A major travel company has cut customer complaints by 50 per cent - thanks to a change in procedures at its Bradford call centre.

Staff working at Thomas Cook's offices in Bradford city centre were nominated for a customer service award after managing to achieve the dramatic fall in complaints.

Customer relations manager Julie Naylor said the success was due to the firm's new "positive" approach towards complaints.

Under the new system, staff reply to written complaints with an immediate phone call in a bid to resolve the problem.

The issue is then forwarded to the head office and acted upon to prevent a repeat of the problem.

"It is all about talking to the customers and trying to reassure them by explaining what steps we are taking as a business to prevent a repeat of the problem," she said, "By feeding the details back to the business, we have been able to substantially reduce the complaint ratio.

"Making telephone calls to the customers rather than writing a standard letter, as we did in the past, has speeded up the whole process for the customer and for ourselves.

"It is not a lot more work, and it has given us the chance to develop our staff. We have had to increase their product knowledge to enable them to give customers better explanations about what has happened." The new system has also enabled the centre, which deals with complaints from across the Thomas Cook group, to resolve 88 per cent of complaints following their initial letter.

The success of the 64-strong customer relations team saw it nominated for the best complaints team category at the National Customer Service Network Awards. And the success has been mirrored in the agent services department at the Bradford centre, nominated in the culture and training categories of the European Call Centre of the Year awards.

The office in Godwin Street, Bradford, Thomas Cook's second largest centre after its Peterborough head office, employs more than 400 staff.