The challenge

A major travel e-commerce site was losing customers to friction across its highest-volume contact categories but couldn’t see exactly where or why. Traditional QA sampled only a fraction of interactions, leaving the real drivers of dissatisfaction hidden across hundreds of thousands of traveler conversations.

Our solution

We deployed TTEC CARES, our AI-driven predictive CX measure analyzing 100% of interactions in near real time.

TTEC CARES stands for Conversation Analytics Resolution Effort Sentiment and is our advanced, predictive measure of the overall customer experience. Rather than waiting for the small fraction of customers who fill out a survey, CARES captures how customers truly feel about every interaction the moment it happens. 

CARES is a composite metric built on three CX drivers: customer sentiment, customer effort, and issue resolution. Bringing these three components together gives a single measure that shows the quality of the customer experience, at the interaction level and at scale. 

We use these three signals to derive a single CARES Score on a 0–10 scale, where 0–5 is negative, 6 is neutral, and 7–10 is positive. Using deep insights that analyze every interaction, we go beyond telling how an interaction performed and help brands detect CX breakdowns earlier, pinpoint the root causes of friction, and inform associate training and enablement.

In this case, we applied the CARES score to analyze 20,213 interactions and isolate 8,549 negative CARES conversations. Our analysis found that four topics drove 38% of negative TTEC CARES interactions and represented the greatest opportunity to improve customer satisfaction. Those topics were:

• meeting points: things like pickup location uncertainty and missing logistics details
• booking amendments: rebooking challenges and refund complexity, among others
• booking confirmation: delayed confirmation status, missing tickers or vouchers, and unclear booking status 
• sold-out tours and waitlists: tours being unavailable, limited alternatives offers, and capacity constraints

Based on our findings, we made actional recommendations to target those specific areas we knew would make the greatest impact. 

When it came to meeting points, we advised the company to standardize traveler guidance, maps, landmarks, and pre-trip reminders. Regarding booking amendments, we recommended simplifying change processes and standardizing recovery communications. To improve the booking confirmation experience, we recommended the company improve visibility, provide proactive updates, and offer self-service tools. And when it came to sold out tours and waitlists, we recommended offering comparable alternatives and creating a self-service waitlist with queue transparency.

The results

Our work gave the company a clearer view of customer experience and sentiment than it’d ever had. We analyzed more than 20,000 interactions and isolated more than 8,500 that received negative CARES scores. 

We traced a large share of those negative interactions (38%) to just four topics, pinpointing where improvements would drive the greatest impact. And, beyond that, we offered actionable recommendations to spur improvements. 

Our work and recommendations could drive $401,000 in potential annualized cost savings. If the company addressed just 25% of dissatisfied contacts with our recommendations, it would prevent an estimated 142,000 dissatisfied contacts annually.