The pandemic wrought havoc on the travel industry. A near complete ban on international travel left airlines grounded, hotels empty and tourist operators struggling to survive. As revenues tumbled across the board, airlines and operators were forced to make drastic headcount reductions. Holiday operator TUI had to cut jobs to combat the money it lost in 2020.
Fast forward to 2023, and TUI had won two gold awards at the European Customer Experience Awards in the CX Team of the Year and Customers at the Heart of Everything categories. It also earned a silver gong in the Customer-Centric Culture category.
During the pandemic, the holiday operator decided it had to realign its customer and employee strategies to push its net promoter score back to its previous high point. The result was an internal culture programme — Makers of Happy!
Building a valuable culture programme
“After COVID, […] our machine was just not as oiled as it has been before. We really had to revitalise our organisation,” said Frans Leenaars, group director of CX at TUI.
The name of the culture programme mirrored TUI’s rebrand ‘Live Happy’ that was launched at the end of 2021.
As the name of the culture programme suggests, employees at the company were responsible for creating happy moments for guests while they were with TUI.
Explaining the restructure and branding, Leenaars said, “When you go on holiday with us, you become your best self; you get into chill mode; we take care of you no matter what. Our logo is a smile [to represent this]!”
“We wanted to be more [present] in people’s lives because we also sell experiences. You can go to the London Eye with us, or you can do a one-day experience, or you can go skiing with us. Our purpose is really to create the best moments in life. If you go with TUI, you live happier,” he added.
The programme was driven by the company’s three values based on its name. Trusted — to make it happen. Unique — to make it personal. Inspiring — to make it meaningful.
Based on the values, the designers of the programme created behavorial guidelines for what it means to work with customers and deliver happy moments.
Training the makers
The main goals for the programme included refocusing colleagues on the needs of the customers; improving colleague engagement scores; and boosting customer satisfaction in service KPIs.
To meet these goals, ‘Makers of Happy’ took employees through various stages to transform their mindset and customer service delivery. Learning and change was a large aspect of the programme, with both face-to-face and e-learning training materials available. To track progress, staff share infographics monthly throughout the company to share where they stand.
The training also featured opportunities for employees to get closer to customers and understand their needs.
“We have 6,000 people in high season all over the world interacting with our guests. We trained all of them. We took them through the ‘why’ of this — why is this important? Why now? And, what can you contribute? What’s our quality?” explained Leenaars.
The programme also featured internal colleague competitions where employees could share examples of their great customer service to take pride in while inspiring other staff.
The Makers of Happy programme is now an integral aspect of TUI’s culture which is breathed through their offices, employee onboarding, and everyday services.”It was an accelerator after the pandemic, and we keep on using it [today]. It’s still very much alive,” explained Leenaars.
The programme also sought to empower and recognise its employees, to assist them in creating memorable moments for customers.
Bettering the company and moving forward
Equipping employees with this positive, customer-centric mindset meant that a higher standard of CX was embedded in TUI’s service. All touchpoints in our customer journey have seen increased CSAT scores year after year.
Customer feedback has improved, continuous improvement initiatives are being taken, and the NPS has increased by another 6 points this year so far.