Enhancing customer experience through Product-driven innovation

Turnberry partnered with a major global airline to address longstanding challenges in its IT department, improve customer experience, and foster innovation. This Product transformation helped bridge the gap between business and IT, modernize outdated systems, and align technology efforts with customer needs.

Client challenge

Our client, a major global airline, faced significant challenges in its IT department, including mistrust between business stakeholders and IT, a perception that IT was not delivering value, and a disconnect between the airline’s products and customer needs.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these issues, as economic uncertainty led to minimal investment in digital products like the website, app, and internal systems. This resulted in an outdated, unintuitive website that caused a substantial drop in booking finalizations. Meanwhile, a costly package booking engine had been in development for two years without delivering any value. Leaders, employees, and customers alike were frustrated and ready for change.

Our solution

To address these challenges, Turnberry brought in a small team of Product experts to help our client change its ways of working and achieve better results. We piloted this Product transformation effort with two of the client’s five technology teams: the airline tickets team and the vacation packages team. We started by conducting a short workshop before the program kickoff to energize stakeholders – from developers to executives – about product development. In these sessions, the team created 11 personas within three days and laid out user story maps for those personas.

They conducted test bookings based on assigned personas, identifying pain points in the booking process. Several team members recognized issues – some of which had easy solves – that they had never considered previously. This was the first instance of injecting customer feedback into the process – and it provided eye-opening insights to the teams.

The primary takeaway was the necessity of prioritizing customer feedback in decision-making. For the first time, these teams were beginning to rely on customer data to prioritize work – ensuring that direction was based on concrete insights rather than subjective perspectives. Following the workshop, we dedicated three weeks to tackling low-hanging fruit identified through customer feedback, resulting in 40 to 50 quick wins that generated immediate value and internal momentum. This approach transformed the perception of the teams from “is this team delivering value?” to “this team is amazing!”

As the product teams became established, we expanded our efforts to the other three product teams, organizing them around customer journeys to enhance expertise in specific areas of the customer process. In addition to the two booking teams who piloted the transformation effort, the client also established dedicated teams for search inspiration, post-booking experiences, and the day-of-travel process.

To deepen customer engagement, we conducted immersion sessions at the airport as teams gained momentum, involving more than 50 stakeholders and team members who actively interacted with customers. Each day, teams decided what they wanted to learn at the airport, gathering feedback, showing prototypes, and making real-time updates.

As the program progressed, we implemented a balanced scorecard with key performance metrics aligned with the client’s business objectives, creating KPIs to measure success. This initiative connected senior leadership to the product teams’ importance and demonstrated the value of product-driven innovation.

This transformation equipped the client with customer-focused, agile teams capable of driving innovation and delivering measurable value, positioning the airline for long-term success in meeting customer needs and business objectives.