WNS Case Study : Transform Travelocity's Offline

The Challenge A challenging economic climate has resulted in a considerable dip in airline traffic and hotel occupancy, the world-over in the past few years. This has directly impacted the revenue generating potential of online travel agencies. Although a market leader, Travelocity also faced the challenge of dipping online revenues and needed a solution that could salvage its revenue generation channels.

Solution Summary As Travelocity's long-time business process management partner, WNS had an in-depth understanding of the customer profiles and business. On evaluating the revenue generation model further, Travelocity and WNS found that the focus was largerly on the online channel as a means of customer acquisition and revenue generation.

WNS helped Travelocity counter the dependence on the online channel by building a robust offline channel through its proprietary Sales Center of Excellence (CoE) model. Three key elements helped WNS create a new revenue channel for Travelocity Its long-standing experience in the travel and hospitality industry A keen understanding of the multi-channel customer service environment Ability to map customer profiles and behavior through its embedded analytics practice Benefits Delivered to the Client The tangible benefits delivered to the client include: 50 percent increase in overall offline revenue 77 percent increase in gross offline sales in comparison to the previous year 150 percent increase in sales conversion rate 20 percent increase in revenue per call Detailed Engagement Summary WNS used its proprietary Sales CoE framework to deliver the solution by following a four-step engagement plan: Analytics-led Diagnostics WNS carried out a thorough diagnostics of the technology platform supporting online sales and the incoming call volumes. This analysis revealed the peaks and troughs in customer volume and became the basis of WNS's conversion plan that helped increase the offline conversion rate. Customer Acquisition & Retention Strategy Development WNS's long-standing experience in the online travel market place helped Travelocity understand the potential of a large but untapped segment of customers comprising of: Online shoppers looking for inexpensive hotel deals Customers dropping off due to technical errors in online transaction Customers dropping off during the billing process using credit / debit cards. As a strategy, WNS implemented a customer need identificationanalysis- segmentation-and-engagement methodology that helped in up- / cross-selling of insurance, travel extras (movie tickets, Spa vouchers) and high-value hotels. This resulted in a substantial year-on-year increase in hotel line-of-business revenues Deployment of a Robust Technology Framework WNS leveraged speech analytics and a specialty expert desk to enable sales agents to monitor the difficulties faced by the online customer and initiate the engagement / selling process. Functional Optimization of the Sales Channel A number of joint initiatives were undertaken to optimize the sales channel based on customer buyer behavior ‘Intelligent number placement’ system on select Web pages of Travelocity and direction of the traffic generated from these numbers to staffed by WNS offline sales centers Implementation of a ‘click-to-call’ feature on Travelocity's 'Package and Hotel' pages to prompt customers to call back the offline center and get connected to a sales expert Customization of the Travelocity Website to generate pop-ups displaying a strong call-to-action on detection of visitor inactivity on the payment (through credit / debit card) page Customer segmentation based on the revenuegeneration potential and alignment of most skilled sales agents based on their conversion rates and C-Sat scores to high-value customers WNS implemented the strategy and the subsequent transition and ramp-up in a very short period of time across multiple locations in the Philippines and India. It is a large set-up with 300 FTEs and handles more than 150,000 calls a year. About WNS WNS (Holdings) Limited (NYSE: WNS), is a leading global business process solutions company. WNS offers business value to 200+ global clients by combining operational excellence with deep domain expertise in key industry verticals, including Travel, Insurance, Banking and Financial Services, Manufacturing, Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods, Shipping and Logistics, Healthcare and Utilities. WNS delivers an entire spectrum of business process outsourcing services such as finance and accounting, customer care, technology solutions, research and analytics and industry-specific back-office and frontoffice processes. WNS has delivery centers world-wide, including China, Costa Rica, India, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, South Africa, Sri Lanka, UK and US.

Related Articles - Travel, Transformation, BPO, Outsourcing, WNS, Revenue, Leisure, Sales,

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