Background
Expedia Group branded customer care support agents (located throughout Philippines, San Salvador, Egypt, North America) face the challenge of having to use different tools and applications (GDS, Classic Voyager, Voyager Flights, Eureka, Brand Site for Agents, etc.) to exchange customer flight bookings. On the Voyager Flights tool, agents have to manually determine penalty, change fee policy, and booking class rules which if done inaccurately lead to airline debit memos that adversely impact the business.
Incomprehensible system errors due to issues in downstream services and the inability to display information due to out of sync booking information when backend systems pull from different data stores also add to the pain points agents experience. When the agents don't know what their next step should be to resolve their customer's problems it leads to dissatisfaction. Tier 2 and Tier 3 agents have to memorize 15+ key commands for the different GDS systems they use to service flight bookings. There existed an opportunity to make a more user friendly interface that could quickly give the agents the information they need and reduce their average handling time.
Design Process
My Role
As the main designer on the project, I worked with the business owner, creative director, product managers, program managers, content strategist, testers, developers, service & delivery, and learning development teams to alleviate the customer pain points and improve the experience faced by the phone agents on complex flight exchange cases. I was a mentor to the designer working on customer self-service flight change. I drafted a design schedule for both our areas and reviewed the other designer's work. I designed around the constraints of an existing visual and interaction style guide and took into consideration the agent's current work flow for how they exchange flights in their current tool. I looked at their mental model for how other products were exchanged in the tool that I'd be building upon. I made design prioritization tradeoffs due to technical and resource limitations and followed design principles around simplicity, focus, clarity and efficiency in the user experience.
Customer Needs
• Improve user experience and increase user confidence. Make it easy and efficient for call center agents to service US and Canadian point of sale flight booking exchanges.
• Improve CSAT (customer satisfaction) for high volume and high effort calls.
• Reduce the customer effort required for 31% of flight exchanges
​
Business Goals
• Reduce operating costs and optimize the business by increasing the customer's ability to self-service.
• Reduce AHT (average handling time) and agent error costs.
• Reduce call propensity by at least 1% (target: 20%).
​
Understanding the user: Call Center Agents
When I interviewed and observed call agents at the different customer care centers, I saw they were on the phone with the customer an average of 5 to 15 minutes for simple cases and 30 minutes for complex ones. And, in extreme cases, like those due to weather related schedule changes, an agent could spend 1.5 hours on the phone with the customer and airlines. Customer call time increases for cases that need higher tier level agents/supervisors access and approval.
Call center agents are able to exchange flights for customers.
Call center agents are able to exchange flights for customers.
Design Planning
• Participated in Project Inceptions to gain a shared vision of business priorities, strategy and project scope from Product Management, Line of Business, Development, and additional cross-functional teams. Met with Learning & Development to understand agent workflows and flight exchange and cancel policies and Content Strategists on the Eureka Knowledge Base Tool that agents depend on.
​
• Drafted and presented design schedule to product management and development/test teams based on dev milestones and the scope of the project.
​
• Participated in working sessions with PM/DEV/TEST to discuss project scope and technical constraints. Group white boarding sessions to agree on user experience and user flow with shared understanding of data model, and business requirements.
​
• Created an html design index and Confluence page for the project that displayed the task flow diagrams and links to prototype, mockups deliverables, and redlines/annotations.
Understanding the problem space
Met with my PM/Business owner to gain more background on the flight business and strategy on why the project was important. I learned about the tools the agents use and training they go through.
Research
• Observed and interviewed call center agents to understand their workflow and escalation process for the different agent types: Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 (Complex Air Agents).
​
• Consulted with subject matter expert from the service delivery team and the line of business product managers on knowledge collected from past survey results and call center agent visits. The goal was to understand the issues that had the biggest impact on the business and the user experience pain points.
​
• Competitive analysis and heuristic evaluation of airline websites (United, Alaska, etc.).
​
• Task analysis and evaluation of the current user experience (Voyager Flights tool) that was being used to exchange, cancel, and void flights by Tier 1 agents in US/CANADA.
• Researched how the GDS is being used by Tier 2 agents and Complex Air agents.
User Scenarios
Identified key scenarios and use cases. Created wireframe screens in Sketch. Built out multiple prototypes in Axure for usability testing.
User Task Flow Diagram
I delivered scenario flows for the different use cases and handed off design for the following screen deliverables: Select Flights/Travelers, Search, Search Results, Review, Confirmation, and confirmation email template. I contributed to the style guide by introducing a new layout pattern on the Review screen for displaying the amount due for a flight exchange.
For the customer self-service portion, I delivered on the review, checkout, and confirmation user experience and ensured the end to end self-service flow worked for responsive web.
Design Deliverables
Created an html index page for the designs. Planned for a design schedule that took into consideration the multiple design iterations with usability testing as well as feedback from reviews with business owners.
Drafted a schedule and worked with dev team on alignment of the design deliverable dates would work with the dev milestones.
Drafted a schedule and worked with dev team on alignment of the design deliverable dates would work with the dev milestones.
Focus Group Session
Agents prioritized most common used tasks they use in Voyager Flights.
