For IBM, the traveler experience isn't a matter just for the
travel department. Of the company's approximately 400,000 employees, about 75
percent travel, and improving the traveler experience has become a priority for
related departments like procurement, HR and expense, according to IBM global
travel sourcing lead Shari Quackenbush.
The traveler experience's move to the forefront has been an
evolution and one that's continuing as the program looks to new ways to assist
employees on the road and to increase traveler engagement.
Recognizing the Potential
In 2016, IBM began switching both its travel and its expense
programs to Concur, no small endeavor for a program that manages travel in more
than 100 countries. As implementation for the first few countries approached,
Quackenbush said, IBM started planning for how it would communicate the changes
to travelers. "In the very beginning of the communication design phase,
there were several ideas that were surfacing about our communication plan,"
Quackenbush said, "and from that generated a whole focus on the travelers
and on the users."
When IBM launched the pilot of its Concur-powered end-to-end
platform for T&E, which it calls Travel @ IBM, it also set up a forum for
users rather than a help desk. "We weren't going to set up specific help
desks for [employees] to help them service their travel booking or their
expense reporting processes; that's supposed to all be very intuitive,"
Quackenbush said. "So we created frequently asked questions and we created
video trainings of things that we felt would be complex or challenging to
individuals."
IBM continued to use the forum as it deployed the Concur
application to more countries. But after a year's worth of questions and
answers had stacked up, Quackenbush's team realized that users don't look in
the archives for answers. That led the team to introduce a travel bot, powered
by IBM Watson. Users ask direct questions, and automation steps in and provides
the answer, often via how-to videos.
When the bot answers a question, users can give the answer a
thumbs up or thumbs down and leave a comment as to how the answer could be
better, Quackenbush said. "And we're going to continuously update the bot
with new information on an as-needed basis."
There are other traveler experience features to the Travel @
IBM platform, too, such as the Ideation Blog, on which users can submit
suggestions for the travel program and others can upvote their favorites.
An On-Trip App
While the initiatives IBM has rolled out over the past year
have improved traveler engagement and offered support, there still are pain
points to work on. Quackenbush said travel management is immobile, disjointed
and indifferent to the traveler. At the same time, she said, travel is the most
app-ready area of the work experience. Quackenbush's team and their R&D
partners are working on a multi-platform, personalized, integrated and
business-ready app for travelers.
The app will begin with an interactive itinerary that
integrates flight, hotel, car rental and meetings. The tool also will provide
IBM employees with special insights during their journey. For instance, the
artificial intelligence-powered tool can recommend restaurants based on the
traveler's preferences, even taking into consideration factors like whether the
traveler is dining alone or with clients. That same insight could recommend
what type of transportation a traveler would use.
Additionally, the app would create a connected traveler
community as the Travel @ IBM platform does. It will be able to notify IBM
travelers in real time when a colleague is on the same flights, in a nearby
hotel or going to the same restaurant.
Such opportunities to meet in person, then,
would extend the online traveler community that IBM has built into a
face-to-face traveler network, proof that technology really can bring people
together, not only online but also in real life.