Learn from the case of travel site Expedia the 'uphill thinking' that leads to a simple & drastic way to solve the problem



`` If it takes years to solve a problem, it is possible that the point of 'preventing the problem from happening in the first place' may have been overlooked, '' saying that the travel site

Expedia costs 11 billion yen annually Writer Dan Heath spells out a simple and radical problem-solving philosophy, taking a case study of solving a customer service problem that was causing problems.

How Expedia Solved a $ 100 Million Customer Service Nightmare
https://marker.medium.com/how-expedia-solved-a-100-million-customer-service-nightmare-d7aabc8d4025



In 2012, Ryan O'Neal, head of the customer experience group of travel site Expedia, looked at call center data and said, `` 58 out of 100 customers who booked a trip on Expedia call the call center for some help I am doing this. '

In the first place, the call center is 'where there is a trained person who makes customers happy as quickly as possible'. The key here is that it is 'quickly', the faster you save, the lower your phone bill, or cost. For this reason, call center managers are committed to `` allowing calls that take 10 minutes to be processed in 2 minutes '', but on the other hand, efforts to `` reduce the number of incoming calls themselves '' have been over many years He was overlooked.

If a problem takes years to solve, you may overlook the point of 'keeping that problem from happening in the first place.' O'Neill immediately reported her findings to her boss, Tucker Moody. The two started a survey, the question of why so many customers need to make a phone call.

As a result, it turned out that the most common reason for customers to call was 'confirmation of the travel process'. In 2012 alone, there were 20 million calls to confirm the travel process. If one phone costs $ 5 (approximately 540 yen), the total cost will be about 100 million dollars (approximately 11 billion yen).



Customers needed to confirm the travel process over the phone because they misspelled their email address in the information entry field, couldn't properly receive the confirmation email, or were treated as spam. For those reasons, there was no way at that time for customers who couldn't get the travel itinerary to check the information on the website.

O'Neill and Moody reported this issue to then-time CEO Dara Kosloshahi. Kosloshahi instructed them to focus on problem solving at the center of the customer experience team as their highest priority task. People who usually work as different groups in the company were gathered, and meetings were repeated every day. Then, guidance such as 'Press 2 to confirm the travel process' is incorporated in the automatic voice of the telephone guide, mail is processed so that it is not treated as spam, and specifications are changed so that customers can check the travel process online. Was. As a result, the percentage of customers calling customer service, which was 58%, has fallen to 15% by 2020.

Heath points out that Expedia's problem solving for call centers is due to 'uphill' intervention. Here, 'up' means measures to prevent the problem from occurring in the first place, and 'down' intervention, which is the concept of a pair, means that after a problem occurs, the problem is resolved.



Of course, it is clear that the upside intervention is better than the downside intervention, but in the case of Expedia, when the number of telephones was about 7 million, the problem was not taken up, and the problem was recognized only after 20 million Was. This is thought to be because Expedia, like many companies, had employees divided into groups and employees in the group were instructed to focus on each issue. In other words, the problem was not recognized because the job of the customer support group was 'to solve customer problems quickly' and not 'to reduce the need for customers to call in the first place'. As a result, the goal set by the customer support group has actually generated many calls.

'Our organization demands 'focus' on employees, which inevitably recognizes the right to be myopic,' said Mark Okastrom, CEO of Expedia from 2017 to 2019. At times, they are told, 'Define your mission, strategize and dedicate resources to problem solving,' which means you have the right to ignore everything you are working on. ' Okastrom's statement reflects both the strengths and weaknesses of an organization, and overcoming weaknesses requires a more integrated and new 'uphill' solution.

Heath points out that similar problems exist not only in companies but also in police organizations. When Heath talked to Canadian city police, he heard that police were more likely to concentrate too much on fighting crime than on preventing it. Many police say they prefer to actually catch the thief, rather than talk with children who are off the road to prevent future crimes.

There is ambiguity in going up. Taking a traffic accident as an example, even if a police officer explains the traffic rules to a certain family, it cannot prove “an accident that did not occur”. Prevention proves effective only when the overall number of accidents is reduced, but it is still less noticeable because police officers cannot see the 'saved people.'

Of course, uphill interventions are not always right, and downhill solutions are not neglected. But the idea of going up allows us to think of the solution from a larger perspective. How to prevent child drowning? When thinking of it, the idea of going down is 'hiring a life saver', but the idea of going up is 'teaching a child how to swim'. Even if you think about things on a daily basis, you can solve problems in a simpler way by thinking uphill.

in Note, Posted by darkhorse_log