This global hotel chain is one of the largest hotel brands in the world. They target both business and leisure travelers with locations in over 100 countries.
LookThink partnered with a global hotel brand to revamp their customer service call center experience. By integrating disparate systems into one holistic platform, call center agents were empowered to do their jobs more efficiently, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and lower onboarding costs.
Case Study
Hospitality Call Center Software: Streamlining a Robust Customer Service Platform
About the Client
At a glance
Call centers are fast-paced environments where customer service is key to every single interaction.
A global hotel brand decided to revamp their customer service process by creating a more efficient call center experience. We took several disparate systems and fused them into one holistic platform that empowered call center agents to do their jobs more efficiently, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and lower onboarding costs.
Project Overview
Primary Goal
Revamp hotel call center software
Audience / Users
Customer service agents
Audience / Users
Salesforce, VisualForce, Lightning, HTML/CSS, Javascript
The Challenge
- Understand, unify, and accelerate the call center's current interface to flex quickly and appropriately for a caller's unique request
- Establish an effective change management plan to effectively transition current employees' habits to the new way of doing things without incurring a productivity loss
- Reduce training costs associated with learning the call center platform
Our Approach
Understand People to Understand Software
Call centers are fast-paced environments where customer service is key to every interaction. When a global hotel brand decided to revamp their call center software, LookThink got the call to help shape the employee experience.
When people interact with an interface, they usually do so on their own behalf. The individual is in control of where to navigate and what to click and read. However, interfaces for call centers are unique. Agents need to respond to another human being calling the shots and leverage the system to react and respond accordingly. This unique interaction pattern was top of mind for this engagement, as well as the following key principles:
1.
People are creatures of habit
2.
People are creatures of habit
3.
Ramping up staff is expensive
4.
The need for speed is real
5.
Problem-solving is easier with a unified system
6.
Traditionally, this job isn’t for everyone
The Solution
Building Empathy to Build Solutions
Before designing anything, our first step was to spend time shadowing agents at a call center to fully understand their environment and daily experience. We observed their calls and asked questions to uncover pain points as well as common tasks and requests. The information we collected helped us build empathy with the agents and callers alike — and became the basis for our human-centered approach for the platform.
One of our key goals was to make the language human and easy to understand so agents knew what to expect from each click. It was important that an agent could follow a task from start to finish without getting lost in the system. We also needed to make sure agents could exit a flow if the customer request changed — so we identified auxiliary information that should accompany the main flow.
80%
decrease in time
it takes to train a new agent, resulting in time saved.
1.5
weeks in training
compared to the original 6-8 week training period.
1
holistic platform
for employees to do their jobs more efficiently.
The Results
The amount of time it takes to train a new agent dropped by nearly 80%. What used to be a six to eight week training period, decreased to only one and a half weeks. New agents report that the interface is clean, easy to read, and intuitive to use, allowing them to tackle all the basic tasks expected of a new agent almost immediately.
With the plan to onboard two-hundred additional new agents soon, this global hotel brand is looking at thousands of hours saved, just for this round of hires. In an industry with a turnover rate of 30-45%, saving training time means saving real money.
A small group of existing beta-testing agents are now championing the product and acting as power users who bring fresh ideas to the development team. Because of these users and the continuous feedback and testing loop we implemented, the brand has confidence that the platform will be well received and readily adopted when released to a wider audience.
The brand went from several disparate systems with meager satisfaction, to one holistic platform that empowers agents to do their jobs more efficiently. Best of all, the brand feels that the platform sets the stage for reducing their turnover rate and increasing customer service across the board.
One of our key goals was to make the language human and easy to understand so agents knew what to expect from each click.”
Rachel Ernst,
Business Analyst
