.png)
TUI is the go-to partner of countless happy travellers who trust the company will provide excellent travel experiences, taking care of them every step of the way. TUI understands that placing the customer at the heart of its business strategy is vital to success. Yet, despite a solid foundation in customer satisfaction research, prioritising improvements and understanding their impact remained a challenge - until they found a way to consistently predict the effects of their actions on crucial customer satisfaction KPIs.
Demystifying customer loyalty
It is obvious: the most valuable customers are those who keep coming back. To keep track of customer loyalty, TUI asks everyone who travels with them how likely they are to recommend the company to someone else. The resulting Net Promotor Score (NPS) is a key performance indicator known to all. TUI also asks customers about their satisfaction with the booking experience, hotel, flight, and other touchpoints – both overall and in detail – with questions about hotel cleanliness, wifi, staff and many more. Nonetheless, unlocking the full potential of this wealth of data was a challenge.
"It was difficult for us to estimate how much an initiative would impact general satisfaction and the NPS, as well as the extent to which it would affect satisfaction about other aspects," explains Kira Drabner, who leads TUI's Voice of Customer Program. "Take food and beverages during the flight, for example. When we invest in improving those, we know our customers will be happier with the flight overall and with other aspects of the flight, too, due to the halo effect. They might even be more inclined to recommend us to others. We knew everything was interconnected but lacked reliable data to quantify the effects of our efforts. Without that, it is hard to put customer experience (CX) at the heart of your business. Decisions are more likely to be driven by commercial considerations and guesses."
Accurate NPS prediction tool
"We teamed up with boobook to find a solution that would help us prioritise the right aspects of the customer journey and allocate our resources wisely," adds Terezia Schwarz, TUI's global head of customer experience. "Having a partner that was thinking along with us was invaluable." The collaboration led to a powerful tool that enables anyone in the company to accurately predict the effect of specific actions on satisfaction levels and the Net Promotor Score.
The tool appears straightforward: by manipulating a slider, users can see how much an increase in satisfaction in one area affects all other dimensions and the Net Promotor Score. Customer Experience is no longer a black box. With numerous analyses happening invisibly in the background, this data-driven yet intuitive tool allows everyone in the company to set targets and plan actions, regardless of their familiarity with data.
CX at the heart of business decisions
Today, the customer is central to all of TUI's initiatives. Their decision-making process is now entirely data-driven, grounded in robust analytics and insights. "We've seen a significant increase in our Net Promoter Score since using the tool in 2017. Starting with an NPS of 40, we saw steady year-on-year improvement, reaching a peak of 52 in 2020. Despite a temporary dip due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we're proud to report that we've regained our all-time high of 52 in 2024," states Kira.
The company primarily uses the tool to set targets. With the interrelationship between all customer touchpoints and customer loyalty quantified, it becomes easier to set realistic goals for everyone involved in customer satisfaction. TUI also uses it more operationally to prioritise different actions. As a side effect, it helped the company steer away from a silo mentality. "When you see in black and white how different aspects of the customer journey impact each other, you realise how important it is to work together and consider how actions in one area might have implications elsewhere," Kira explains.
The tool has been instrumental in TUI's journey towards customer centricity. "I would highly recommend it to companies that are already quite good at measuring customer satisfaction but are unsure about how it all fits together and how it can ultimately improve business success", Terezia concludes.
Curious how your company could benefit from a solution like this? Get in touch!
