Human Touch Remains Indispensable in our Journey

As brand experience becomes increasingly important, technological advancement and customer expectations have risen in parallel. This becomes critical, particularly in the travel sector, where experience plays a role at every touchpoint and customers today expect seamlessness, speed, and convenience at every stage of travel, be it travel planning, booking, check-in, boarding.

For Cleartrip, rising expectations have seen the travel platform elevate its technology and services and keep raising the bar. Priyaah Sundaram, Head, VP, Customer Experience and Fulfilment, Cleartrip says that the brand’s role is to forecast where adoption will create genuine value and introduce solutions at the right moment which helps can reduce anxiety and build confidence in customers.

She says, “The winning balance is to stay ahead in experimentation, while introducing solutions only when customers are truly ready to embrace them.” Sundaram says that the company’s priority is to act swiftly and resolve it by acknowledging inconvenience and restoring trust immediately. She also highlights the importance of pre-emptive communication and predictive prioritization, empathy and why automation and human interaction are not opposites but are complementary.

Excerpts from the conversation:

Looking at your experience – at major hotels, airlines and now Cleartrip – all the industries are ones where you face consumers one-on-one. How has the way companies look at customer experience evolved?

 How has customer expectations evolved? Any customer-facing brand can only succeed when it places the customer at the center. That has always been the fundamental truth behind strong, enduring brands. If you look at the most successful companies, they are customer-centric, constantly listening, and tailoring their products and services to evolving customer needs.

As technology has advanced, customer expectations have risen in parallel. The two constantly mirror each other. Think back - once we had paper tickets, then e-tickets, and now boarding passes stored on your phone. Customers today expect seamlessness, speed, and convenience at every stage of travel, be it travel planning, booking, check-in, boarding ; they want to glide through each step without pause. Classic eg is Digi Yatra. As expectations grow, we elevate our technology and services to match, and as technology evolves, expectations also shift upwards. It’s a cycle that keeps raising the bar.

However, is it a case of brands playing catch-up as customers are generally the first to latch on to technology. So, is it a case of catch-up, or you're able to forecast and tailor solutions?

Customers are often quick to embrace new technology in their daily lives—sometimes faster than brands can adapt. But in travel, the question isn’t just about keeping pace with adoption, it’s about ensuring the technology is mature enough to solve real problems.

 For example, with say agentic AI, the capability is here and companies are experimenting with it in different contexts. But when it comes to resolving a disrupted flight or a payment issue, not all travellers are ready to trust a bot entirely. That trust builds gradually.

So yes, there is an element of catch-up, because customers’ expectations evolve rapidly. At the same time, our role as a brand is to forecast where adoption will create genuine value and introduce solutions at the right moment— when they can reduce anxiety, build confidence, and feel natural to use.

In that sense, it’s less a race to be first, and more about being responsible and timely. The winning balance is to stay ahead in experimentation, while introducing solutions only when customers are truly ready to embrace them.

Marketers talk about omni-channel. Reaching consumers at every touch points…. Now in travel you have multiple touchpoints – from the time you book your ticket, at airport, in air, right till the time you come back home. What is the challenge in creating a seamless experience?

The biggest challenge is the “handshake” between brands. At Cleartrip, we strive for near-100% accuracy and consistency, carefully screening our partners to maintain service standards. Yet, breakdowns can occur when another part of the journey—outside our direct control—falters.

For instance, if a traveler books an emergency exit seat on an A320 but the aircraft type changes, their chosen seat may no longer be available. Or in hotels, if a prior guest delays checkout, the ripple effect may inconvenience our customer.

What matters is how we respond. The moment a customer raises an issue, we act swiftly to resolve it. That’s our brand promise: acknowledging inconvenience and restoring trust immediately. Our retention philosophy is built on this very premise.

Coming to CRM, when something goes wrong in an itinerary on an individual level, and customer reaches out, how do you ensure a positive experience? When this happens on a much larger level, and there is a surge in customer queries during high-pressure situations, what are the SOPs to ensure right dissemination of information while maintaining speed and agility?

Large-scale disruptions - like heavy rains or fog - trigger a surge of queries from travelers. Our first response is pre-emptive communication: if Mumbai is experiencing poor weather, we proactively alert customers via social media and app notifications, nudging them to check flight details before they even leave for the airport.

In parallel, we rely on predictive prioritization. For example, customers whose flights are disrupted on the day of travel, automatically move to the top of our response queue. Similarly, our systems detect calls made within 24 hours of a booking—often indicating an error or urgent need—and fast-track them for immediate handling.

