Challenge
A major international cruise line was experiencing a new but steady increase in Brazilian travelers for several of its Asian cruise packages. This emerging market was important, but the cruise line was getting uneven feedback from this segment in guest satisfaction surveys. Additionally, there was a sense that there were cultural issues in key customer experience interactions like reservation booking, boarding, excursions, and disembarkation.
Solution
The cruise line hired Coyle to refer independent professional Brazilian cruise passengers to assess the pre-booking experience to ensure that the marketing and sales messaging and processes were culturally aligned.
Coyle then polled its panel of independent professional Brazilian evaluators matching the client profile. A select group of evaluators were presented to the client who decided that a native Brazilian was the most useful demographic.
The evaluators were offered opportunities to conduct evaluations of cruises with evaluation criteria developed by Coyle and the client. The evaluation programs were aligned with the cruise line’s specific quality assurance programs. The evaluators were also given suggested questions and prompts in order to get subjective, emotional feedback as well.
The professional evaluators completed the cruises, scored the company on its brand standards, and provided very detailed and structured narratives about the experience. Finally, a structured debrief was conducted after the cruises to determine loyalty to the brand weeks after the experience.
Outcomes
The customer voice was heard loud and clear. The client learned that the extremely important muster drill was not being executed to company specifications, and that media and collateral were often misleading and grammatically incorrect, diminishing the impression of the brand. Cultural and language issues were raised objectively, in a format the client could get their hands around. The culturally diverse crew was able to better understand and prepare for this increasingly important customer.
