Travelport

Business Challenge 

While Travelport prides itself on being customer-centric, they wanted to focus on customer research as a discipline in order to appreciate the end-to-end customer experience. “We didn’t really understand our customers or properly walk a mile in their shoes,” shared Sarah Strahan, Head of Marketing Operations. “Pain points could be at any point in the customer journey and negatively impact a customer’s perception of Travelport across the board.”

As the travel industry recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, creating a seamless experience for agents and consumers—while removing operational complexity—is essential for the company’s success.

When launching a new platform to help agents sell better and faster, Travelport faced many decisions that impacted user experience. The next generation point of sale product offered a customizable storefront, easier comparison shopping, and new retailing capabilities. Lightweight, intelligent APIs also provided unique opportunities. 

Solution

In partnership with Alida, Travelport created the Customer Voice Panel. Through this community of 1,000+ agents, managers, and directors, they conduct targeted surveys, polling, and face-to-face interviews for ongoing feedback on their travel retailing products. The community’s size and scope allow them to support decisions across the organization, including customer experience, UX, and marketing.

In preparation for the launch of the new platform, Travelport’s UX team was able to ask questions, test designs, and make adjustments based on the feedback they received. To discover opportunities for improvement they’ve asked travel agents how they use different products in the travel ecosystem.

Travelport also uses Alida to investigate customer satisfaction scores by conducting deep dives to better understand customer's pain points. “Just having a CSAT score isn’t enough,” explains Matthew Ovington, Head of UX. “Understanding the reasons behind the scores means asking follow-up questions with people using our products.”

Results

Product managers and the UX team have now embedded the customer voice in the product design and development process through an agile “Build, Measure, Learn,” approach involving continuous discovery and feedback. Getting rapid, quality feedback helps the team prioritize features on the product roadmap and improve the user experience. The Customer Voice Panel has enabled Travelport to gather essential insights on pain points in the travel retailing and management journey.

Travelport’s marketing team has used insights from the community as part of global thought leadership campaigns across all social media platforms, partner channels, and the Travelport website. Their campaigns have reinforced Travelport’s position as a thought leader in the travel industry.

Overall, Travelport has increased confidence in its decisions and feels better about standing behind its claim of being customer-centric. They expect their growing community to become a critical source of insights to help guide the company's future.