While we are busy working on projects with specific directions and attune ourselves to think for different industries, businesses and projects. There is something that has been a moonlighting effort of our team… it is about re-imagining the user experience of corporate travel
Global business travel is a 1.3 trillion dollar industry and despite the wrinkles (read pandemic) it is going to stay a major contributor to the travel industry.
Today if you have to travel for work there are a bunch of interfaces that you have to go through and the process of approvals, allowances is an added layer. From asking your personal assistants (for the management folks) to requesting your internal travel desks or logging into corporate travel portals and writing for approvals to your boss. It’s not an easy task to do considering you have to focus on the job for which you want to travel.
Well, we have been working with different global travel brands and while there is enough work being done on the leisure travel side in terms of design, user experiences and digital platforms. The corporate or business travel side is relatively under served.
Now that you know of the premise, the ‘what if ‘moment for us came when we starting thinking about taking a completely unconventional approach towards creating a product experience that didn’t require any new interface to be created but was based on what already exists and what business users are spending their maximum time on -the corporate email and WhatsApp messengers.
What if - A business traveler doesn’t need to depend on a travel desk or keep track of a separate travel portal or app.
What if - A business traveler doesn’t need to depend on a travel desk or keep track of a separate travel portal or app.
What if - A business traveler doesn’t need to depend on a travel desk or keep track of a separate travel portal or app.
We did a deep dive with our engineering team that works on artificial intelligence and some user research with some dip sticks … gave us a possible solution that can change the experience and interface of corporate travel forever. (Yes, we think it’s that big a deal!)
Its called the NeoBot. With the right code and the intent (which we never have a shortage of) the engineers wrote the functionality for NeoBot to manage and run an email box and connect with GDS systems.
Again – nothing new that you need to learn and remember but just use what you are familiar with.
Your ticket in a message – just write a message like you would write an email and the bot works in the background of your company’s WhatsApp business account.
Ticket on your chat – your ticket is booked in your phone while you are out for coffee or chatting with business colleagues or having a group conversation on WhatsApp.
Just write and email - All you need to do is write a simple email to an office email address and tell them that you need to travel … and that’s it !!! No new interfaces, no complex searches or no need to go through 100s of search results.
You receive an email – the response comes back with a intelligent curated list of limited search results that best suit your company policy and corporate travelers. All you have to do is hit reply and give the option that works best for you.
