Marty Hall International

Traveler and Agent Chat

What channel do customers want? Can we shift agents off the phone and begin to automate the most common traveler customer care tasks?

When I joined Expedia we ran a smoke test to determine channel preference. The results showed a traveler preference for Chat. The first stage provided the chat option to travelers and an off the shelf solution for agents. In the second stage we created an agent tool to receive chat and phone calls.

Role:

Senior UX Designer

Mobile channel picker, call back and chat entry UX

Two variations of our chat bot experience

Company:

Expedia Group

Team:

Jesse Brown (UX Designer)
Dan Saimo (UX Designer)
Chris Arredondo (UX Designer)

Tools:

Figma, Adobe Creative Suite

Voyager Next

As our chat channel matured we built a chat bot to automate common traveler scenarios. The logical next step was to provide the bot automation to our agents. Voyager Next was the project that initially brought the agents a virtual agent.

Initially I was tasked with designing the customer chat UX. As the Voyager Next project began I partnered with Jesse Brown, Dan Saimo, and Chris Arredondo. We worked to flesh out the framework and visual design we called Orion. Once these guiding elements were set in motion I worked with our Product and Development team to bring it all to life.

Early idea for chat plus a pane for trip details

Orion design with chat and Virtual Agent

Research-Driven Design

Call center visits for the chat roll out provided rich research opportunities. During trips to the Philippines and El Salvador I was able to gain an understanding of the agents' job. Each trip included days of ethnographic research followed by 1:1 usability tests.

Some examples of research-driven changes: An early MVP decision that the typing indicator wasn't needed was reversed. A desire to be able to help each other prompted exploration into agent to agent chat. Supervisor interviews led to a tailored search for training chat agents.

Agent to Agent Chat

One insight from our research was agents' desire to help each other in real-time. We explored multiple approaches to enable agent-to-agent communication while maintaining focus on customer conversations.

These explorations included both three-pane layouts and layered notification systems to ensure agents could collaborate without disrupting their primary workflow.

The Jeepney is ubiquitous in the Philippines.

A layered exploration for Agent to Agent Chat

A three pane exploration for Agent to Agent Chat

Adapting to Change

When Covid-19 forced agents to work from home, we quickly redesigned the interface to optimize for laptop screens rather than the large desktop monitors used in call centers.

This pivot required rethinking our information hierarchy and ensuring all critical functionality remained accessible on smaller displays while agents navigated complex customer service scenarios from their homes.

A Covid-19 redesign for laptops as agents began to work from home

Next: Expedia Group's Explore 19 Conference

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