Meeting French, Italian and German business travellers
Understanding how business travellers use the services
We run three remote focus groups with a panel of French, Italian and German business travellers. (We had already targeted users from these three countries during a project to improve the online check-in experience for B&B.) The aim is to gather feedback at the different stages of a business-trip journey:
- Before the stay
- During the stay
- After the stay
Bringing in the business view of travel managers
Understanding the preparation and management phases of a business trip
We then talk to users who are in charge of managing business travel for their company: the travel managers. A panel of around ten travel managers is recruited. The segmentation is done based on the number of business trips managed in parallel. The more experienced participants are more likely to use specific tools or solutions in the course of their work. The interviews are run with three main goals:
- Identify the functional needs and the blockers during the different stages of their journeys
- Understand the working habits and the way travel managers organise themselves
- Identify the strengths and weaknesses of competing platforms or platforms in other domains related to travel
To complement this phase, we run a benchmark on the service offers available to professionals for their trips. Following that, other interviews are run with B&B sales staff from four different countries. We then gather complementary feedback on the conversations with the travel managers and any issues that may come up. The data is cross-referenced during the analysis phase.
Analysing and categorising the information
Setting up a taxonomy to group and categorise the different user feedback
To start, we centralise the user feedback in the Dovetail tool. Bringing together the data from the focus groups and from the different interviews makes the analysis and cross-referencing easier. To carry out a cross-analysis, a specific processing method has to be applied to each data source. To make convergence easier, a taxonomy is put in place. It is about precisely defining the list of elements we want to surface. (Dovetail = a dedicated tool for analysing and managing data from user research.)
Analysing the individual-interview data
For the interviews, we use the transcripts generated by Dovetail combined with our own notes. For each session, a coding effort is carried out based on the taxonomy. We then isolate context elements, the constraints or difficulties encountered, feature directions and relevant user quotes.
With Dovetail, we filter the gathered information by theme. An ideal feature to focus on one category of information at a time, while easily navigating the field data.
Modelling the 'business travellers' user journeys
Bringing the journeys together in an experience map
Building on the focus-group data, the results are represented as an experience map. We categorise business travellers based on their booking habits and the way they manage their stays. For each step of the experience (before, during and after the stay) we identify:
- the needs, the frustrations and the emotions of business travellers
- as well as the different solution directions tied to them
If you want to learn more about modelling user journeys, we invite you to read our blog article on the subject!
Cross-analysis: business travellers and travel managers
From analysis to identifying opportunities
Cross-analysis on business travel
The work carried out on the two target audiences (business travellers and travel managers) provides a complete view of the business-travel experience. By pulling together all this data, we analyse step by step the needs and expectations of the two user profiles. From there, we generate a list of features and service opportunities tied to themes relevant for the project team. This work makes it easier to formulate targeted recommendations, building on the analysis of the user feedback, the benchmark and our own expertise. Before passing on the results of our analysis, we list and prioritise our recommendations.
Summarising the results
We produce a summary document of the main findings and the functional directions identified for the two strands of the study. Two formats are produced:
- a detailed, descriptive report, which embeds the key findings by step and the associated user quotes;
- a list of solutions identified with the journey step, the theme and the insight. This document will form the basis of a backlog with different priority levels for the solutions.
Final delivery of the results
Delivery environment
Building on the user research enriches the foundations of our work. On the client side, it gives the team a lasting record of the issues explored and the areas for improvement identified over time. That’s why at the end of every UX research engagement, we make a dedicated research repository available for the engagement.
We centralise the collection work and the results on platforms such as Notion or Dovetail. Access to these environments lets the project teams review the methodology in detail.
This way, we can layer different levels of information: from raw data (e.g. audio or video recordings) to in-depth analysis of the user feedback.