Background
Expedia Group branded customer care support agents (located throughout Philippines, San Salvador, Egypt, North America) face the challenge of having to use different tools and applications (GDS, Classic Voyager, Voyager Flights, Eureka, Brand Site for Agents, etc.) to exchange customer flight bookings. On the Voyager Flights tool, agents have to manually determine penalty, change fee policy, and booking class rules which if done inaccurately lead to airline debit memos that adversely impact the business.
Incomprehensible system errors due to issues in downstream services and the inability to display information due to out of sync booking information when backend systems pull from different data stores also add to the pain points agents experience. When the agents don't know what their next step should be to resolve their customer's problems it leads to dissatisfaction. Tier 2 and Tier 3 agents have to memorize 15+ key commands for the different GDS systems they use to service flight bookings. There existed an opportunity to make a more user friendly interface that could quickly give the agents the information they need and reduce their average handling time.
Design Process
Smartsheet
Admin Insights
Designed data visualization concepts that allowed IT Admins visibility into product usage and user activity for better license management and reporting.
Overview
Working with Product Management and Engineering Development, UX (Design and Research) can formulate a shared vision of the user needs, customer experience of the problem we are trying to solve, and the business goals. I consult with subject matter experts, business sales/account management/stakeholders and reach across my design counterparts to identify overlaps, share knowledge, and gather inputs so we can create a holistic experience. Together, we'll explore project vision and scope, review the design schedule, and capture the what the success metrics we are trying to achieve.
Thinking through how we can approach using SMART.
Who will use and benefit from Admin Insights?
IT Admin will use Admin Insights to answer questions and requests that come to them from the people they work with that represent different departments and have different needs.
-- Program Product Managers allocate user licenses and reallocate user licenses based on usage.
-- Program Product Managers on what products are being used and access
-- Procurement Department: License Renewal. Value of return
-- Legal, Info-sec Department: Set policy and determine what can be used
-- Department Heads: User allocation budget for user plans: Who is using it.
Current experience:
At least once per month, IT Admins will partake in a manual process downloading report csv file reports, compile, then extrapolate usage data in excel to answer these questions.
Depending on size of the company, their plan type, and type of work the company does, the questions and reporting needs varied.
Research Competitive Landscape
I researched the data analytic solutions of the product experiences in the market. I took a capabilities audit of what key metrics, default time periods periods, type of filters, and downloadable report types.
Best practices for data visualization
Dashboards within Smartsheet: Mental Model
Existing Account Map
I reviewed and watched past usability sessions and findings. Partnerships I made with designers and researchers on past projects gave me context. For next steps, it came down to what questions/information would be most useful to the Admins who seek to allocate user licenses and manage and increase product engagement to support business needs per the InfoSec, Procurement, Finance, and Operation Departments.
Evaluated Account Maps used by Technical Account Managers: Context
Mind Mapping & Task flows
I engaged with the Business Analyst who find out what metrics matter to customers. I held customer interview sessions with 4 Technical Account Managers to tap into what matters to their customers when doing License Renewals, Plan and License Allocation for business growth. The account maps and presentation decks they prepare for their customers.
Identify & Define
In the early stages of the project there was a lot of data presented to the customer. Overall, I was looking to enable the Admin to have quick and easy access to the data For MVP, I looked to identify the top 3-5 questions (primary information) our customers had and use progressive disclosure to enable the quick access to secondary information. For Northstar, my focus was on enabling custom saved filters within the experience that would result in a data sheet and dashboard within Smartsheet. Goal was to reduce the number of manual steps and time it takes for the Admin to parse the data. This proposal would eliminate the need to download a cvs file that would have to be converted and extrapolated into Excel.
Wireframes done by previous designer in concept stage
Usability Sessions: Wireframes
Following up on the first round of usability sessions that had card sorting and captured customer signal on concepts, we partnered with our BI Analyst who was able to create the data visualizations in Tableau using customer's actual data. We proceeded to capture second round of customer sentiment and overlapped it with the design heuristics.
What inspires me...
Inspired by conversations and tip sharing in Clubhouse room on Data Visualization, I thought through the principles and being purposeful to only show the data that mattered.
Sketching Iterations
I went back to the drawing board. To reflect and think through the relationship between the Admin Center Landing Page (Dashboard) and Admin Insights (Data Analytics). I wanted to remove the duplication of repeat data and make sure each page had focus.
Mockups
I translate wireframes and sketches to mockups using Sketch's symbols and Figma Component library and created prototypes both in Axure and Figma for the different usability sessions. I reviewed my designed with ​common design patterns team and applied the standard colors. To design for accessibility I made sure that proper visual contrast was made and adequate spacing between elements for legibility. Keyboard tab focus order and aria-tag labels where elements of the design that I deliver to my developers and work with my content strategist team on.
Iteration 1:
Outcomes
Final design and findings were presented to Senior Leadership and shared at Pillar reviews. Across several iterations and usability sessions, key data findings point to insights that I'll share with my project team. I'll create idea boards of future project vision. New product features that would improve the current experience.
Iteration 2:
Impact
Leveraged framework for future projects.
Miro Brainstorm Session
Working Session with BI Analyst
