Communicating Your Customer's Needs

Marja Ojala at UXDX Europe. Video: https://youtu.be/dMc-XyjDuMg

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Our customers, in their own words

[00:00:00] "I could not get the boarding pass to my email." "I do not want to finger up[?]. Your customer service is on the internet and I don't want to use it." "The app is amazing, intuitive, easy to handle, and links in the competitors' frequent flyer account automatically." "I really love the Finnair website, especially compared to a competitor's site. The way of showing the prices of flights for different days of arrival and departure is wonderfully simple and so, so customer friendly. Please never change that, this is so wonderful to use." "The website is total crap."

[00:00:49] "I really like the friendly greeting from the captain, the helpful crew, and even a wrap for a relatively long flight. The plane was very disappointing, full of crying kids, uncomfortable seats and no in-flight entertainment. Staff onboard were great and friendly, but I expect more from Finnair when travelling business class. It felt almost like an easyJet flight." "Okay, Finnair app is total crap. With every check-in you need to fill your passport number, etc. Horrible."

[00:01:27] "Finnair, from my experience, is a lesser-known airline and I had my concerns, but my whole experience with you has been excellent and I would happily fly with you again. The app is also excellent, informative and easy to use. My only comment would be the age of the films you show onboard, they felt a little dated, but this is very minor and a personal opinion." "Yeah, yeah, this questionnaire is ridiculously long. The continue button is way too much to the right. I was this close to quitting several times." "Keep up the good work, excellent."

Introducing myself, and Finland

[00:02:12] Now that you've met a few of my colleagues, let me introduce myself. I'm Marja Ojala, like was said, lead designer for our in-flight entertainment, or what we nowadays maybe call more the onboard digital platform, and the mobile app. Today I'm going through some examples, some cases that we do at Finnair, of how to spread the customer voice and customer needs across our organization.

[00:02:49] So maybe first of all, how many of you know what Finland is? Yeah, it's a country. How many have been in Finland? Okay, quite a few, actually. And the chief life in there[?] — oh, some hands were raised. So there's a lot of, let's say, this kind of what Finland is, the stereotypes: we're in sea, vodka, sauna, we really like our personal space, that's why I actually have this huge stage. But in reality we all... well, all of those stereotypes are true, but in reality we also have, let's say, we have really like good work-life balance in Finland, and also at the workplace we have a pretty low hierarchy when it comes to, let's say, for me it would be not unusual if I would have a coffee with a CEO, for instance, or with any of our developers for that matter. Yeah, so, no, maybe not every day, once a fortnight or so, but yeah.

Finnair, and the changes we made three years ago

[00:04:15] About Finnair: we are Finland's flag carrier, almost a hundred years old, so we will turn a hundred in '23, and we kind of have the shortest route between Europe and Asia, since we fly over Siberia and almost the North Pole. Two and a half years ago, or actually three years ago, Finnair started making major changes to how we do work at Finnair. So they invested in creating an in-house development digital platform team including in-house developers, testers, designers, product owners and other roles, alongside the external subcontractors. We also invested in a company-wide iPhone fleet, so all of our employees, from cabin crew to the office worker, we have a company iPhone, and that is laying the base for their future possibilities when it comes to serving the customer on the go and getting up-to-date information, for instance.

[00:05:43] Why I wanted to have this talk about customer voice: we had our new CEO appointed at the beginning of this year, and it stuck with me, this kind of anecdote that he said. When it was announced that he would be the new CEO of Finnair — he was coming from one of the biggest banks in Finland, from Nordea — he thought that you get a lot of critique and feedback directly to you when you're working in banking. But once he started to work in aviation and at Finnair, he was blown away, basically: you get bombarded with constant, constant feedback. For instance, myself as well, I don't get a normal day at home, because for instance my dad sends me this PowerPoint on suggestions how to improve Finnair services.

[00:06:45] Since Finnair is the main airline of Finland, that means that almost all of the Finns are flying Finnair, and that means that we get a lot of feedback, whether it's just the direct channels that we have, or when you're at the bar and make the mistake of saying that you work for Finnair. It's constant. I like it personally, maybe some others don't.

Who our customers are

[00:07:14] So who are our customers then? We have the Finns, they make up around fifty percent, depending on the season, fifty to seventy percent of our passengers. We also then have the European or Asian business traveller, from who we don't get that much feedback, at least organic feedback, and when I say organic I mean that they are proactively contacting you about that feedback. Then there's the Asian leisure traveller, who might have the kind of trip of a lifetime with us once in five years, or once in ten years, and it might be that they will never fly with us again, but it's our responsibility to give them that trip of a lifetime.

