Goals

1. Understand existing processes, training, and resources available to employees
2. Redesign the landing page for “Flying with a Medical Condition” based on user feedback
3. Document the employee and guest day of travel experiences, from booking to arriving at their destination
4. Uncover challenges and opportunities to improve employee and guest experience, related to medical conditions and air travel 

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Roles & Responsibilities

Stakeholders

Initially, this project began as a request from a medical representative and product executives. However, once the scope of the project grew to evaluate the systems, operations, and wholistic user experience product directors and managers, and employee representatives for booking, airport, and inflight were brought into the project for their respective areas and expertise.

Product-focused stakeholders were kept updated on project status and progress through bi-weekly share-outs while executives and key stakeholders were included at the final share-out and deliverable meeting to discuss next steps and roadmapping efforts.

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Collaborators

Key collaborators in this project included:

• Another UX researcher with expertise in the booking/call-centre portfolio to investigate specific training and tools available to employees
• Analysts to investigate customer reviews about the landing page, information customers are searching on WestJet.com, and to see where customers look for this page on the website
• A collaboration between market analysts and the UX research team  informed some of the special assistance requirements customers and/or employees require throughout the travel experience, based on work being done on ADA compliance and employee training.

Key collaborators met on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to keep updated on each person's progress and insights. Research and insights were pulled together for the final deliverable, to tell a story of what the travel experience is for guests and employees and to identify gaps or challenges.

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Process

This project started as a re-design of the informational landing page on WestJet.com, which led to a multi-phased project that included workshops, an audit of employee training and resources, user testing, and the development of a journey map to help understand different aspects of both employee and customer experiences on day of travel.

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Landing page re-design

The landing page for “travelling with health concerns” was very difficult to find on WestJet.com, especially compared to other airlines. This was a concern for customer safety and employee resources. Employees and customers were tasked with finding the page from the home screen, and only 10% were successful.

A new page was designed based on feedback from customer feedback and website analytics to better address guest, caretaker, and physician concerns when planning to travel. 

The new landing page was designed to provide more details and/or warnings ahead of travelling with a health condition. Links to this page were also integrated throughout WestJet.com and within the booking flow to increase awareness and user interactions during the planning, booking, and preparing to travel phases of a customer’s journey.

Upon using customer and employee feedback to inform the redesign of the landing page, several gaps in service and operations were identified, creating a need for a larger project scope to address these issues.

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Employee Training/Resource audit:

A deep review of the training and resources available to employees at each major phase of day of travel (contact centre (planning/booking), airport (day of travel), and cabin (day of travel)) was done to capture a wholistic understanding of what exists for employees. We found there were limited resources available for employees (training and on duty),  if a guest travels with a medical condition without proper clearance from their doctor or without taking proper precautions for their safety. This creates serious issues if medical or health conditions are not identified prior to arriving to the airport or boarding the plane.

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Employee Workshops:

Employees working in the contact centre, airport, and inflight were brought together for various workshops to discuss responsibilities and challenges faced when serving customers who have not been cleared for travel or require special assistance.

The purpose of the workshops was to map out what steps employees take when guests with a medical or health condition fly and what resources are available for them to take care of the guests in the airport and cabin.

Insights from the workshops were mapped out together to uncover gaps in training, systems, and resources available to employees at different phases of a guest’s day of travel.

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Journey Mapping:

A journey map was created to map out both the guest and employee experience, focused on guests flying with a visible or non-visble health condition. This map was a cumulation of user research feedback, resources and training reviews, interviews, and user testing data. 

A persona was developed to represent a guest flying with both visible and non-visble health conditions, to help visualize their experience from planning, booking, preparing for travel, and day of travel.

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Deliverables

A journey map and an extensive presentation deck providing more detail was presented to key stakeholders, directors, project managers, designers who would be working on implementing this work into project roadmaps and product/service improvements. The journey map was broken down into each main phase of the travel experience evaluated -- booking, airport, and inflight, providing more details for employee-facing improvements and insights that could be actioned.

Challenges and opportunities for service/training, UI design, and investment for new resources and tools were identified and immediately actioned upon deliverable share-out.

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Outcomes

This research directly informed new training procedures and resources available to employees, the redesign of the landing page, and has been continuously called upon by different departments throughout the company.

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Learnings & Takeaways

While this project was successful in its cross-department engagement and influence, there are a few things that could have enhanced the insights and/or process:

• A project scope meeting with a broader group of stakeholders at the beginning of this project may have helped position this research better from the beginning. This could have resulted in  additional resources for a more thorough investigation into each aspect of the travel experience and deeper user testing with customers.
• A retrospective meeting following project completion with the collaborators from the UX research, design, and analytics teams would have been useful to identify pro's and challenges that occurred throughout the project -- as a learning of what to continue vs. what to improve upon for the next collaboration opportunity.
• Conducting a 6-month or year post-project round-up with key stakeholders would be beneficial in measuring the success or challenges of the changes implemented from the study insights (web, services, systems and operations) and to plan for new product/service additions per the roadmap. This is a great way to keep track of deliverable progress and keep stakeholders accountable and proactive.