Improving online travel customer experience

Completion Date: 2014

Client Requirement

A leading European online travel retailer based in Germany engaged Arundel to assess their customer experience and develop a strategy to help unlock stalling growth.

OUR ROLE

Arundel tested the existing online service and assessed each step of the customer journeys
We discovered a very limited service, offering few features beyond the basic travel booking – inability for customers to self-serve online drove a high number of enquiries to the call centre
To make matters worse, the existing call centre technology was out of date, agents needed to access multiple systems and could not see a complete set of customer booking data.
To address these problems Arundel:
- Designed new features for the websites to allow customers to change booking dates, passenger details or make a cancellation
- Designed improved integration between websites and backend inventory, sales order processing and finance systems
- Proposed a replacement call centre system that provided agents with a complete view of all customer data
Implemented the technical changes in a series of short agile sprints
Implemented the new call centre
Managed the change and tracked the impact on customer behaviour across websites and call centre

Business Outcome

The improved online experience helped to increase growth rate, improve customer retention and drive more repeat purchases
When the self-service features went live, there was an immediate shift in behaviour with customers making changes themselves online – this simultaneously reduced call centre workload
The improved call centre solution increased call handling efficiency, combined with the increased online self service – enabling a significant reduction in call centre headcount
Re-ignited growth, delivering 30% volume uplift p.a. helped to hold operating costs flat and produced a 25% improvement in EBITDA,