Case Study: Tripadvisor

CUSTOMER PROFILE

01 THE BEFORE

A complex global network

Tripadvisor grew organically and through acquisition over many years from a price comparison site to an organization providing a wide range of travel and tourism services. The subsidiary with the most contact center activity, for example, is the tour operations business, Viator. But it is far from the only one. Over time, different technologies and operational structures were assimilated or selected in different subsidiary business units. A heterogeneous technical environment developed, with a complex patchwork of contact center solutions and vendor agreements.

02 DESIRE TO CHANGE

Growing pains

It became progressively difficult to coordinate activities, service-level standards and employees among the 28 different companies under the Tripadvisor umbrella. Operational inefficiencies and overhead increased with the need for timeconsuming and costly management efforts across multiple operational siloes, which also constrained the adoption of new technologies or more efficient processes. It was difficult, if not impossible, to share information, experience and context across a customer’s journey with different Tripadvisor business units, which made it increasingly challenging to provide a consistent customer experience. In addition, the advent of the global pandemic presented the need for supporting a rapid transition from office- to homebased contact center teams.

03 THE SOLUTION

A single global platform for standardizing success

Tripadvisor decided that the solution for standardizing its globe-spanning mix of customer support and telesales services was consolidation. The corporation launched an initiative to migrate its contact center activities to a single, centralized omnichannel platform, NICE CXone, selected for its record of delivering operational efficiencies, reducing costs and improving performance. Integrated with core Tripadvisor systems and its telco network, the solution eliminated silos and enables consistent handling of interactions worldwide, while giving agents visibility into the full customer experience. With easily shared data, Tripadvisor is also obtaining new robust insights into customer behavior.

NICE CXone implementation was completed within a remarkable 12-month time frame, including the migration of over 2,000 agents to the new platform without disrupting business continuity. The project was successful thanks to collaboration between Tripadvisor and NICE on the discovery and design of functional specifications to meet the organization’s specific requirements. This was followed by deployment, configuration, testing and the transition - business by business and market by market – of all global operations to the new environment. The Tripadvisor team took the opportunity to improve its workflows and technical designs, as well.

04 THE RESULTS

More efficient, effective and stable – for everyone

CXone has helped Tripadvisor create a seamless customer journey across group companies, as well as a consistent, frictionless experience along the way. Average handle times have been improved by providing agents the contextual data they need in real time with on-screen prompts and automating routine administrative tasks. Consolidation of call handling simplified the customer’s experience with IVR, reducing it from 7 to 2 interactions for a typical brand, making it easier to find the right person to assist with their query and substantially increasing first-call resolution (FCR). The result has been an industry-leading Customer Effort Score that is consistently over 70.

The efficiency and consolidation CXone made possible has generated multi-million-dollar savings and increased revenue for Tripadvisor. The corporation has slashed its technology, infrastructure and management costs with fewer licensing, storage and telco charges (vendor contracts were reduced from 17 to 3), as well as the elimination of local PC software deployments and a single interface with common tools for contact center management. Tripadvisor consolidated multiple scheduling and forecasting applications into one, and standardized contract management worldwide. The new architecture, with its streamlined workflows, reduced administrative tasks and increased the speed of new user creation by 63%. This makes quickly scaling the workforce in response to seasonal demand easy and facilitated a rapid transition from office- to home-based work during the pandemic.

05 THE FUTURE

A framework for the future

“The new capabilities enabled by CXOne solution and its ability to integrate with our in-house and third-party tools have opened the door to a pipeline of new initiatives, which will deliver numerous benefits over the coming years,” according to David Fox, Tripadvisor’s Senior Director for Global Telecoms Services.

A few examples of the expanded or novel capabilities Tripadvisor is considering as of this writing include: automated ID and verification of customers, reducing handling time and outsourcing costs; interaction analytics, for greater insight across all channels; verified calling, intended to increase call acceptance among customers; feedback management, providing actionable intelligence on potential improvements; and new channels for customer interactions.