Beacon was a three-month engagement to help an airline navigate through the complexities of the aviation business with the business in mind and with the traveler at heart; uncovering the different types of customer that they serve, along with their needs, pain points and behaviors across the end to end travel journey. Meanwhile, developing their internal customer experience and service design capabilities, training a team in service design and research methodologies.
CASE STUDY - 2018
A Beacon for Better
Customer Experience
My Role
Research
Visualisation
Team
Fjord Singapore
THE CHALLENGE
How might we better understand the airline’s customers today, so that we can design products and services they truly desire and align our business units to deliver them?
Glimpse into the Process
As part of the engagement, the Fjord and Customer Experience team worked closely together to transfer and cross-pollinate design thinking skills and domain-specific knowledge. Specifically for the Customer Experience team, it was to have a better understanding of how best to use ‘Design Thinking’ methods within the wider organization, empowering them to take ownership of the customer experience and be the voice of the customer in current and future projects.
STARTING FROM THE BASICS
From creating discussion guides to interviewing customers to synthesizing the findings, the Customer Experience team was taught on the intricacies of the design process. This often started as a mini theory session before doing hands-on practice in the field. Side by side, both teams conducted field observations at the lounges and service centers, interviewing stakeholders, staff and customers to get a better understanding of the needs and pain points of both the business and the customers they served.
Observing and interviewing staff and customers
The research accumulated to 5 high-level themes which were later introduced to the staff in a workshop where we brought together multiple customer service and product development business units. Through this process, the organization reached a common understanding of their customers and their journeys, coming up with several service concepts that were taken to cross-functional teams.
Bringing the organisation together for a workshop
The Design
7 high-value service concepts were crafted collaboratively and taken
into refinement. These concepts ranged from enhancing the inflight
entertainment system to a new policy that empowered staff to make
exceptions. Each service concept tackled several pain points that
were identified during the research and how it would bring value to
the business.
Update: The airline took forward 3
concepts and is currently testing it in the field.
Taking into consideration the company’s core values, 6 design principles were created to help establish a framework for future decision making. Each design principle was further illustrated on what it meant for the product, people and process.
Due to the complexity of the industry and silos within the organization, it was rare for a person to have a complete picture. Therefore, a living service blueprint was created to have a unified view on the backstage processes on how services were orchestrated between the different business units and the various dependecies in the system. Additionally, the blueprint was created to be editable so that the team could continuously update it.