The flood of cancellations and rebookings at the beginning of the pandemic challenged OTA giant Priceline to move quickly in two opposing directions simultaneously: more automated options and more human support.
It has been a long-term goal of the company to build out platforms for customers to book in the channel of their choice, including social media, texting, chat, interactive voice programs, apps and desktop displays. As these efforts intensified to meet the churn that followed border closings and lockdowns in March 2020, so did the need for live agent support, even as phone centers closed and systems had to be modified to enable employees to work from home.
Jeremy Ellis
"The whole thing around Covid really acted as a catalyst that allowed us to accelerate a lot of stuff that was on our long-term plan around automation: self-service features and things to make the customer experience a little easier," said Jeremy Ellis, head of customer care operations. "I'm glad we could actually deploy that, because it took some of the stress off people who had a lot of things going on in their lives. We didn't want this to be a stressful thing, too."
Because of the pandemic and its impact on travel, Priceline quickly deployed self-service cancellation and refund options on its website as well as through its "phone robot," or interactive voice response system, Ellis said. It enabled customers to cancel and refund bookings that typically would have required them to speak with a live customer-service agent.
Priceline also introduced features enabling customers to cancel and bank flight tickets for future use without having to speak to an agent.
Meanwhile, the company had to move all of its workers home, including Ellis' 1,400-plus team. Priceline accomplished that within 48 hours.
"That was pretty Herculean, if I can say so myself," Ellis said. "It was a lot of work but it played out really well."
Despite introducing the focus on automated features, demand for a more personal response was still high. Ellis trained several hundred Priceline headquarters staff to become customer care agents, focusing on handling cancellation and refund requests for hotel bookings and car rentals.
For the most part, Ellis' customer care staff continues to work from home. He estimated that will continue until at least September, or when Covid-19 restrictions further loosen.
The company has not yet decided whether that will, in fact, become a permanent change, but Ellis said several Covid learnings will inform Priceline's customer service path going forward.
First, Ellis said, the OTA has long recognized the value of redundancies, such as having customer care centers in different locations in case one is, for instance, affected by a weather event. Should some staff be forced offline, others can fill in.
The pandemic reinforced the need to "stay really good at making sure we can pivot very quickly as things change in the world around us," Ellis said.
He added that his team is working to enhance self-service features introduced early in the pandemic with additional functionality, such as empowering customers to rebook flights themselves, which currently requires speaking to a live agent.
In addition, Ellis is working to bring more capabilities to customer communication channels, including on texting and social media platforms.
"As we see customers moving, in general, more to a mobile-first choice, we want to make sure that we can meet you in that channel," he said.