How does Cleartrip enable empathy-led support, especially for customers in emotionally sensitive or time-critical scenarios.

At Cleartrip, we embed empathy at multiple levels:

• Training & Certification: Every agent undergoes dedicated training focused exclusively on empathy. They’re taught to manage tone, diffuse anxiety, and reassure customers in high-stress situations. Only after rigorous certification are they entrusted with sensitive calls.
• Real-Time Support & Monitoring: Our monitoring framework goes beyond compliance. We track voice tonality, patience, and emotional control, combining tech-driven analytics with human assessment. This helps us coach agents not just on what they said but how they said it.
• Leadership Oversight: Escalations are not passed down the line; they’re escalated upwards. I personally review cases with my leadership team, conducting root cause analyses not just on the operational failure but on the quality of the human response. This ensures empathy is never lost, even when processes falter.
• Culture of Care: Beyond training, we foster a culture where employees themselves feel cared for. An agent who feels supported is far more capable of extending the same empathy to anxious customers. This cultural reinforcement is often overlooked, but it’s vital.

In short, we see empathy as both a philosophy and a practice—enabled by systems, measured through data, and reinforced by leadership. It’s what allows us to transform moments of disruption into moments of trust.

Speaking of bots vs humans. How do you balance automation with human touch?

We see automation and human interaction not as opposites, but as complements. Automation is excellent for routine, transactional tasks—resending tickets, processing refunds, booking add-ons. These are areas where speed matters most, and customers don’t require emotional engagement.

However, travel is deeply personal. When it comes to cancellations, payment issues, or disruptions, customers are often anxious, sometimes even distressed. These moments require empathy, reassurance, and problem-solving— things only a human can deliver with authenticity. That’s why the human touch remains indispensable in our journey.

At Cleartrip, we balance this on four pillars:

• Simplicity: Keep processes intuitive and easy for customers, without unnecessary complexity. Reliability – Deliver consistently accurate outcomes that build long-term trust.
• Empathy: Go beyond solving the issue, by acknowledging the stress and reassuring the customer.
• Efficiency: Use automation for scale in transactional areas, while reserving human expertise for critical, emotional situations.

What makes our approach unique is that automation isn’t just about reducing human workload—it’s about freeing up human intelligence. By taking away mundane, repetitive tasks, we allow our agents to focus on complex problem-solving and high-stakes interactions, where their ability to listen, reassure, and resolve truly makes a difference.

In essence, technology gives us scale and speed, while people give us trust and connection. It’s this balance that ensures customers feel both cared for and efficiently served.

How do you differentiate yourselves from competition?

Price & Product features can always be matched, but what cannot be replicated easily is the experience customers associate with a brand. For Cleartrip, our differentiation lies in delivering reliability, consistency, and care across every touchpoint. What we focus on is:

• Reliability: Customers know that when they book with us, their plans are safe. Whether it’s honoring hotel commitments, ensuring seamless refunds, or resolving disruptions, reliability is at the heart of trust.
• Empathy in Moments that Matter: Travel is highly emotional. When something goes wrong, the way we respond—listening, reassuring, and resolving—often matters more than the issue itself. That human touch becomes our differentiator.
• Ease of Experience: Our endeavor is to make the customer journey simple and frictionless, whether it’s booking, managing changes, or seeking support. Customers value not having to “work hard” to travel with us.

We are also steadily building towards greater personalization—so that over time, our platform doesn’t just serve customers but understands them, offering more relevant and intuitive experiences.

Ultimately, customers return to Cleartrip not because of discounts, but because they can trust us to deliver, consistently and empathetically, every single time.

Looking at the future, what can we expect from Cleartrip?

The future of Cleartrip is about moving beyond transactions to becoming a trusted travel companion. Our ambition is to deliver experiences that are not only efficient, but also intuitive, personalized, and deeply human.

AI and advanced technologies will play a pivotal role—not simply to automate, but to elevate interactions. Our focus is on using technology to anticipate needs, offer timely recommendations, and proactively resolve disruptions.

 At the same time, we believe technology alone is not enough. Technology enables scale and speed; humans ensure trust and empathy. The real differentiation will come from blending the two seamlessly—where automation takes care of routine tasks, and our people focus on high-touch, emotionally critical moments.

Strategically, we are building towards a future where:

• Smarter, contextual experiences simplify decision-making and planning for travelers.
• Personalisation
• Predictive intelligence e.g. allows us to pre-empt disruptions before they inconvenience customers.
• Empathy-led human support continues to anchor how we show up in moments that truly matter.