Insights from the Masters of Experience will feature video interviews with some of the brightest minds in CX and customer insights who will be sharing their insights, discussing trends, and addressing challenges within the industry.

What are you most excited about in the next 12 months?

Ben: I think it’s a really exciting time for the industry, particularly at Webjet. My role as the CTO is very much focused on the new technology platform that we’re rolling out in the in the coming months. Ultimately, there’s a huge opportunity, in the industry now around AI, and how to ultimately leverage that to the advantage of the business. So, I think a lot of organisations are looking to try and work out where they should place themselves and how advanced should they be in this evolving technology at such an early stage.

You’re joining a fantastic panel discussion at Customer Connect exploring whether the best customer experiences will be underpinned by what AI can do. How are you experimenting with AI at Webjet.com.au?

Ben: At Webjet I think we’re very similar to most organisations where there’s a bit of a fear of missing out going on in the AI space. I think at this stage, our organisation is really pressing on all employees that we should be engaging in AI. Are you thinking about your task and saying can it be supported or enhanced by the use of AI? It can be as simple as writing a template to a customer. Or what’s something more advanced, for example, we’re doing is reconditioning and reviewing all of our unstructured data and having AI actually work through that data and structure it for us. And so that’s ten years worth of unstructured data, in a matter of minutes ultimately, reorganised and it would take a few many, many weeks to do that. So that’s a great example of where you’re embracing it at that early stage.

What would you say is the biggest priority in your role currently?

Ben: Within travel, there is compressional margins. So we’re a very cost-conscious organisation and at the same time, as with most organisations, want to embrace the newest technology. We’ve acquired the Amazon Connect platform for our contact center services – which is a build platform. So, we’re building that internally versus the buy option. And so really head down, designing that and making sure that it’s really a future-looking platform for us and it encompasses all of the elements that we that we know that we need both as an MVP, but also in the future state. So embracing that of new technologies and ultimately comparing ourselves to much larger organisations globally that have been there and gone there before.

Customer expectations are continuing to evolve at a rapid rate. How are you keeping up with that pace of change at Webjet.com.au?

Ben: We have an approach of having an open door for all channels. So, it’s really up to the customer how they want to engage with us. We’ve got some really advanced self serve functions at the same time as having chat voice wide open.I think our focus over the next few years is encouraging customers to try our self-serve functionality. Do they know it exists as a starting point? So really educating them that that those services exist and working with the customer to see if they’re comfortable defining what their channel of choice is. If we know what a channel of choice is, we’ll start to actually market that to them more effectively and offer them those services once we identify them in channel and point them towards the channel of preference as opposed to arguably distracting with the channels that they don’t want to engage in.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

Ben: I keep coming back to this one and it’s the same… It’s certainly well over my years in in the industry – which is communication is king. Often, when I look at opportunities and challenges – be it interpersonal, into partnerships for example, challenges that we have operationally – ultimately, it comes down to communication. Communication in terms of explaining what we’re doing or what we want to do. I find that a lot of very complicated things can be solved with a very simple conversation. And so I’m really encouraging my team to get back to basics as it relates to communicating with being extremely effective.

What are you most looking forward to at Customer Connect?

Ben: I think it’s the piece where ultimately with all of these conferences, particularly this one, we’ve got a number of organisations coming to the event with common problems. Common problems impacting the industry, common opportunities that are coming to fruition. I think it’s a fantastic opportunity, I suppose, to simplify where we are in the industry. Because a lot of the issues that we’re facing the common regardless of the industry. They’re commonplace issues and having the support of peers and individuals that you may not have actually met yet. Having those conversations sharing and knowing that the travel industry isn’t unique – the same opportunities that we see a lot of the time in travel are present banking, insurance, online retail. It’s not unique to to travel. So I’ve been really looking forward to meeting new people and really understanding the competency of issues that we have across our industry.

Customer Connect, 9 November 2023, will bring together 150 of the region’s most influential CX and customer insights leaders to examine this new era of how we must understand and connect with our customers to deliver an experience that sets us apart from the competition. The two track programme, with dedicated CX and Customer Insights programmes, will feature inspiring international keynotes, insightful panel discussions, the best local case studies and lots of opportunity for peer-to-peer learning and conversation..