[00:08:05] But then we also have our internal customers, for instance cabin crew, pilots, the customer-facing crew, also the ground crew, gate crew and so on, and then the back office, or the backstage, from maintenance to kitchen to loading and so on. One thing maybe to mention: well, I said the low hierarchy, that doesn't actually apply when it comes to aviation in the operative world. Of course aviation is highly hierarchical, and you can basically see that strict chain of command onboard with the stripes and so on. Even so, we do get, when not on duty, we do get this kind of really instant and honest feedback from our cabin crew as well.

How we get to know our customers

[00:09:14] What we do now to get to know our customers: well, I mentioned the organic feedback, so naturally we do have this kind of feedback channels on our touchpoints. I guess that's a normal thing. So for instance, different touchpoints, what I do for instance with the in-flight entertainment, we have this Wi-Fi portal from which we get direct feedback to our team. Same for the mobile app, we have a send-feedback channel that goes directly to the team. Of course then if there's a customer case issue we will forward that to the appropriate people, but basically we are the people — the developers, designers, testers and the team itself are the people who are handling those kind of different customer cases that are revolving around, let's say, the technical problem, so they're kind of user experience issues.

[00:10:19] For instance, with the feedback, the whole team takes part. For instance with the app team we have this one tester who is now taking the role of assigning people with feedback duties, but each of the developers and designers will take turns, or weeks, that they will then handle the feedback and reply and get to know the customers as well. And actually that's a really good way of recruiting users, since if they have complained about something and we want to fix it, then we might get them to give us the kind of response, or to test the new ideas that we have.

[00:11:02] Then, user testing and validations. Yes, you can see the picture behind. This is a picture that was taken maybe a few weeks back, so part of this in-flight entertainment project. So we do this kind of one-on-one validations, or then online testing as well. Yesterday in the UK government speech there was that user research is a separate discipline. At our organization the designers, so let's say the lead designers, senior designers, junior designers, they are all involved in doing and facilitating testing. So a different approach there, and at least for me it's been working, and for others in our team as well.

[00:11:52] Surveys, that's of course again the basics of the toolbox, and there we have different units contributing, like the business unit, but we can do it ourselves as well. One of the examples is that we have this online community where we can post surveys or even small prototype tests, that consists of our Finnair Plus frequent flyers. And I believe our design researcher posted a test on the online community and it was three hours until she got the quota that she was requesting, so we can really do this kind of fast releases of tests as well.

A/B testing onboard, and observation flights

[00:12:40] Then analytics, A/B testing. I'm not sure if I can, because I don't know, I'm not sure, but I'm just going to say: we have done the first onboard A/B testing in the world. So we improved our Wi-Fi portal website, and we're actually now doing this kind of continuous A/B testing. We started that a bit over a year ago, maybe one and a half years ago, focusing on our pre-order shopping, and that's still the kind of thing that we're testing around: how can we improve the conversion, for instance? Because we control our own portal, we control our own IFE, which is also unique in the airline industry, we can do this kind of really fast end-to-end testing even onboard the aircraft.

[00:13:39] Then we have the diaries and probe kits. This is more about the future, that we would want to get actual user journeys documented by the users, or by the passengers actually. Let's go back one still. So also a few things that we do is that we have these observation flights or shadowing flights. If you go to the UXDX app and see my picture there, that's actually taken from a cockpit flight that I had with the pilots. So this is of course something that's pretty unique as well.

Involving individuals across teams and hierarchy

[00:14:29] The things that we do: well, involve individuals, and across teams and hierarchy. Even in my previous jobs I basically pulled in C-suite people to take part in user validation, in concept validations, to help them understand the market better or the needs better. Also, for instance, with the mobile app team we have constructed this tradition almost, that we do airport testing. The developers take part in that testing, they might even conduct that testing, and that actually has made them more in tune with the product as well, caring and owning the product.

[00:15:17] Then, involving the team, so the responsibility to follow up as well. For instance with the user validations, even if we do this kind of face to face and the team is not present, I will still involve the team in planning the test, for instance: what are the things that we want to know from the developer side, can we, is this the most important thing, or should we put all of our effort in different instances? So developers are involved, and of course product managers are involved in creating the tests and defining what we actually need to know.

Sharing quotes and success stories

[00:15:54] Share the quotes. This is something that of course, when you get those quotes, remember to document them and share them around. Customer quotes, video clips, those are an extremely powerful tool to be using, and something that you might forget every now and then. We're just now basically trying to build up our bank of quotes.

