Flight Centre: Digital Experience

← BACK

What is Digital Experience

Digital Experience, is the customer’s personal connection to Flight Centre’s eco-system of products, services, and environments, across the digital and physical footprint. Taking the customer seamlessly through all stages of their travel journey.

Responsible for Personalisation / Connection / Navigation across the App, Website Home Page, and MyAccount - across 3 teams.

Mission

Make Travel Simple, Seamless and Delightful.

Objectives (Problems to Solve)

• Enable personalisation - Show customers relevant products, services, content, and information based on their interests and context

• Reduce friction in booking flows - Streamline repeat bookings

• Provide customers with self-service capabilities - Enable customers to access and manage all travel information and documents from one place, anytime anywhere

• Connected and consistent experience - Ensure a seamless and unified experience across both the Website Home Page and App. (And across all products and services)

• Increase customer retention and investment into Flight Centre’s ecosystem of products and services

• Gain comprehensive customer insights through a single profile

• Elevate the human connection between customers and consultants

• Connected online and retail systems

• Globalise MyAccount to all regions AU/NZ/CA/UK/ZA

Solutions

The following initiatives have been implemented to begin addressing the challenges. They involved cross-team collaboration with multiple product teams, marketing, architects, stakeholders, privacy, and legal teams.

• Authenticated account sign up - Enabling Flight Centre to better understand their customers

• Trips integration - Enabling customers to access and manage their booking/itineraries in one place, MyAccount

• Marketing preference integration - Enabling customers to manage their marketing preferences in MyAccount

• Integration of marketing subscription in the account sign up flow

• Connecting Flight Centre online profiles with retail profiles - Working towards a global single customer profile for each customer

• Capturing online customer profile details and enabling automatic population of customer information in the Flights booking funnel, facilitating a frictionless checkout experience

• Saving customer details from the Flights booking funnel back to the customer account profile

• Acquisition of account sign ups in the Flights booking funnel

• Globalised MyAccount to AU/NZ/CA/UK/ZA - Web and App

1. Market Research

To develop effective product strategies, a comprehensive market research approach was adopted. This involved employing various research methods to gain insights into market trends, competitors, and target customers, etc. In collaboration with the design team, existing relevant research was consolidated while new research was planned and conducted to bridge any knowledge gaps.

Research methods included:

• Case studies

• Competitor research

• Audience analysis

• Market trends research

• Analysis of gaps and opportunities within the market

2. Customer (and Consultants) Research

Building upon the insights gathered from market research, customer (and consultants) research was undertaken to gain a deeper understanding of how individuals would respond to the identified market insights, questions, and opportunities. This customer research was carried out in collaboration with the design team and the marketing team, utilising various research methods:

• Interviews

• Surveys

• Focus groups

• Flight Centre store visits (Conversations with consultants, customers, and observations)

3. Business & Product Analysis

A comprehensive analysis of the current state of the business and product was conducted, one of the methods used was the "Hooked" model framework, which was utilised to identify potential opportunities for customer retention. This analysis aimed to uncover key insights and areas for improvement.

4. Business & Stakeholder Alignment Workshops

The insights derived from market research, customer research, and business and product analysis were synthesized to provide the foundation for the business and stakeholder alignment workshops. These workshops aimed to achieve a shared understanding among the stakeholders regarding their aspirations, the problem space, and any concerns they might have. The objective of these alignment workshops was to ensure that stakeholders had an equal opportunity to contribute to shaping the product vision, establishing alignment on shared goals, addressing concerns, and identifying the most critical problems to be addressed from their perspective.

These workshops were conducted across product and marketing teams, involving key global business stakeholders.

6. Vision and Strategy

Based on the insights gathered from research and business alignment workshops, a product deck was developed to formalise the product's vision and strategy. 

The product deck includes:

• Product description - Outlining what the product entails

• Problem statement - Identifying the key problems to be addressed

• Vision and strategy - Articulating the overarching direction and approach

• Current state vs future state - Highlighting the desired transformation

• Market and customer research - Summarising the findings from research activities

• Target customers - Defining the specific audience the product aims to serve

• Unique customer value proposition - Communicating the distinct benefits for customers

• Value to the business, customers, and consultants - Demonstrating the advantages the product brings to various stakeholders and users

• Next steps - Outlining the planned actions and milestones

7. Ideation Workshops

The prioritised business objectives, problems, and product themes were utilised to create "How Might We" statements, which served as prompts for the ideation workshops. The development of these statements and the ideation workshop formats involved close collaboration with the design team.

The following workshop methods were employed during the ideation process, engaging both the team and stakeholders:

1. Quick Idea Generation - A rapid brainstorming technique to generate a multitude of ideas within a short timeframe

2. Crazy 8s - An exercise where participants generate eight quick ideas individually in just eight minutes, encouraging fast and creative thinking

3. Rose Bud Thorn - A technique that involves identifying positive aspects (rose), potential opportunities (bud), and challenges (thorn) associated with the product or solution

By leveraging these workshop methods, the team and stakeholders actively participated in the ideation process, fostering a collaborative environment for generating diverse and innovative ideas.

8. Prioritisation

To determine the order of product ideas, a range of prioritisation methods were used. These methods considered inputs from stakeholders, other teams, and internal team members. Depending on the specific ideas and context, prioritization activities involved collaboration with stakeholders, product, design, and engineering teams. Here are some of the methods utilised:

1. Value ranking with stakeholders - Collaborating with stakeholders to assess and rank ideas based on their perceived value and importance

2. Customer & Business Value vs. Effort ranking / RICE - Evaluating ideas by comparing the potential value they offer to customers and the business against the effort required in terms of technology and team resources

3. Product dependency mapping - Identifying and prioritising ideas based on their dependencies with other products or features in the roadmap

4. Technical dependency mapping - Assessing ideas based on their technical dependencies and considering the feasibility and impact on the overall technical infrastructure

By employing these prioritisation methods, the team was able to make informed decisions about which ideas to focus on first, ensuring that resources were allocated effectively and aligned with the strategic goals of the business.

9. Roadmap

The development of the roadmap involved collaboration among stakeholders and the team. The objective was to align the product with the business goals, customer requirements, technical priorities, and legal and privacy considerations.

To cater to different contexts and levels of detail required, various types of roadmaps were developed to effectively communicate with both the team and stakeholders. Productboard and Jira were also utilised as tools to convey the roadmap and priorities, ensuring clear and transparent communication.

The roadmap served as a strategic guide, outlining the planned trajectory of the product's development. It facilitates alignment, informed decision-making, and provided a shared understanding of the product's direction.