App that made the office paperless
Story of the simple mobile app that catalysed the big changes.
The Reality
Tour Leaders are the nice people with umbrella who guide travellers around Europe in Tour Buses. They were relying on stack of printed out papers with hotels, addresses, room lists and menu orders in restaurants.
My Role
One man army of UX Research, Discovery, Strategy, UI & Design Crafting, Promoting, Advocating and Monitoring Results. Lots of fun and lots of responsibility for the outcome. Interviews and shadowing in Taipei, Prague, London, Rome, Budapest, Copenhagen ... building more than simple app - we've laid foundation for the future digital eco system.
The Result
Mobile B2B Tour Inventory app with Customer support, Navigation, Notes, Satisfaction surveying. With NPS 60+ turning offices into paperless digital customer centred hubs. We've won prestigious Japanese travel industry innovation prize and were acknowledged as pioneers of B2B travel.
Making all the information up-to-date and accessible brought enormous relief to Tour Leaders and our Ops alike. Our Partners also benefited from knowing what's going on.
Client
Kuoni Tumlare
Year
2018-2021
My Role
Product Vision & Strat
Qalt & Qant Research
Branding & Tone
Design System
WFs & Screen Flows
Hi-fi prototype
Workshops Facilitation
Reports & Comms
Results
NPS 60+
Paper > Display
Printed > Updated
Legacy > Progress
The process
Everyone on board, join the tour and see
As we were pioneering not only digital, but also HCD & Agile & Lean, we’ve published internal newsletter. Done as a online presentation in 10 slides, Digital Times every week told about our work everyone in the wide company. To understand better, everyone on team also participated on Tours as Tourists. Backend devs, Office Managers, Leaders got my Observers Manual with quiz and spent one day with the group.
RESULTS
Paper saved, SMSes not sent, stamps abandoned, support self managed, NPS 60+
EMPATHY IN DATA
Stand in their Shoes
Empathy Maps is where every Discovery starts to show results. After identifying the Customer Segment with biggest impact, and after creating Persona that shapes the understanding, I like to get it all together under the roof of Empathy Map. Great thing about these Maps is you cannot fake them. They’re made of quotes, real life observations and collected documents. And they open eyes.
JOURNEY
Journey of their Lifetime
User Journeys in any form are what I consider the foundation of every product design work. They should catch the essence of Persona we’ve described – not only touch points with the product, that’s what Service Design Blueprints are for. Problem is they can get very technical with all the emotions, questions, actions noted down. So I’ve created two versions – one for the team and one for the management. One very descriptive, one that clearly communicates the benefits of the app.
the journey
Promoting the change
We've started really small and aimed really big. First we've focused on delivering value for Tour Leaders and hoped it would get us some traction. Then we've organised company wide contest for the most Tour Leaders converted to digital with prize pool for the best office. Finally we've focused on support processes that would allow us to offer more ways of solving their problems than just phone calls.
01
Delivering value
We went for the absolute basic they've asked for: Bus driver contact, vouchers for services in the app, quality of contact data for services, details like menu or rooms break down, plus maps integrated from Google. We've color coded widgets for faster navigation across the app. Structured the customer support by country, added notes for Tour Leader's comments. And every Tour Leader who returned from the trip was asked for feedback.
02
Go to Market game
Although the value of the app was very clear to us and to Tour Leaders we knew we had yet to convince everyone in the company too. During the first year of launching to market we've shifted part of our own department's budget to finance the game for our sales offices. The one with the most installs would win prize money to spice up the lunar new year party. This led to great engagement, lots of feedback and rapid market penetration.
03
Better help
We've spearheaded the Zendesk initiative, centralising the customer support in it, instead of legacy support systems. While it was pretty easy to implement it was very challenging to alter company wide processes tied to it. Result was better evidence of troubles, messenger like ticket processing with attachments and overall raise of Quality of Service metrics, CSAT and NPS.
BEFORE & AFTER
Digital Transformation IRL
This is the same place in the Taiwan office before and after our app. All the printed itineraries, stamps to label them and deliver to clients were transformed into one small app. Tools have stayed, papers were spared.
