Opportunity Sizing
Marriott asked to size their future state opportunity just prior to the SPG acquisition. They wanted to know what tool to build and for what reason it served.
The Challenge.
From our future-state “north-star” agent experience, size our customer service initiatives and deliver business justifications for investments in the future. Include reservations, customer care and loyalty into a business case.
We looked at various travel experiences and developed recommendations on leading indicators to measure.
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148
Callers/Cases Shadowed across Reservations, Rewards and Customer Care
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31
Agents Interviewed in 2 call centers; Omaha and San Antonio
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39
Total Team Hours of Contextual Research
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6
Hours with Marriott senior stakeholders to socialize research and solution great experiences
We identified three core areas for agent success
We then looked at the reservations segments within the journey to measure
We evaluated the call center agent lifecycle stages with a customer
Trend: Call Volume
Q: Is 40% of calls that don’t book a missed opportunity?
Modern travelers have more tools at their disposal than ever before. The question remains - do we build a greater portfolio information tool for agents, or more direct one?
What the brand research shows.
Understanding of brands
Some newer agents are missing full understanding of the brands and what they offer in comparison.
Senior business travelers require higher class stays and need agent’s knowledge of offerings, value.
Agent Hotel Concierge Services
Agent occasionally doesn’t have local knowledge and not sure if hotel will capture customer’s requests through the notes. Agent has to transfer call to hotel’s concierge
Agent Understanding of local attractions, amenities
Agents don’t have access to hotel’s floor plan or what transportation options are available near by (Train, public transportation, Uber not available in some cities)
Agent understanding of hotel physical details
Agents don’t understand the stay experience of each hotel to match customers to the right hotel. This can be accomplished with better hotel profile.
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KEY PRINCIPLES FROM RESEARCH
Explorative - enabling the agent to help visualize, solution and describe value in each experience over the phone
Personalized - providing a greater, tailored stay based on insightful conversation that adds richness to the experience and fulfilling expectations
Unified Voice - is removing various interpretations by both conveying best practice resolutions to the customer as well as communicating fluid exchange between agents on call transfers
Value ID - identifying, pairing and validating with the customer within the spectrum of folio expectations to meet perceived value
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KEY PRINCIPLES FROM MARRIOTT
Fast - finding the most time efficient approach to achieving customers goals
Flexible - being able to sense and quickly respond to a customer’s need with adaptive results that respond upon their goals
Intuitive - facilitating suggestive processes the resolve solutions instead of further complicating them
Simple - when you can no longer remove anything necessary
What we sized in the opportunity.
“The plan for the project was a cogent and well-articulated strategy, consistently aligned with our overall process given the nature of the ask. Based on other feedback I've heard from (Marriott at) the beginning, Josh did a great job of articulating the overall approach to the rest of the design team.”
— E.D. Design Director on Marriott