Case Study: Expedia, Inc.

CLIENT: Expedia, Inc.
Expedia, Inc. is the world’s leading online travel service with gross bookings of $13.2 billion for 2004.

NEED: Reduce customer service calls.
Expedia’s call center was receiving a large number of calls from customers who either could not find or could not understand their itinerary.

There was plenty of helpful itinerary information in text on the site, but customers weren’t taking the time to find it. So Expedia wanted a way to push engaging site education out to its customers right when they needed it.

SOLUTION: Deliver a 2-1/2 minute demo when customers need it.
Autodemo worked with Expedia to understand their unique business challenges and focused on leveraging a demo to reduce itinerary call volume. Because contextual placement is a critical success factor for any demo, Autodemo’s experts took the time to understand the overall objective to help to make an informed decision.

The “Where is my itinerary?” demo was crafted by Autodemo’s producers, writers and developers to clearly and concisely educate customers on that feature of the site. Autodemo worked with Expedia’s usability director to fine tune the demo’s placement on the site and within ticket confirmation emails so that it provided “just-in-time” guidance to customers before they needed to search for their itinerary. A link to the demo resides on Expedia’s confirmation page, in confirmation emails to customers and on the customer support page.

RESULT: Demo helps reduce number itinerary inquiries.
The demo has had a significant impact on Expedia's customer service costs. Shortly after the demo went live, Expedia's call center witnessed a drop in the number of calls from customers asking about their itinerary.

More than 82 percent of Expedia's customers who viewed the demo and completed an online survey said that they found answers to their itinerary questions by watching the demo and 84 percent of these same customers said that they found the demo helpful.