Two voices, one goal

Editor’s note: Brett Tucker is director, solution design, at Seattle research firm NetReflector, Inc.

Expedia has certainly come a long way since its original inception as a Microsoft CD travel guide in 1995. After selling its first travel tickets in October 1996, going public in November 1999 and being acquired by InterActiveCorp (IAC) in August 2003, Expedia, Inc. is now the world’s largest online travel provider and the fourth-largest travel agency in the U.S.  It has eight internal and outsourced contact centers supporting Expedia North America.

In February 2002, Expedia decided to implement a real-time customer satisfaction measurement program within its service and support organization. There were three main business objectives:

  • increase satisfaction with customer support;
  • measure results of training and operational initiatives;
  • provide contact center management with a tool for one-on-one agent coaching.“We were looking to migrate the hosting of our existing customer satisfaction survey, which used to live on the Expedia.com Web site, to a third-party vendor,” says Lynne Taddeo, Expedia’s manager of customer experience. “We used to conduct weekly survey data reporting in Excel, which worked fairly well, but as we grew, we realized that this was a very time-intensive process for our internal data analysis team. In addition, our contact center managers were not receiving feedback in real time, which limited their ability to coach our customer service team on the results.”

There were also other areas that Expedia wanted to improve upon, including survey design and quality measurement approaches such as quality assurance and mystery shopping. But the most important goal was to be able to tie survey responses to CRM support case IDs.

Defining measurement needs

Expedia’s next step was to design a customer satisfaction measurement program that would meet the business objectives it had set for its support organization. The company started by mining its existing consumer research for customer service insights, and identified skill sets or service attributes that supported its strategy. It met with contact center stakeholders to identify reporting and coaching needs. It also worked closely with the marketing department to adopt a consistent satisfaction scale, loyalty measures and other design elements enterprise-wide.

Selecting a solution

Expedia needed a reliable data collection method from an unbiased third-party vendor. “Out of the many data collection methods available in the marketplace, the option that made the most sense for us was to integrate online survey technology with our E.piphany CRM system to be able to examine data by agent, team, contact center and other case-specific information in real time, at a much lower cost,” Taddeo says. “We also needed a multi-layered, permissions-based report portal to share survey findings internally with selected audiences and externally with our outsourced contact center partners.”

After evaluating various vendors, Expedia decided to partner with NetReflector and immediately tasked the Seattle-based research firm with developing a custom survey distribution tool that could append CRM information from an E.piphany sample to the respondent’s completed survey data. It also asked NetReflector to build an enterprise-level reporting portal that would provide relevant real-time data for everyone from the executive team to a frontline contact center supervisor.

Developing insightful reports

Expedia launched its customer satisfaction measurement program across its eight global contact centers in April 2003 after training all contact center management and internal users. Expedia is currently implementing version two of the survey, including a number of reporting and distribution enhancements requested by its contact center user base. The survey data is used as the basis for monthly quality reports that stack-rank all of its network contact centers. A key driver analysis is also generated quarterly to reveal the elements that customers really value in Expedia’s service and support team. (See diagram for more on key driver analysis.)

“The custom reporting that we designed and implemented has become the most-used and most-valued service quality measurement tool across Expedia’s global network of contact centers,” says Taddeo. “It provides us with a far more powerful view of the customer than any other quality measures previously used.”

Benefits and business results

Since implementing its real-time customer satisfaction measurement program, Expedia can design surveys that support more complex question types. Data collection has also improved: skip logic enables follow-up questions based on particular customer experiences; piping allows survey customization based on a specific purchase channel. Finally, the online report portal that was designed with Expedia’s specific needs in mind provides enhanced real-time reporting with multiple custom report formats.

“Our executive team and contact center managers now have secure, 24/7 global online access to our customer satisfaction data,” Taddeo says. “Keeping their finger on the pulse of what our customers think enables them to make better-informed business decisions more quickly.”

Within nine months of implementing its online customer satisfaction measurement program, Expedia started reaping the following business results:

  • Overall customer satisfaction improved by 16 percent.
  • Survey response rates ranged from 11 percent to 13 percent.
  • Survey design allowing for better granularity led to increased data relevance and validity.
  • Automating the survey and reporting process reduced the amount of internal resources usually necessary to manage such an ongoing measurement program.
  • Expedia has coaching and feedback tools which help contact center managers identify systemic training, operational and individual performance issues.
  • The survey response is now linked to contact center, agent name and support case ID, and allows contact center managers to review the case vs. the customer’s perception of it.
  • Agents receive feedback contextualized by their own case notes.

Actionable information, actionable plans

Armed with the knowledge gained through real-time customer feedback, Expedia can now fine-tune service delivery. Analyzing data at the enterprise level and incorporating tools such as a key driver analysis, Expedia is also able to make carefully informed business decisions about its long-term customer service strategy.

In addition to using the survey tool to measure customer satisfaction, Expedia conducts an annual employee satisfaction survey of all internal and outsourced contact center personnel. Results of the annual survey and careful analysis of agent feedback help Expedia determine where to focus its contact center tool and process-improvement programs. To motivate its support staff and reinforce the fact that their voices are being heard, Expedia team members visit each of the company’s eight contact centers during frequent communication tours. Customer service training is regularly conducted to improve service skills and respond to changes in the marketplace. Customer satisfaction and retention are tracked on an ongoing basis and results are shared with contact center personnel.

“Listening to the voices of both our support staff and customers and integrating them into our business processes in real time has become one of the fundamental pillars of our customer service strategy,” Taddeo says. “We can now fully embrace our customer support touch-point as a valuable opportunity to reinforce relationships with our current clients, establish them as long-term sources of recurring revenue and positively impact the company bottom line.”