Customer journey mapping for Amadeus ePower

Amadeus ePower is a customisable online booking engine used by travel agents to allow their customers to book flights and additional services. The product has two distinct sets of users – travel agents and travellers – and is used in diverse contexts and across multiple devices. We undertook customer journey mapping and persona development work to help Amadeus enhance understanding of customer goals, behaviours and experiences.

The challenge

Amadeus wanted to ensure a UX driven approach to product development, with an understanding of the customer journey central to this. The Head of Online Solutions saw the development of customer journey maps and personas as a vital foundation in assessing business needs, and innovating to deliver greater value, explaining “we wanted to gain a 360 degree view of how customers experience our product”.

The research objectives included:

• Understanding the end-to-end customer journeys for travel agents and travellers.
• Identifying unmet customer needs, and opportunities to improve customer experiences.
• Generating ideas for addressing unmet needs, to act as a starting point for exploring and validating future solutions.

What we did

Customer journey mapping

The customer journey mapping and persona development projects were two phases in a wider body of work that we undertook for the Amadeus ePower team. The customer journey mapping work we undertook was completed in a 5 week period, as follows:

1. Remote interviews and creation of proto persona

We started by running remote interviews with travel agents and a delivery centre team member, to get an initial understanding of travel agents’ ePower journey. We also created a proto persona of a traveller based on our existing market and product knowledge, and collated ePower usability insights gained from previous research we had undertaken with travellers.

2. Customer journey mapping workshop

Our UX researchers created and facilitated a 2 day workshop in Istanbul, kicking-off the customer journey mapping activity by sharing our insights with ePower stakeholders. The workshop attendees worked in sub-groups to map customer touchpoints, actions, feelings, unmet needs and moments of truth as they progressed through every stage of the current journey.

3. Analysis of outputs 

Our consultants analysed the individual group outputs to create two insightful, end-to-end customer journey maps – one for travel agents, and one for travellers.

4. Creative design of customer journey map

Our creative team then worked on the workshop outputs, presenting the customer journey maps in a visually engaging and easy to digest format. The maps capture the needs, feelings, tools used, who was involved, and the pain points and moments of truth along the journey.

Interviews and persona development

Once the customer journey mapping and subsequent user testing work was completed, our researchers undertook user interviews and persona development work, incorporating:

1. User interviews

We conducted remote user interviews with travellers from Switzerland and Russia to add further user insight and understanding around the customer journey. A pre-session exploration task encouraged  travellers to reflect on their most recent booking/travel experiences.

2. Persona creation

Using the insights from the interviews, our consultants developed a set of 4 personas to demonstrate the key traveller types using the ePower tool, and how their attitudes, needs and behaviours varied at each stage in the journey. Our accompanying report highlighted the opportunities these insights revealed.

Benefits

The Amadeus ePower team has gained powerful customer journey maps for its two primary user groups, travel agents and travellers.

Large printed versions of these maps are now prominently displayed in Amadeus offices, helping the team to connect with end users, identify gaps in the ePower offering, and spot opportunities to enhance the customer experience. The visually engaging and digestible maps are integral to internal communications too – with the sales teams, for example – and are a key point of reference for future R&D work at the company.