Alaska Airlines - Customer Call Center
LEGACY APPLICATIONS - AND LEGACY WORKFLOWS
Alaska Airline’s Customer Call Centers are at the heart of the airline’s award-winning customer service reputation. Until recently, this 1,500 count workforce utilized a toolset consisting of several dated applications. The primary tool, a custom version of the industry-standard reservation system, was first released in 1990. I was brought on as the sole Product Designer to design a new, modern web-app to replace this application. The goal of this effort was not only to give the Call Center agents a new enterprise tool - but to reduce costs while simultaneously making it easier for this workforce to continue delivering their industry leading customer service.
TYPICAL DESKTOP OF A CALL CENTER AGENT
A DEEP DIVE IN UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGES
The business goals were clear; reduce average call handling time, reduce costs associated with the reservation system, and reducing training costs. But none of these would be achievable without understanding the people, how they currently work, and what pain points they had in their day-to-day workflow. To do this, I conducted on-site interviews, sat with them and listened in on how they work, and sent out multiple surveys to attain data to identify the pain points associated with the current toolset. In addition I led by-weekly usability test
‘DOUBLE JACKING’ SESSION AT THE CALL CENTER
WORKING BACKWARDS FROM THE PROBLEMS TO VALIDATE POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS
Using data garnered from my various touchpoints with the agents, I began to iterate on potential new workflows. Our first major initiative was to ship the purchasing of seat upgrades. Using universal design patterns, I developed prototypes to test in the field and in person. Instead of using multiple applications, the new, virtually error-proof flow, tested well and resulted in less call handling time.
USERFLOW EXAMPLE AND PROTOTYPE
NEW ENTERPRISE STYLE GUIDE & EXAMPLES OF JOURNEY MAPS AND RESPONSIVE LAYOUTS
IDEATE, ITERATE & INVENT
As the testing process proceeded, it was clear that the use of the existing Alaskaairlines.com style guide wasn't going to meet the needs of our Enterprise product. So I designed and delivered our own. With this new component-based style guide, I was able to visually parse the intricate display of information that the agent's used to do their jobs and make it easier for my development team to re-use common elements.
OVER A MILLION AND COUNTING
With the first major feature shipping, my team has exceeded the business goals, and the product has been widely well-received by the agents. The projection of $1M in sales was reached 9 months early, training was reduced from two weeks to four hours, and the average call handling time was reduced to just over three minutes.
Prototype:
TEAM DASHBOARD & DETAIL OF PRODUCT
