Skyscanner traveller care
Creating the best self-service experience in travel
The goal
At Skyscanner, my team delivered and scaled a completely new customer service operation from the ground up, in just 9 months.
I led design for in-app self-service, advisor tooling, instant chat and customer service journeys - quite a lot!
My analysis reveled that 20% of customer contacts were from travellers simply trying to cancel or change their flights. I led the design effort to take the hassle out of travellers’ hands by providing in-app self service of the highest standard possible.
The design process
1. Service blueprinting
Using contextual enquiries and expert interviews, I mapped the existing agent-led processes for flight cancellation/change requests, as well as the back-end services which supported it. This provided a reference of engineers and designers to ideate.
2. Defined success with kano mapping
I developed a new format called “Kano mapping” (based on the Kano Model) to define user needs and pains across the user journey. These helped us visualise and agree upon the experiential outcomes and standards which we wanted to achieve. From a journey-level, down to a task-level, and for every end state, we had a definition of quality.
3. User flow and interaction design
Managing a junior designer, we laid out the self-service flows according to the service blueprint and kano maps. Every step of our flows were checked for feasibility by engineers, while they explored the APIs. We were ambitious in designing both a north star experience and MVP experience based on the emergent feasibility constraints.
4. Design evaluation and iteration
Our designs were constantly cross-checked by customer service agents, acting as experts to ensure every use case was supported. User testing provided more reassuring feedback that our experience was satisfactory, meeting the standards of our kano mapping.
Service blueprint
Kano mapping is a tool I created to help us describe a delightful experience at every step of the user journey.
My impact
-20% reduction in traveller contacts. Saving the company £500k per annum - equivalent salary of 18 advisors
Increased NPS
Call volumes reduced and wait times reduced by -8%
Junior designer promoted under my line management