ROLE
UX Design, UX Research, UX Lead
DESIGN & STRATEGY TEAM
Gideon Olshansky, Ian Micallef
YEAR
BBH/Domani, 2017-2018
ENHANCING AN EXISTING PLATFORM
Wyndham came to us to redesign the interface for their Customer Service Reservation Platform. It was on a system that Sabre designed, but they were allowed to make a few enhancements to the platform in response to pain points that customer service representatives were experiencing.
The biggest pain point that was noted is maintaining the on property illusion. Often, a guest would call a property, but actually be directed to the call center instead of the hotel's front desk. For these calls, it was imperative that the guest not know that they were not on site, meaning the customer service representative would have to be able to provide local area information quickly. This information was simply not surfaced in this tool.
Wyndham also wanted to empower the customer service representative to deliver exceptional service, building and/or reinforcing brand loyalty with the prospective guest, as well as achieving brand growth through positive word of mouth.
Making updates to a fixed platform
As the customer service representatives were on a platform designed and supported by Sabre, we had to ensure that the recommendations we were making would help Wyndham and the rest of their clientele. We worked closely with the team at Sabre throughout this process to understand what was on their product roadmap and how we could collectively enhance the experience for all of their users.
We set out to:
1. Make the interface as simple and intuitive as possible so customer service representatives can focus less on searching and more on selling.
2. Optimize screen real estate by balancing the display of critical and pertinent information in a persistent vs. non-persistent fashion.
3. Facilitate rapid discovery by ensuring the answers to complex queries are never further than 2 clicks away.
4. Put complex content in easy reach, minimizing call time and dead air, increasing the average speed of answer, and ensuring first-call resolution.
But before we could do all of that, we had to know what the representatives were experiencing.
So, on December 5th, we spent the day at the Wyndham Call Center in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. During our time there we...
Identifying areas of focus
We process and analyzed the data we received from the agents we interviewed and shadowed. We also mapped the High-Level Call Flow to shine a light on areas that agents were experiencing friction.
The following themes came up in our conversations with agents and led to areas of functionality improvements.
Sluggishness: Speed issues in NGVA are getting in the way of sales.
Rapid discovery: Finding on-property information helps agents build the on-property illusion.
Sense of wayfinding: Agents often get lost in NGVA as they try to close a sale.
Loyalty friction: Agents have issues discovering customer loyalty info and selling the program.
Bugs Persist: Small issues with the program are interfering with the agents’ flow.
Functionality Requests: Agents asked for specific functionality that could simplify their process.
From there, we worked with Sabre to improve the platform, using the same look and feel as it had previously. We worked in weekly Sprints, remotely testing with representatives at the end of each sprint.
Overall, the adjustments have been well received by the representatives and are helping to shorten the time spent on a call and maintain that "on-property illusion."
We made essential info available within the platform in 0-2 clicks instead of 1-3+ clicks (and possibly leaving the platform).
This increased agent confidence and excitement as well as optimized call time by making information easy to find.
