provide wide availability of booking channels but in addition they provide the feature of
bus hire, car hire & tour packages. Chartered Bus has also equipped its online platforms with
advanced GPS tracking for customers’ conveniences. With
the presence of a more responsive graphical user interface
in both online website and mobile application, Chartered
Bus is able to establish a great structural bond where they
have entwined the mission of providing core benefits such
as best in class quality services with their updated information management systems and is
able to cater to the needs of the premium segment customers.
Customer Connect (Listening and Improving)

HANS TRAVELS

The above Hans Travels customer review on Google Play Store shows that the application has
a poor score. Most relevant comments section majorly consists of bad customer reviews, all
of which that are unaddressed by the company. Addressing customer reviews can arguably
be one of the best methods/steps in increasing the chances of customer retention which the
company has failed to do. This could/is result/resulting in loss of existing customer due to
dissatisfaction.
CHARTERED BUS

Contrary to Hans Travels, Chartered Bus makes sure that it writes back and addresses the
issue of the customers who faced problem during their travel. In the reply, the customers are
given an email id they can write to and this reply by the company is generally done within 24
hours of Customers addressing the complaints. As a result Chartered Bus goes ahead of Hans
Travels with a review score of 3.2. And if the company really does resolve the issue it can play
a major role in increasing the customer retention of the company.
SUGGESTIONS

Hans has to focus on imroving the responsiveness towards their customers in online medias,
especially during booking failure or service failure customers tend to loose their faith in the
company and they complain on popular medias such as google reviews or playstore reviews.
Responding to customers through only official website and app’s interface isn’t really a good
choice as could have been understood. Hence, the need for providing responses through
these 3rd parties also has to be a necessity for Hans Travels.

Chartered Bus has been well able to maintain their reputation in terms of customer complain
handling but one common suggestion towards both the brand would be that they should
focus on redesigning the app or website’s experience for the customers in terms of
communication. Both the websites might appear as techready but to succeed in terms of
customer relationship management, improvements are required such as the addrassal
methods should be strengthened more, reasons for displeasure for the customers should
tried to be better mapped out through integrated review systems, which would also make
the improvement processes much easier.