Envisioning airport customer service in a self-service era of travel (OLD)

OVERVIEW:

In partnership with United Airlines, this project delved into the future role and enterprise tools of customer service representatives (CSRs) amidst a shift to customer self-service as the norm for air travel. Through contextual inquiries, interviews, and concept tests, our team designed a three-touchpoint enterprise system that allows CSRs to parse complex air travel policies and bring personalized assistance to customers anywhere in the lobby.

METHODS:

Contextual inquiry, interviews, journey mapping, jobs-to-be-done, concept tests, rapid iterative testing and evaluation

DURATION:

4 MONTHS

2024.04 - 2024.08

ROLE:

Lead Researcher and Service Designer in team of 4

DELIVERABLES:

Insights report, design artifacts, design systems, and prototypes

Jump to: Context • Methodology • Generative Research • Design and Evaluative Research (ongoing) • Outcomes (ongoing) • Reflection

🌰 In a nutshell…

Phase 1: Generative Research

Contextual inquiry, SME interviews

💡

Insights: • CSR’s role has become more ambiguous as self-service becomes the norm. • Open lobby layout creates unnecessary interactions. • One traveler’s frustration can impact everyone’s experience in the lobby. • CSRs will use whatever tool is familiar to clear the lines as quickly as possible.

Jobs-to-be-done, journey mapping

💡

Jobs-to-be-done: • Get customers through standard tasks as quickly as possible so that I can keep the lines moving. • Quickly identify customer needs so that I can meet their preferred way of being helped • Use new tools confidently so that I can efficiently solve customer problems

Phase 2: Design & Evaluative Research

Concept tests, RITE, service design

💡

Currently underway!

Context

In partnership with United Airlines, my capstone team set out to reimagine the airport lobby experience, focusing on the experience of Customer Service Representatives (CSR’s) stationed in the lobby at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA).

For CSRs Enterprise tools used by employees have not been elevated to the same standards as customer-facing tools.

For customers As the first point of contact for passengers arriving at the airport, the experience of CSRs are intricately tied to customer experiences.

For business Interventions in this space would support the airline’s strategic pillars, and position it as an innovative, forward-looking airline.

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Methodology

What are the opportunities for innovation?

June 2024

Jobs-to-be done & journey mapping
Mapped out the current CSR journey to identify bottlenecks
Distilled 1 key job-to-be-done and 2 sub-jobs
Mapped out the ideal CSR journey to identify opportunities for intervention

💡

I designed and facilitated the insights, jobs-to-be-done, and journey mapping workshops.

Phase 2: Design & Evaluative Research

What could an airport lobby of the future look like, and what is the role of CSRs in that future?

Jun - Aug 2024

RITE & service design
Currently underway!

✈️

We obtained permission to conduct the contextual inquiries and interview CSRs with the kind support of our sponsor at United Airlines.

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Phase 1: Generative Research

Phase 0: Secondary Research

What does it mean to be an airline CSR?

Mar 2024

Literature reviews and online research
Job listings for airline CSRs
Day-in-the-life YouTube videos
Op-eds and articles on travel trends
Online forums
Literature reviews on self-service technologies in airports

Phase 1: Generative Research

What is the current experience of a United Airlines lobby agent at SeaTac?

Apr - May 2024

Contextual inquiry, competitor analysis & SME interviews
5 x contextual inquiry sessions at SEA and Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD)
15 x CSRs intercept interview
Analysis of competitor airline lobbies
4 x SME interviews

I co-designed the research materials with my team, taking the lead on the observation guide. I conducted 3 of the contextual inquiry sessions and moderated 2 of the SME interviews.

I proposed contextual inquiry as our primary method as the CSR x customer interaction is highly contextual. We needed to understand the spaces in which they occurred.

Contextual Inquiry Observed a mix of peak (e.g. opening shift at 3am) and non-peak shifts at SEA and ORD’s United Airlines’ lobbies + competitor airlines’ lobbies

SME Interviews Interviewed United Airline’s SEA local management on processes, protocols, and KPIs.

🤔

Research Questions:

What is the current experience of a United Airlines CSR at SeaTac?

Key responsibilities, tasks, and capabilities
Obstacles when assisting customers
Resources available to address customer needs

We took great care to not disrupt operations, and only interviewed CSRs when there were few customers around.

Getting ready to observe the opening shift at 3am!

Key Discoveries

In an era of travel that promotes self-service, the CSR’s role and responsibility have become ambiguous.

In the SEA and ORD lobbies, we observed some CSRs operating the self-service kiosks for customers, while some others took a step back, sometimes not noticing when customers tried to get their attention for assistance.

Because of differing levels of tech literacy, customers have adapted to the current self-service tools to varying degrees, creating a wider range of customer needs that CSRs need to consider. We observed and heard from CSRs that they now have to make a judgment call of when and how much to help a customer.

The open lobby layout forces CSRs to guide each customer individually.

A CSR ushering customers to appropriate kiosks.

Without line extensions, we observed that customers were unsure about which counters they could approach and how to form lines, resulting in CSRs needing to actively triage and usher customers forward.

One traveler’s frustration can impact everyone’s experience in the lobby.

We observed several groups of customers repacking luggage in the lobby, each taking over 30min to do so.

Frustrated customers are reluctant to self-service, and take up more physical (e.g. lobby space, kiosk) and manpower resources to process. This results in a longer wait time for many other customers.

CSRs will use whatever tool is familiar to clear the lines as quickly as possible.

CSRs had access to a plethora of old and new digital tools, available on both desktop and mobile. However, in the midst of the chaos of long lines, concurrent requests, and diagnosing each customer’s unique situation on the spot, CSRs often defaulted to workflows they were most familiar with. This may not always be the newest or most efficient tool available.

Informing Design Explorations

Journey mapping Internal workshop to map the current and ideal CSR journeys to identify opportunities for design interventions

Jobs-to-be-done Internal workshop to identify 1 key job-to-be-done and 2 sub-jobs

I led workshops to ground the learnings from our contextual inquiries and interviews into journey maps and jobs-to-be-done. These artifacts helped our team and stakeholders to align on opportunities for ideation in the next phase.

💡

While the journey maps helped us hone in on the type of experience and emotions we wanted to deliver, the jobs-to-be-done framework helped us sort through the myriad of tasks that CSRs tackle everyday to arrive at the main job we should address in our intervention.

The “as-is” CSR journey map that I consolidated, with a bottleneck around identifying customer needs and monitoring when customers need help (link to file).

The “to-be” CSR journey map, with an exploration into the thoughts and opportunity areas for ideation (link to file).

Main JTBD: Help me get customers through standard tasks as quickly as possible so that I can keep the lines moving.

Help me quickly identify customer needs so that I can meet their preferred way of being helped
Help me use new CSR tools confidently so that I can efficiently solve customer problems

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Phase 2: Design and Evaluative Research

🚧 We are working closely with our project sponsors to build and test our design interventions! 🚧

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Outcomes

🚧 We are working closely with our project sponsors to build and test our design interventions! 🚧

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Reflections

Research

Pivoting methods to meet participants where they are

We initially considered conducting additional interviews with CSRs outside of their shifts. However, considering their long shifts and the highly contextual nature of their work, we focused our energy on the contextual inquiry and interviewing CSRs in between customers instead. While we wanted to understand their experience as much as we could, we wanted to respect their personal time too.

Advocating for frontline staff

Businesses tend to focus more resources on elevating customer experiences - even our sponsor mentioned to us that employee tools often aren’t elevated to the same standards as customer tools. I’m grateful that this project gave us a unique opportunity to advocate for the frontline faces of United Airlines!

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