Marieke Tucker

Global Operations Leader, Flight Centre

Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG) is one of the world's largest travel agency groups, with a strong online and offline network of retail travel stores, corporate businesses, wholesale brands, and online travel platforms. The company now has more than 30 brands employing 13,000 people globally. Our company purpose is to open up the world for those who want to see it, providing exceptional service, expert advice, and unforgettable travel experiences.

Flight Centre is the flagship brand of Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG), an Australian born international travel company with 40+years experience of creating amazing travel experiences for customers around the world. The brand was recently recognised as the most trusted travel agency brand in Australia (Roy Morgan, Risk Report Feb2024)

Supernova Award Category: 
Future of Work: Employee Experience
The Problem: 

Flight Centre has a solid technology foundation, but we were keen to unify our five global business units and nearly 3,000 travel consultants on the same platforms and systems. We took on a business transformation and change management initiative that included launching a central CRM – Microsoft Dynamics – to manage customer information, organize sales reporting, align our travel consultants on one online booking system, and streamline the onboarding of over 800 travel consultants per year.

Flight Centre’s consultants juggle training, providing expert assistance and advice to customers, and meeting their sales targets. Due to their in-store, client-facing roles, they didn’t have time to sit through lengthy training sessions. Travel booking requires complex, multi-step processes, and team members were heavily reliant on support, which led to high ticket volumes. We also needed a way to proactively mitigate data entry errors and associated costs. Most importantly, we wanted to empower our team members to deliver the best possible experience to our customers.

With constantly evolving processes and policies, we sought a digital adoption platform (DAP) to develop in-the-moment guidance and make our technology ecosystem intuitive for consultants to learn as they work. We decided a digital adoption platform was best, combining automation, analytics, and the ability to deliver content in the flow of work.

The Solution: 

We implemented WalkMe for our CRM and online booking system. Our DAP strategy has 3 goals: improve process adherence, drive self-service + decrease reliance on support & reduce training needs. We created a persona, Avery, for our WalkMe solutions to be relatable and engaging. We tackled improvements in the booking process, aiming to reduce completion times and ensure consultants entered accurate data the first time. We automated up to 80% of core processes, saving our consultants valuable time and improving operational efficiency. We use segmentation to provide relevant content to the right users exactly when they need it. To reduce ticket volume, we loaded common notification codes into WalkMe. Now, Avery automatically tells consultants how to self-serve a correction and be on their way. We also used WalkMe to support a change initiative for new airline booking systems in less than 60 days and this speed to solution gives us agility that was never before possible

The Results: 

By using WalkMe in our change management and digital transformation strategy, we have doubled consultant productivity, improved data quality, and simplified processes. We are empowered to strategically build solutions that preemptively prevent errors. By embedding guidance and enforcing best practices in workflows, we reduced errors and improved productivity. Consultants spend less time navigating the system and can focus on delivering the best possible outcome, while support teams have more time to solve complex issues. 

We also created a best-in-class employee experience. People all over the business are keen to engage with Avery to improve their work and improve our solutions. Avery has become an internal celebrity! 

The positive results brought more teams to work with us. Together, we’re finding new ways to use WalkMe to test and fix workflows from other areas of the business.

WalkMe was our key solution to ensure everything was unified and consistent while we globalized the business, standardizing processes, and revamped our change management strategies. We’ve experienced the power of strong digital adoption strategies and solutions in resolving business challenges, improving user experience, and enhancing productivity. We’ve showcased the power of WalkMe to internal stakeholders for scalable, cost effective change management and governance and won the hearts of end users through the playful and helpful persona of Avery.

Metrics: 

Implementing our digital adoption strategy reduced overall process completion times by 30% through automation and in-the-moment prompts. For new enhancement releases, we’ve seen a 2.5x improvement in capability adoption, meaning users are actually using these new capabilities. Moreover, we’ve reduced the time it takes our consultants to complete their most common workflows, like gift card processing and booking, by *90%* from 16 or 23 clicks to three or four. This generated three-fold benefits: we improve consultants’ experience, minimize potential errors, and free our teams to focus on serving clients.

We also helped consultants self-serve so they don’t need to seek help, which led to an 8% decrease in support tickets and 4,000 productivity hours returned to the support team -equivalent to 2 full-time employees. We also saw improved accuracy and a reduction in write-offs, which have halved year over year. In some scenarios, we experienced a 400x reduction in small process errors.

Comparing pre-and post-COVID, we’ve seen over 40% growth in sales per person. Staff turnover has reduced year over year by over 26%, thanks in part to WalkMe’s change management and workflow support enabling team members to focus on what they love most and leaders to invest their time in advanced initiatives. 

The impact on productivity, minimizing errors, and consultant happiness has been remarkable

The Technology: 

WalkMe solutions simplify processes, confirm data accuracy, and connect flows across our CRM and booking platform. Notifications prompt consultants to ask clients about valuable add-ons, like travel insurance and vacation tours. 

WalkMe gives us insights into user behavior and needs through advanced analytics, helping us understand trends and engagement for continuous improvement. Data enhances our ability to see what’s working and what’s not, so we can deliver on our goals.

Disruptive Factor: 

A unified and consistent end-user experience is paramount when undertaking a massive global digital transformation project like ours. We were able to scale a very personalized approach that put the end-user first using WalkMe. We were able to achieve stunning results without our nearly 3,000 consultants taking time away from customers, while minimizing data inaccuracies, and setting ourselves up for ongoing success in the face of ongoing system and process evolution. 

The human-centric focus on the employee and advanced AI technology at the core of WalkMe made for a unique disruptive factor investing in continued success and an excellent employee experience regardless of ongoing technology change.

Shining Moment: 

For our “Big Red Sale” event, we partnered with marketing to create notifications that appeared on consultants’ screens each day of the sale, so it was top of mind as they engaged with customers. In just 2 days, we were able to push out a DAP solution that we knew consultants would see, instead of emails that easily get missed, so we could maximize the initiative. With WalkMe’s flexibility and agility, we were empowered to deliver content quickly and to the right people

About Flight Centre

Flight Centre is the flagship brand of Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG), an Australian born international travel company with 40+years experience of creating amazing travel experiences for customers around the world. The brand was recently recognised as the most trusted travel agency brand in Australia (Roy Morgan, Risk Report Feb 2024).