Can you tell us about your role and what your job title actually means?

We have a few UX people here but not many; I’m really the go-to person when it comes to site experience. I work a call center to improve customer experience over the phone. The call center also runs our live chat, so my priority is to streamline processes and make sure that everyone keeps the voice of the customer in mind; I’m the person who constantly reminds the whole company that customer experience is paramount.

 

What does your team structure look like?

CheapCarribean is part of a larger group of companies (the Apple Leisure Group). UX and product management is part of the same team here. If a project falls under CheapCaribbean only, I’m the primary UX person. If a project falls across different brands or platforms, I’ll take the lead on UX across a team of people from many different subcompanies. But the overall user experience of Apple Leisure Group is pretty homogenized. I try to make everyone understand that customer experience is everyone’s job, because there’s only so much of me to go around.

 

Is there a project you’re working on that you’d like to draw attention to?

One of the main things is refreshing our UI. We’re trying to figure out what it should look like in the long term, and how to deliver that incrementally, in small chunks.
A second priority is our live chat capability. It’s becoming a much more important part of our business. It’s helping us meet our customer where they want to be met, instead of forcing them to call us.

 

Let’s dig into each of those priorities- the UI refresh and the live chat capability. You mention that the refresh/redesign is something you put on hold for a while, so why did it fall down the list of priorities?

Because we are part of a larger organization and one of their goals is to have shared platforms. In the last several years, all our companies were put together under one umbrella. So how could all those teams stay independent, while also having access to better technology and economies of scale? The original plan was to create separate UI refresh projects for each company, on their own timelines. Then we realized it made more sense to build shared tech that could be leveraged for all of them at the same time. The project was bigger than anyone realized initially, so it’s taken a very long time to get a solid foundation for our user facing design.

 

So, the plan now is to build the tech first, then deliver it all at the same time to each separate business unit?

Yes. As a travel company we don’t have a traditional data warehouse. We use data from hundreds of airlines and hotels etc. So, having three different companies and websites sharing the same information makes a lot of sense. Once that’s in place, we can design the UX on top of each (similar) platform.

 

It sounds like your original UI redesign plan changing a lot. Why was it important to pivot, and who made this decision?

There were changes in leadership at a very high level. The new execs came in, saw how the individual refresh projects were progressing and thought there was a better way to do it. It became important to improve each business unit individually and create a shared space for the technology at the same time.

 

What is the end goal of the UI refresh? In an ideal world, what will it look like when it’s finished?

Our current website was built twelve years ago and there have been a lot of small improvements and changes since then. The ultimate goal, which will be more than six months from now, is to have a much more lightweight, services-based architecture. We could then build new UI on top and make it flow much easier, allowing us to create entirely new experiences that are dramatically different from what we have now.

 

If you were to start all over again, what would you do differently?

When companies think about launching a new website or UI, they often think it will be easy to turn off the old system on Monday and turn on the new system on Tuesday. But the reality is that small, incremental improvements and slowly building toward the new system will actually get you where you want to be faster. Overhauling a system is always a bigger undertaking than you think, even if you plan well. If we had started with small enhancements that slowly grew together, I think we would be farther along the path than we are now. And from the users’ perspective, there wouldn’t be that shock of coming to the site and seeing it look completely different. Instead, it would be slowly morphing into something new.

 

How are you, as Head of UX, feeling about the project overall? What do you want to personally get out of it?

I know our website could look more modern and streamlined. One of my primary goals is to get out of the users’ way- decluttering is the No.1 checkbox. Every time I change something, I look to see if I’ve decluttered it, and then think ‘what else can I get rid of?’ Another goal is to generally make all of our business units work together to create a seamless customer experience. No matter who they’re in contact with- chatting on the phone with an agent, talking to hotel staff on their trip, receiving a post-trip survey- we want to unify the experience so they feel like it’s all the same.

 

Before we talk about live chat, what are the next steps for the redesign? How much of your time is it going to take up over the next few months?

40% of my time is pure redesign. 30% will be chat functionality and general call service. And the rest of my time will be spent on small incremental tests that we run on our marketing campaigns.

 

Your second priority is live chat capability. What’s the need for this project right now?

Phone calls are very time-consuming. You need a large staff to handle high call volume, and sometimes we have long hold times. Having chat capability is great because it allows you to answer quick questions that don’t need a phone call. Our staff can chat at the same time as performing other work so, from a business perspective, it allows them to manage their time more effectively. And from a customer perspective, they get the help they need on their own terms, especially younger people who don’t think about getting on the phone anymore.

 

Have you rolled out live chat yet, or is it still in the developmental stage?

We’ve tested it in a few markets, and we’re planning on rolling it out broadly soon. The ultimate goal is to have chat available anywhere for anyone who is on the site at least 22 hours a day (if not 24).

 

What advice can you give to those who are just beginning to think about implementing live chat?

The first step is to get everyone together who has a stake in it, and ask them to share their ideas for how it should be used. The person who runs your call center will have a different opinion to the person who runs your website. And your data analysts will only care about the numbers, not the customer experience. So get all these people together and align their priorities. What will chat actually do for your business? How will it help across the board rather than just helping one person or department, at the expense of making everyone else’s life harder?

 

What early results have you seen so far?

The tool that we’re using works alongside our existing call center system, and the early results have been positive. We’ve actually seen a small boost to conversion on our site.
As we hypothesized, a lot of chats are initiated by customers who need a quick answer to a simple question in order to book. We also tell our agents what the customer was looking at when they decided to initiate a chat, and this context has definitely helped.

 

Any final takeaways?

As designers we tend to think about things differently to analysts and developers. I work with a lot of smart people and just because we don’t completely align on certain ideas, doesn’t mean we won’t eventually achieve our goal together. So be prepared to compromise, and be patient.

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