CX STRATEGY / @ATJ
ATJ
Business goals
ATJ (atj.com) is the premier US-based tour operator specializing in Asia and the Pacific region. They have been offering custom and small-group trips to the region since 1987 and have cultivated a reputation for excellence. In fact, travelers are so pleased with their experiences with ATJ that over 80% of ATJ’s business comes from repeat travelers and personal referrals (new travelers who have been personally referred to ATJ by an existing customer).
The travel industry is rapidly changing as it becomes easier for travelers to forgo travel agents and tour operators and book direct with local suppliers. In order to remain in business, those tour operators that do remain must deliver significantly better experience than travelers would have booking on their own in order to remain competitive. Thus, my role as Content Marketing Director at ATJ had a strong inbound focus. My primary objective was to optimize travelers’ end-to-end experience with ATJ to nurture leads, promote customer satisfaction and make it easy for travelers to share their experience with friends and family.
Customer MOTIVATIONS
Based on personal feedback (collected via first-contact inquiries, a post-travel survey and through interviews with travelers and customer service staff), travelers generally choose to travel with ATJ because they wanted to simplify the travel planning process, to access unique experiences, and/or for the safety and peace of mind of traveling with US-based experts in the field. When their expectations in these areas were met, there was a strong probability of them becoming repeat ATJ travelers and recommending ATJ to others in their community.
“Now that we are both retired, we love exploring new parts of the world on regular basis. We love how simple it is to plan a trip with ATJ and to knowing just who to call if something goes wrong. We enjoy cultural experiences and luxurious amenities when we are abroad and ATJ does a great job of consistently meeting our expectations.”
- Mary & Bob J., repeat ATJ travelers
“I’m too busy to plan my own trips these days, but I want to make the most of my vacation time by having unusual travel experiences that you can’t just find online and that my friends haven’t done.“
- Emily M., ATJ First-time Traveler
“We both traveled a lot when we were young and now we want to introduce our kids to new cultures and new experiences. Our vacations need to be fun, educational and safe.”
- Beth & Simon F., ATJ First-Time Travelers
IDENTIFYING PAIN POINTS
While my tenure with ATJ had already given me some idea of what could be improved to inspire even more repeat travelers like Mary and Bob, it had also made me aware of a tendency towards siloing within the organization. Each department was deeply entrenched in their own workflows and aware of specific problems, but few steps had been taken to analyze pain points and potential improvements from a broader perspective.
My first step was to zoom out and map ATJ’s core service offering (custom-planned travel) to better visualize the activity flow between various departments to identify pain points and key interrelationships within the service as a whole.
Mapping the customer journey atop a service blueprint of ATJ’s core service offering (custom travel) revealed the various activities and departments involved in pain points.
To identify pain points, I gathered data to better understand and empathize with the experience ATJ travelers were having with the service. I analyzed existing quantitative data (feedback survey, CRM data) and qualitative data (my own and my colleagues previous experiences working with and traveling with the company) and conducted additional interviews with travelers, sales staff and administrative staff. Looking at this data holistically, I identified several consistent pain points in the customer journey that accounted for the majority of traveler dissatisfaction.
Some travelers are disappointed with the initial itinerary they receive from ATJ. Travelers are attracted to ATJ based on its reputation for expert knowledge, luxury and personalized service. Accordingly, they expect their itinerary to be fully customized to their desires. Thus, when the text-heavy itineraries are clumsily put together and contain duplicate or contradictory text, this creates a negative first impression.
During the initial travel planning process, many travelers find it difficult to keep track of revisions being made to their itinerary. Revised itineraries are sent by PDF to the traveler with an email and/or phone call explaining the changes that have been made. For complex trips, it is not unusual for an itinerary to be revised 10 or more times, and these revisions may take place many months apart depending upon how far in advance the trip was planned. Frustrations during this process detract from the simplicity of booking with ATJ that originally attracts many travelers.
Once an itinerary has been finalized, many travelers find it difficult to keep track of what information and documents ATJ needs in order to confirm the trip (personal details, visa applications, payments, etc.). This is especially frustrating for families or groups traveling together and travel companions of different nationalities as requirements may differ per person. Again, this is counter to the simplicity travelers expect when booking with ATJ.
Travelers are frequently annoyed when on-the-ground activities do not match the finalized copy of the itinerary provided by ATJ. In general, travelers are very happy with their travel experience with ATJ’s suppliers. However, a common complaint is that in-country tour providers often alter daily itineraries to better fit local weather, traffic patterns, holidays, etc. Travelers frequently find it disappointing and jarring when their on-the-ground experience does not match the finalized daily itinerary that was reconfirmed for them just before traveling. Not only can this cause disappointment when one is looking forward to specific activity, but it can also make travelers doubt the trustworthiness of ATJ and their suppliers.
DEFINING PROBLEMS
The four customer-facing pain points identified in the customer journey related to two key areas of the service offering: creating and managing itineraries (blue), and submitting required pre-travel documents to ATJ (green).
By referring to the service blueprint above, it is easy to see that pain points 1, 2 and 4 all relate to frustrations with ATJ itineraries (creating them, editing them and confirming them with suppliers), and that the current itinerary platform is deeply embedded in the service (shown in blue). The itinerary management process includes interactions between the traveler and ATJ, ATJ and their suppliers, the traveler and ATJ’s suppliers, and integration with ATJ’s custom ERP system.
Pain point 3 is related to frustrations with understanding and submitting required pre-travel information to ATJ (shown in green). Similar to the itinerary creation process, this process also transcends multiple layers and methods of interaction. Required information and due dates are tracked in ATJ’s custom ERP system but communicated to the traveler by email, phone and/or mail and followed up by multiple contact people. Documents are submitted by email, online payment portal, fax and mail and manually logged in the ERP system.
Having identified these areas for improvement, improving the ATJ itinerary management process and improving the pre-travel information collection process (traveler portal) became two of my major projects at ATJ:
