Microsoft Travel global
employee experience lead Julia Fidler and global travel BI & analytics
Marta Rodriguez Martinez have worked together
to develop four distinctive traveler personas that represent the company's 75,000-person
travel population. Fidler initiated the investigation into personas after taking
Microsoft Travel's new global employee experience lead role just over a year ago.
She took the persona concept to Rodriguez Martinez, who translated Fidler's vision
into data-based formulas that stream together 11 sources of structured and unstructured
data that gave shape to the needs and preferences of four overarching types of Microsoft
travelers. The deep dive into business travel intelligence that validated the strategy
has set the program on a path to travel customization and personalization—not only
with traveler services but also with strategic supplier partnerships and sourcing
strategies. The collaborative work with data and experience management point to
the future of travel management.
BTN: Julia, what is
the role of an employee experience lead for managed travel?
Fidler: The traditional role for a travel manager is managing
costs, compliance and controls to make the functional team run efficiently. With
my new role, I have shifted completely to the traveler perspective. It sounds like
such an obvious thing and [makes you] start to question why we didn't do this before,
but Microsoft has a very mature travel program and we needed to identify the next
evolution of the program. I'm happy to say that the company is very open to this
approach and when I began my investigations, doors just opened for me. Every conversation
propelled me forward. What it really comes down to, though, is Microsoft's business
mission of empowering employees. I'm constantly asking myself now, "How do
I make things better, and how do I enable the traveler to achieve more?" It's
very exciting, and I can honestly say it's been one of the most enjoyable jobs I've
had.
BTN: Marta, when Julia
came to you with the persona concept, how did you work with her? What was that process
like?
Martinez: I was already exploring some machine learning
algorithms with other people about classification and clusterization. Julia and
I thought [combining our respective work] could lead to something. We started to
define the parameters, and it was a very R&D-style exercise. From a very small
idea, we developed that vision. I contributed on the more algorithm, modeling and
testing side. We are still looking at the models and understanding the features
and the descriptions and what really drives the different personas, so it's been
a very organic process.
BTN: Julia, what was
it like working with someone who has Marta's skill set and perspective? This is
a really new area for travel management: to dive this deep into data intelligence,
particularly on the traveler behavior and sentiment side.
Fidler: Our skill sets are so very different. I love to
apply historical knowledge of travel, but Marta has that fresh set of ears and eyes
and she can physically translate our ideas into reality. She's also fast. We can
sit in a room together and we could discuss the ideas. She got it very quickly and
it felt like building blocks. We could see progress in an hour. It was new for both
of us, and there was freshness and speed. Of course, it's always important to slow
down and check to see how the data resonated with other work and what we already
knew.
BTN: So what is Microsoft
actually doing with the traveler personas?
Martinez: Personalization and customization of the travel
program are the end goals. And that's not just on the traveler side, although it
all ultimately flows through to the end user. But from a strategic sourcing and
decision-making perspective, understanding traveler types informs what types of
products and services need to be sourced for the different personas. Longer-term,
there is the personalization piece, where we will be able to tailor the traveler
experience not just based on historic booking behaviors but on a lot of different
behaviors or correlations between behaviors like low card usage and whether there
is a correlation to direct bookings, or what we can gather from direct comments
through our internal social media or surveys that help us understand what travelers
need.
Fidler: I love the conversations that our personas and
more detailed data are allowing us to have with suppliers. With Diane [Lundeen Smith,
global travel sourcing manager,] I am excited to have a deeper engagement with the
customer experience teams with our top suppliers. We've had some preliminary conversations
with Delta and Virgin, and they've been really exciting. Some of the preliminary
discussion hasn't been fruitful with certain suppliers, but there are enough that
are willing to be challenged and willing to partner with us to really understand
what our travelers need.
BTN: Have you measured
traveler engagement and satisfaction in the program since you've taken on the employee
experience role, Julia?
Fidler: Each month, we send a survey out to a few thousand
travelers. All of our metrics—every one of them—has improved. Some dramatically.
That felt very validating to the work the entire team has been doing. The travelers
have seen a difference.
BTN: Marta, your role
as a specialized business travel intelligence manager is unique, as well. Do you
see others with this deep data analysis skill set coming into the industry?
Martinez: There's
a bit more movement in this space, but it's a lot of talk and not much substance
to it. The industry doesn't really do a great job attracting this kind of talent.
I love doing this, but to other people who have engineering degrees like me, it
may sound boring. I ended up in this industry by chance, and at Microsoft, I get
to do really cool things. But the industry has to do a better job of showing that.
If we want to attract people with great data skills, it has to look a little cooler
from the outside.