UK & Ireland’s Customer Service Champion: Helen Dooley

This special category celebrates stories of travel agents going to extraordinary lengths to look after their customers. In a year with so many agents having to go above and beyond to help repatriate clients and manage unprecedented situations, choosing just one winner from the many inspiring nominations was no easy task. However, judges felt that this particular agent had gone literally miles out of her way to help a client with what others may have seen as a trivial problem but meant a huge amount to one of the party in particular.

Once the first lockdown was lifted last summer, More Travel partner Helen Dooley had a regular client who was very excited to get away again – like many other Brits.

Heading to a villa in the south of France with his extended family in July, they decided to avoid the airport and opted to travel via Eurostar and French rail instead. It was a simple journey but involved a change of stations in Paris between Gare du Nord and Gare de Lyon.

Changing stations by taxi, all was going smoothly, until that is, the party boarded their next train and realised the youngest member of the party, granddaughter Alexandra, had left her suitcase of toys at the taxi rank.
The client phoned Helen and she sprang into action. She tracked down the lost suitcase at Gare du Lyon easily enough, but bagages perdus (lost luggage) could only organise delivery within France.

After working through a few solutions including arranging a courier to collect the case but coming up against administrative obstacles, Helen decided the simplest course of action was to collect it herself.

With her son in tow she headed out to Paris, at her own expense, collected the suitcase, stayed in the city for the weekend and then returned home, dropping the suitcase at the client’s house to reunite Alexandra with her treasured toys.

The client and his granddaughter were so grateful they visited the shop the next day, bringing a bunch of flowers as thanks and a rescued toy bunny to meet her.