Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.
Page 15 of 52
Leader'sView Four Questions...
…FOR CAROLYNE MATSESHE-CRAWFORD, HEAD OF GLOBAL CONTACT CENTER STRATEGY SERVICES, ORBITZ WORLDWIDE
1) WHAT KIND OF LEARNING INITIATIVES HAS ORBITZ IMPLEMENTED IN THE LAST TWO YEARS TO FURTHER THE COMPANY'S BUSINESS OBJECTIVES? Orbitz Worldwide has been laser focused on moving our consumer brands to our Global Platform and building our mobile toolsets for smartphone and tablet users. These exciting challenges required a constant cycle of training or updating our contact center agents across the globe, so that they were well equipped to provide great customer service at every consumer touch point. Depending on the customer, teams supporting voice, email, chat, and social media needed informa-
tion delivered fast. Throughout these projects, our Global Training and Process Services teams were tasked with developing learning solutions that were easily deployable and flexible to meet the varying nuances of our leisure brands. This required these teams to creatively develop training materials and daily updates that were engaging, easy to understand, and easily accessible, as the contact center agent's servicing toolset and the consumer Websites changed. The team used a host of delivery mediums from LMS-hosted short video clips accessible via internal FAQs to online modules and retention assessments, to keep customer-facing teams up to date.
2) WHAT OBSTACLES HAVE YOU HAD TO SURMOUNT IN IMPLEMENTING NEWER INITIATIVES, AND HOW DID YOU SOLVE THEM? In addition to the challenges of creating a training plan that is flexible enough to accommodate early or late releases of technical features and functionality, the online travel industry has a continual flow of uncontrollable consumer-impacting events that can drive unplanned but required changes to a train- ing delivery schedule. Significant inclement weather events like the Chicago blizzard, the Icelandic ash cloud interrupt-
ing air travel throughout Europe, and the tsunami in Japan required material development and training delivery to temporarily halt. Teams re-focused energies on updating our external and inter- nal FAQs, so that agents and customers had the most up-to-date information from airline and hotel travel suppliers. Additionally, Orbitz Worldwide processes proactively reach out to our travelers impacted by such
events to assist with alternate travel schedules. Such events require that all contact center resources and supporting staff are available to take care of our customers. Any associated project delays require updates to the training execution plans and adjustments to forecasted training costs.
3) OVERALL, HOW HAS YOUR PROGRAM BEEN RECEIVED BY EMPLOYEES, MANAGEMENT AND OTHER STAKEHOLDERS? We have moved our www.ebookers.com, www.RatesToGo.com, www.HotelClub.com, www.Cheaptickets.com and www.orbitz.com brands to the Global Platform, launched our mobile sites, as well as iPhone, Android, and tablet applications. Despite the challenges of this multi-year project, consumers have benefited from new and improved Website features, content and mobile-accessible travel tools. Our contact centers are trained and using their updated processes and desktop tools to provide customers support.
4) WHAT LEARNING-SPECIFIC INCENTIVES ARE IN THE PLANNING PROCESS, AND WHY ARE YOU CONSIDERING THEM? This has been an exciting journey for our project and customer facing teams. We are pleased with the results that leveraging e-learning tools deliver and assess learner retention. Organizationally, we are excited about completing this project, what we learned about our training effectiveness, and the future of using more video e-learning and FAQ content for our external and internal customers.
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