Flight Centre reduces process completion times by 30% and delivers better employee and customer experience with WalkMe

As Flight Centre, one of the world’s largest travel agencies with a strong off and online network, embarked on a major digital transformation to unify its global business units on one technology stack and set of processes, it needed a robust, scalable change management strategy. Faced with challenges like ensuring its nearly 3,000 consultants in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and the UK adopted new systems without taking time away from customers, minimizing any data inaccuracies, and planning for ongoing system and process evolution, Flight Centre turned to WalkMe to meet its goals.

Since partnering with WalkMe, the organization has improved process adherence and data quality and streamlined workflows. These enhancements and other initiatives have helped drive a significant increase in productivity. The team has reduced task completion times by 30%, automated up to 80% of common processes, and returned nearly 4,000 productivity hours to the business. In addition to employee experience and operational efficiency benefits, consultants can focus on delivering the best possible experience to customers, boosting competitive advantage and customer satisfaction and retention.

As a global brand with a 40 year history, Flight Centre had a solid technology foundation, but was keen to unify its five global business units and nearly 3,000 travel consultants on the same platforms and systems. This business transformation and change management initiative included launching a central CRM, Microsoft Dynamics, to manage customer information and sales reporting and aligning all of its travel consultants on one online booking system.

Flight Centre’s consultants are in-store and client-facing and didn’t have time to sit through lengthy training sessions, so traditional enablement methods were insufficient. Travel booking also requires complex, multi-step processes and team members were heavily reliant on support as they completed their day-to-day work. Additionally, the organization needed a way to proactively mitigate data entry errors, such as selecting an incorrect travel insurance provider, which would cause rework, data fidelity issues, and costs associated with write-offs.

“Our consultants have to juggle learning in the office, providing expert assistance and advice to customers, and making sure they meet their sales targets – and it’s just too much. Plus, processes and policies are constantly evolving. We needed a way to create in-the-moment learning and get our technology ecosystem to a place where it’s intuitive enough to learn as they work,” said Marieke Tucker, Global Operations Leader at Flight Centre.

With this in mind, Flight Centre’s operations team evaluated various options and decided a digital adoption platform was the best of all worlds, combining automation, analytics, and the ability to deliver content in the flow of work.

Flight Centre implemented WalkMe for Microsoft Dynamics and its online booking system, two business-critical systems that consultants use on a daily basis. Their digital adoption strategy has three main goals: improve process adherence, drive self-service and decrease reliance on support, and reduce training needs.

Before they began building solutions, they hosted internal workshops to engage consultants and get feedback – and, based on these sessions, created a persona, “Avery,” for all of their WalkMe content to make it more relatable and engaging.

From there, the team tackled improvements in the booking process, aiming to reduce completion times and ensure consultants entered accurate data the first time. For example, they built WalkMe solutions that automate 80% of core processes, such as redeeming gift cards – going from 23 clicks to 3 clicks – and solutions that validate consultants select the right insurance suppliers. “With WalkMe, we’ve focused on data quality and prevention workflows. Now, we can understand where consultants may input the wrong information and build solutions that prevent errors before they happen,” said Tucker.

Historically, if consultants encountered system issues or unfamiliar notifications, they would contact support to understand how to resolve them, taking them out of the system and the task at hand. To solve this, the team loaded common notification codes into WalkMe, so that when consultants see one, Avery automatically pops up and tells them how to self-serve the correction, such as refreshing their browser. “We identified five or six really key ticket trends where we see consultants feel the need to contact our support teams, which we actively solve with our digital adoption approach,” said Tucker.

The digital adoption team also uses WalkMe to connect flows across their CRM and the booking platform, ensuring consultants don’t duplicate contacts and that the company can track inbound lead-to-booking conversion. Digital adoption solutions also prompt consultants to ask clients about add-on opportunities, like travel insurance and vacation tours. “We want our consultants to exceed our customers’ expectations and deliver on all of their travel needs. With WalkMe, they spend less time trying to navigate the system and can focus on delivering the best possible outcome to the customer, “ said Tucker.

For its “Big Red Sale” event, the digital adoption team partnered with Flight Centre’s marketing department to create ShoutOuts that appeared on consultants’ screens every day of the sale, so it was top of mind as they engaged with customers. “In just two 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. We have the flexibility and agility to serve up content quickly and to the right people,” said Tucker.

The digital adoption team also makes heavy use of WalkMe analytics to better understand trends and engagement to continuously improve. “We don’t want to just train people on things, we want to build solutions that enhance our systems and our team members’ experience. The data we get from WalkMe enhances our ability to track and trace and see what’s working and what’s not, so we can deliver on that goal,” said Tucker.

By using WalkMe as part of its change management and digital transformation strategy, Flight Centre has doubled consultant productivity, improved data quality, and simplified processes across the board. They’ve reduced completion times by 30% through automation and in-the-moment prompts, as well as decreased consultants’ need to contact support. Overall support tickets have decreased by 8% and the organization has returned 4,000 productivity hours to the support team (equivalent to 2 FTEs).

“In just the last few months, we’ve been able to take 6 or 7 workflows and reduce them from 23 or 16 clicks to 4 or 3 – and the impact on productivity, minimizing errors, and consultant happiness has been remarkable,” said Tucker.

Consultants can now direct even more focus on sales and the customer experience, while support teams have more time to solve more complex issues. Based on the positive results, additional teams within Flight Centre have started to engage the digital adoption team to collaborate and find new ways to use WalkMe to test and fix workflows from other areas of the business.

“From a global perspective, if you’re trying to globalize a business, standardize processes in your business or undergoing a change management initiative, WalkMe is an incredible solution to ensure everything is unified and consistent,” said Tucker.

Flight Centre’s success is a testament to the power of digital adoption strategies in resolving business challenges, improving user experience, and enhancing productivity.