Improving the post-purchase travel experience

Giving Travelers More Control After Booking

Role: UX researcher within a product team of one design lead, one UX designer, and four developers
Timeline: 8+ weeks
Focus: Cancellations, reservation changes, refunds, and support automation
Outcome: 25–30% fewer support calls within three months; the release was associated with a 3% increase in retention.

The Challenge

Flightio had digitized flight and hotel booking, but many post-purchase tasks still depended on phone support. Customers had to contact an agent to cancel, change, or follow up on a reservation—often during an already stressful moment.

The manual process created problems on both sides. Travelers lacked visibility and control, while the support team spent significant time handling repetitive requests. The project aimed to move appropriate tasks online without making exceptional or sensitive cases harder to resolve.

Research Questions

We needed to understand:

• Which post-purchase tasks generated the most friction and support demand?
• Where could automation give users meaningful control?
• When did customers still need a person?
• How could we introduce a new behavior without reducing trust?

Discovery

I combined competitive analysis, journey mapping, surveys, behavioral data, and five remote interviews with customers who had recently changed or canceled a reservation.

The research revealed three consistent needs:

1. Control: Customers wanted to manage straightforward changes themselves rather than call support.
2. Transparency: They needed to understand eligibility, fees, refund amounts, and status before committing.
3. Low-friction help: When human support was necessary, users preferred chat to phone because it felt more convenient and less confrontational.

Competitive research reinforced the opportunity. Leading booking platforms already offered guided cancellation and real-time status updates, setting a clear expectation for self-service.

Defining the Opportunity

We mapped the existing journey and identified where manual handoffs, unclear status, and repeated contact created the greatest cost. From that work, three product opportunities emerged:

• Let customers manage eligible cancellations and refunds from their profile.
• Create a clear, trackable follow-up process.
• Reserve support capacity for exceptions instead of routine administration.

The business and user goals aligned: more customer control could also reduce operational load, processing errors, and avoidable calls.

The Solution

We designed a guided self-service flow that begins inside the customer’s account. It helps the user:

1. Select the relevant booking and passengers.
2. Understand cancellation eligibility.
3. Review fees and the expected refund before confirming.
4. Submit the request online.
5. Track progress and status without calling support.

I developed the end-to-end flow, wireframes, and prototype, then refined the experience through user feedback. The design emphasized plain language, visible consequences, and clear progress so customers could make an informed decision at every step.

Impact

• Support calls fell by 25–30% within three months.
• The wider release period saw a 3% increase in retention. The feature was considered a contributor, although the available data does not establish it as the sole cause.
• Automation allowed the operation to process multiple requests simultaneously instead of handling each case by phone.
• Follow-up feedback highlighted convenience and greater control as the main improvements.

Next Steps

The next opportunity is a tiered support model: automate common questions, use chat for cases that require guidance, and preserve direct specialist support for exceptions. I would continue monitoring completion, cancellation errors, time to resolution, repeat contact, and satisfaction by request type.

Reflection

This work showed that post-purchase design is part of the product—not an operational afterthought. The highest-value solution was not automation for its own sake. It was giving customers certainty and control while directing human support toward the moments where it added the most value.