Insights from Marriott's Journey to Becoming the World's Favorite Travel Company

In the digital age, transformation seems inevitable. The more innovation we see, the more opportunities there are to implement new technology, optimize processes and work to improve. But, because the contact center space has been riddled with inefficient and disconnected technology for so long, every new technology offers both a new path forward and a challenge in seamless implementation and system connection.

Karen Mitchell, Senior Director of Product Management at Marriott International, has seen successes in her approach to transformation, marking key objectives and clear metrics as the key to progress when diving into new technology.

In her presentation at the CCW Executive Exchange in Chicago last week she shared insight on Marriott’s transformation journey to enhance the agent desktop and deliver memorable experiences to travelers across the globe.

Comprising 26 different products, the agent desktop at Marriott is used by 65 million support employees and services 160 million Bonvoy accounts. The goal of the interaction platform is to create experiences for guests and ensure a seamless journey throughout their travels. 

Mitchell prefaced this exciting initiative stating, “I share all of that information not so that you would be impressed… but really just to show you how far we've come from a technology perspective. Because it is nothing like what we looked like several years ago.”

These successes, she shares, are all due to Marriott’s comprehensive transformation process - which began with a lofty statement from their CEO. This statement outlined a goal of transforming Marriott to not just a best-in-class hotel chain, but the world’s favorite travel company.

Going from a chain of hotels to a memorable end-to-end travel experience, would mean more than just a few pleasant interactions. Mitchell shared that the Engagement Center came up with their own vision to achieve this new goal: to create raving brand fans through seamless travel. This would be accomplished by empowering their associates to create unique, memorable and personalized experiences.

Once this goal was confirmed, Mitchell and the engagement center team identified their key objectives for transformation. The guiding principles they put forward were to:

1. Minimize distractions but acknowledge that there would, at times, be disruptions. 

Transformation means that you are reworking so much technology, it was critical for their team to avoid disrupting other business. At the end of the day, customers and employees still need to do their jobs, so avoiding distraction and disruption is critical for a successful transformation.

2. Be transparent with employees and invite them to join in on the transformation journey.

Mitchell was transparent with her team because she knew there would be bumps along the way, “We were very honest with them upfront because we didn’t want them to be discouraged by what they were seeing and how their jobs would be impacted.” She continued, “While we were all excited about the cool things we were going to do, they are on the other end of that having to understand and embrace new technologies that don’t always work.”

3. Keep it Simple

Transformation in itself is highly complex. As outlined already, there are so many moving parts that need to be addressed before even considering a transformation initiative. Mitchell states, “It’s very easy when you’re trying to do something complex to come up with the most complex solutions in order to solve, what really are some very basic topics.” Ultimately, she shares, the more complex you make something, the less likely you are to actually execute it. 

Assessing Next-Steps

With all of their guiding principles outlined, the support team at Marriott still had work to do to understand how prepared they were to enter a transformation journey. Mitchell and her colleagues decided to put together a readiness assessment to shed light on where their customers and associates were at in terms of engaging with new technology.

From a people perspective, they were aiming to answer a few key questions: were they optimized for success? Were they training agents in a way that would support this transition? Were they organized in a way that would make them successful once they launched? Were their  processes aligned with customer needs and the overall objectives for the transformation?

Ultimately, after asking these questions, Mitchell and her team found they were not yet prepared to take it on. Working across 3 different sites, each leader had a different approach to processes, organization and role assignments.

“You couldn’t get transitioned from a reservation sales associate to someone in customer care without having to state your problem. Again, none of the systems are integrated, you could get different information.” She furthered, “Our whole organization was not arranged in a way that provides any sort of decent, effortless environment for our associates.”

Beyond preparedness, Mitchell also noted that many employees were simply not excited about learning new technology. Many tenured associates had been there for 15-20 years and the tools that they worked with had become second nature to them.

In terms of technology, the organization was also unprepared when it came to standardizing processes and connecting experiences. Associates were accessing a minimum of 8 different systems on a daily basis that did not always talk to one another. 

By spending most of their time on technology, agents were unable to really focus on the customer. Although they may have become experts on navigating systems, Mitchell shared “They did not necessarily become pros at listening to the guest on the other line, really engaging with them and understanding what their problem was, and resolving it quickly.”

Service Redesign for Next-Generation Support

Mitchell emphasized the importance of solving many of these key challenges before entering into the transformation journey. The team at Marriott redesigned operations to support a more consistent and connected experience across the organization.

First, operations shifted to support agents under a single leader. Additionally, the organization went from having a large portion of specialized associates to mostly global associates. Having a team that was focused on service, that led to a single leader and followed a single/similar process enabled the brand to have more consistency and control over operations.

Mitchell also shared the team's dedication to emotional training and change management. “You can make technology do whatever you want… but it will fail if you don't have a good change management strategy to execute it and implement with your team,” she stated. The team recognized the emotional connections associates made with their toolsets and worked to get them ready to connect with new technology. 

Finally, Mitchell and her team took a deeper look at the guest and associate journey and lined them up to understand where the pain points existed in both. With this information, they were able to build out a foundation of requirements for their new platform. In leveraging this information, and including regional differences across their properties, the engagement center was able to create one set of business requirements globally. 

With everything in place, Marriott began to build out a multi-year roadmap and start their transformation initiative.

Transformation is Not Linear

Ultimately, Mitchell’s presentation highlighted the unique nature of every transformation journey. While so many new tools and technology seem exciting, they may not be a simple fix to deeper organizational challenges. 

Taking the time to unpack key pain points in the agent journey is a critical step for making positive change. Further, understanding how ready your employees are to actually engage with new technology is crucial. Mitchell and her engagement center team were able to set clear objectives and metrics that guided their efforts and supported their team along the way. This planning also enabled her team to take a step back and repair disconnects within their organization before they became major roadblocks. 

At the end of the day, Mitchell and her team at Marriott prove that transformation is not always linear. Sometimes organizations have to take a few steps back before they are able to truly innovate and optimize. Before jumping into a transformation journey, understand what you want to solve, what you can already solve and ensure the technology will help you meet these greater goals over the long-term. 

Main image by Colin Freld on Pexels