Designing the information flow

Abstract

Bluebird, a Dutch airline company, was founded over 100 years ago. To this day, they aim to provide memorable experiences to their customers. To do so, Bluebird must service their customers well at every brand touchpoint. Even though digital self-service is becoming the norm, knowledgeable contact centre agents are important to ensure a seamless transition between the online and offline touchpoints. Hence, the customer service agents behind the phone, i.e. the front-line staff, play a crucial role in providing the right support and offers for the customer, and consequently in delivering the Bluebird brand experience.

To provide the customer service, the agents rely on information that comes from Bluebird. This thesis specifically focuses on the information about ancillaries. The ancillaries refer to all additional options that a customer can buy to enrich the flight experience. By offering ancillaries, the airline responds to the upcoming customer demand for personalised travel experiences. However, Bluebird’s provision of timely and complete ancillary information currently falls short. Therefore, this thesis aims to investigate how the ancillary information flow to the contact centres can be improved.

This thesis makes use of a design approach. By means of qualitative methods, it is investigated how the information currently travels from the source to the agent, and how the involved people experience this information flow. The research reveals that the information passes through a four-step chain: it travels from the Ancillary Team and their colleagues (i.e. ancillary stakeholders), via Bluebird Customer Services and the contact centre Knowledge Management, to the agent. This current flow does not make use of a structured process and highly depends on individual proactivity. As a result, the information flow is found to be unorganised and inefficient.

Furthermore, the research shows that for the ancillary stakeholders it is not clear who, when, what and how they should inform. This results in confusion, misalignment, inconsistent output, and low levels of awareness and engagement in the process of communicating information. Hence, the goal of this thesis is to create an engaging approach to guide the ancillary stakeholders in an adequate information transfer process.

During the design phase, co-creative sessions are used to explore solutions to meet the design goal. This phase results in the Information Journey concept, which consists of a process proposal, a corresponding template, and an explanatory manual. The process consists of clear steps and dedicated meeting moments to ensure early involvement of relevant stakeholders and creates the opportunity to exchange feedback between those stakeholders. The template corresponds to the proposed process steps. It specifies which information is required at which moment, and motivates users to complete the document. The manual contains detailed explanations of the process and its background, as well as tips for the stakeholders to apply during the proposed meeting moments.

The Information Journey provides Bluebird with a set of tools that ensure a well-structured and consistent ancillary information flow towards the contact centre. The approach is flexible, reusable, and open for future iterations to make it worthwhile for the organisation.