[00:16:27] Then share the success stories. As a designer I really enjoy negative feedback, because that means that there's something I can fix, there's something wrong that can be fixed. For others that can feel almost like an insult, or something like you're not doing your work properly because something is wrong. So I personally rather go through success stories, showing when we did this validation, when we did this testing, when we did this and this and this, and then if we can even wrap it up with a good customer quote. Like we did for the mobile app seat reservation: we did a lot of testing, some people were questioning, is it worth it? At the end, once we had released it, we got organic positive feedback, which is rare, saying that the customer had tried the seat reservation and he absolutely loved it. And this is something that's really difficult to usually get, positive organic feedback. Then the kind of town halls, exhibitions, demos, open houses, and including the customers, the customer voice, in all of those.

Gathering feedback, and finding allies

[00:17:46] So gathering feedback, gathering the sources of feedback, that's first of all the issue. Now actually we have a bit of an issue: after GDPR took effect last year, our feedback sources were such that we kind of needed to destroy the base that we had a bit, and we're still kind of thinking how to rebuild that so that we can get this centralized and quantified feedback sorting. So if you have any suggestions how to handle feedback, please come and see me after.

[00:18:28] We also have these innovation sprints that we do in-house, where one of the teams came up with a social media thing: whenever there's a Finnish hashtag, what are trending, what are the feedback stuff that are trending over there. And this is maybe something that we will investigate in our own internal platforms as well.

[00:18:50] And also, make sure that you're not doing this alone: find the allies in your company. Packaging, something that, like I said, this quote, this kind of easily digestible snippets, something that's easy to share, something that people can pick up for a presentation and put it in their own. And also the easy access to feedback, so again, the access to the sources and then the distribution. So put those in every single presentation that you have, and then offer the channels where the others can learn more about that.

Why it matters

[00:19:33] Then, why does it matter? I feel that this is still something that needs reasoning, especially if you have done that one validation, then it's like, yeah, we've done our work, we've done validation, we know what our customers want. So it still needs to have almost like a fight to get this continuous validation, continuous loop of feedback, continuous customer voice, and keep it fresh. Of course it has an expiration date.

[00:20:02] This is one of my favourite jokes, which I feel refers well in the design world. I've been part of these projects where, when the project fails, there's like, yeah, we kind of, the kind of hindsight, we could have known this. Yeah, we could, if we had asked the customer.

[00:20:30] Also one thing, the customer questions, those are really powerful, but you can actually abuse them as well: interpret as you wish, hear what you want to hear. And this is a bit of a struggle, or a challenge, when it comes to the user questions, having people part of validation for instance, especially if not trained. So the kind of medium interest in a feature, for instance, might be interpreted as, yeah, people really like it. No, they don't, they're just saying whatever.

Who has the responsibility

[00:21:08] But who has the responsibility? So, designers at Finnair: we are heavily involved in planning, doing, facilitating, summarizing, analyzing the feedback, validation stuff, basically everything, and then summarizing it for our product managers or product owners. Developers: taking part in the testing, making sure that we have the means to monitor the usage, and also the A/B testing, enabling our A/B tests. POs and management: the number one thing for them is the fact that they need to be able to secure the resources, secure the time resources, for the customer voice to be heard. Of course it's a costly thing, but it costs way much more if you don't ask the customers and spend all that time making something that is not used.

Pointers to leave you with

[00:22:23] So I will leave you off with a few pointers. Make the effort of building the relationship with the customer. This goes both to our passengers and to our internal customers. So for instance with internal customers, or cabin crew for instance, we need to get their trust to get the actual insight with the passengers.

[00:22:48] Build the base for fast recruitment. Don't be afraid of contacting the passengers or customers directly. There's quite a few of those passengers that I, for instance, have done validations with, who are top tier frequent flyers, that when I go to the airport it seems that every single time I see a person that we've done testing with, and they recognize me and I recognize them. So, a good feeling as well. Of course the difference would be going to B2B or B2C, so with B2B there might be a bit of, people might not be sharing their insights that openly, or they just don't know their customers' insights or thoughts and needs that well.

[00:23:36] Then make the effort of building a relationship with the data and analytics team. This is something that I'm now kind of lacking. I used to have a team member who was doing this, but now he's moved on to other things, so I need to kind of rethink the whole thing. But basically you don't need to do all of this, you can delegate.

[00:23:58] Then take the time to go through customer feedback and talking to them directly. This is something that I kind of noticed, that I slip at this every now and then. For instance, I don't read the feedback for two weeks and then I notice that I haven't been updating my pulse. But basically, take the time.

[00:24:21] And most importantly, at least for me, is to secure the time and money for the customer. For instance, what we're doing now is a project, a huge investment for Finnair, and they didn't include anything for customer validation. Anything. Well, once I had suggested it or proposed it, it went through like this, but it's still not part of the general basic structure, and it's even more difficult for those touchpoints that already exist, because they're already performing, so why do we need to have that?

[00:24:58] I'm out of time soon. We're looking for new additions to our design team as a design researcher, so if you're interested, contact me after this show or find me on LinkedIn and let's see what we can do.