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
Windows Live Writer
Intuitive Blogging Software.
Photo Sharing Experiences for
Live Writer Blogging Application.
Target Audience:
Teens to middle age. Broad customer segment. Computer saavy but also needs to appeal to the newbie.
GOALS
Provide customers with an optimized way to quickly and easily publish a blog entry with text, hyperlinks, and media in the style that they want. Make desktop software better than their current blogging web interface. Provide for a great offline blogging experience.
APPROACH
Created the experience in Windows LiveWriter that enables customers to share photos in a variety of layouts. The photos are stored online and play in a slideshow. These photomail albums appeared in the Windows Live Services of: Mail, LiveWriter, Hotmail, and Windows Live Home, Profile, and Spaces.
I was the designer on Windows Live Writer's Wave 4 Release (2009-2010) that integrated LiveWriter into the Windows Live Suite. I improved the interaction experience for blogging and inserting rich media content. I introduced a tabbed command bar set of tools that allowed for more efficient task completion and reduced duplication and confusion of commands by streamlining the interface. I visualized the iconography for the tool set and art directed implementation of final visuals with the vendor.
I researched the different types of blogging, blogging trends, and blogging experiences on the web in order to form a good mental model for the needs of the customer. I then mapped out task flows and wireframes. I developed low fidelity mockups for heuristic evaluation and created an interactive prototype of the key scenarios. I reviewed the ux designs and worked through feedback from design management, user research, content writer, product team and developer stakeholders.
Through the usability sessions my user researcher conducted, I was able to validate the customer's desire to have different photo layouts, add captions, and re-order photos. It also showed customers did not like having their photos deleted after 30 days.
PROCESS:
I did the early explorations and visualizations of photo album templates and worked with the visual designer on the final deliverables. I designed the command toolbar for formatting the photo album to be visually user friendly and engaging. Final deliverables included final mockups, design spec, redlines, and visual assets used. Reviewed builds, logged and helped triage bugs for final polish.
I partnered with my program manager and created an interactive Blend prototype that defined the Wordpress.com blog setup experience in Windows Live Writer for presentation to then potential and eventual partner Wordpress.
​
IMPACT
— 30% increase in photo sharing via photomail instead of file attachments. This saved company file cloud storage costs.
— Deepened customer engagement for using Windows Live services and feedback from customers and reviews was favorable.
— Design used platform ribbon control which improved user experience consistency and maintenance costs.
New Designs
Layout Explorations
Final Photo-Album Layouts
Improved Navigation - Progressive disclosure and information hierarchy
