The challenge

The key to earning and retaining customer loyalty in the airline industry is understanding customer behaviours and anticipating needs to deliver an exceptional experience. An aging knowledge base, however, made it difficult for associates of a major airline’s loyalty group to stay ahead of customer expectations. Proactive actions were needed to prevent performance issues and ensure associates were able to consistently deliver a great customer experience.

Our solution

TTEC’s first move was to gather and analyse user data about the knowledge base used by the loyalty group. We conducted usability surveys, side-by-side feedback discussions, and focus group discussions to gather insight. Based on the issues identified, such as lack of usability and difficult search functionality, we implemented an action plan to build a new and improved version of the current knowledge base.

Those plans included upskilling the instructional designer with new training to better manage, curate, and update knowledge documents. We also implemented a system upgrade to the latest version. Moving to the new version meant a faster system and new functionalities such as:

• Gamification – To help increase engagement and utilisation, users can earn points by completing missions and track their progress on a leader board.
• User forums – To gather insights and answer questions that users might have in forms of conversation threads. This also makes it easier for clients to respond and comment to agent questions in a way that is visible to all users.
• Recent items – To make it easier for users to go back to the items they recently accessed, thus decreasing effort.
• Layout update – The layout was updated to reflect the users’ feedback to make it more interactive and for ease of access and improved functionality. The new layout also reflected the airline’s brand colors and logos.

To further simplify the search function, obsolete documents were deleted and hundreds of documents were consolidated in an extensive audit. An internal employee champion was also selected based on supervisor recommendations as an ambassador to encourage collaboration through the knowledge base. The Champion helped promote and drive a culture of using the knowledge base, especially since platform utilisation tends to drop during an update. Having a Champion on board also helped boost agent morale by demonstrating an opportunity to grow within the program.

The results

In the first three months after the knowledge base upgrade was launched, the operational metrics reflected highly positive results: 90% CSAT and 95% quality (results are overall averages) and a 61 NPS, exceeding the 55-point target.

Feedback from users and other stakeholders have been positive as well:

“What I really like about it is that they actually categorized the information that we would be needing so that it will be much easier for us agents to navigate what we need.” –Voice Agent

“What a great piece of work! Thank you and thank all the people who put in time and effort to drive the change and take it to this stage!!! Keep up with the great work!” –Head of Service Delivery and Operations

“Having only stepped into the journey a few months in, I can honestly say [the knowledge base] is heading in the right direction we need it to be for all stakeholders. The layout is completely on-brand and usability has improved significantly. What I particularly like about it is it's not as noisy as it used to be. I love the Time Zones touch, Beng!” –Service Delivery Analyst

Looking ahead, the operations team, the Champion, and the client will continue to work together to create a culture of collaboration, increase utilisation, and meet and exceed key performance indicators.