This episode features an interview with Scott Booker, Chief Customer Officer at EasyPark Group, a leading global parking tech company with the vision to make cities more livable. Scott has extensive experience in leading large organizations in travel, retail e-commerce, and the consumer marketplace. He is the former President of Hotels.com Worldwide and Chief Marketing and Product Officer at Copart. And on this episode, host Larry Fleischman and Scott discuss how he built a loyalty program at Hotels.com, creating different customer experiences for new customers versus loyal ones, and making an experience so easy and simple that customers don’t need to call in for support.
Scott Booker is Chief Customer Officer at EasyPark Group. He has held leading positions at large scale, digital marketplaces. Most recently at Copart, the number one global leader in online vehicle auctions. Prior to Copart, Scott had several leading roles at Expedia Inc., one being President of Hotels.com, where he led the company’s rapid global expansion. Scott also has profound experience developing transformational growth strategies.
*”If you don’t disrupt [the industry] yourself, somebody’s going to do it for you. And that’s what Hotels.com was doing in the hotel space. They were disrupting. And I wanted to be a part of that.”
*”It’s always cheaper to keep a customer than it is to go acquire a new one. How do you treat a new customer through customer service versus an existing one? Should they have a different service? We decided we would create a separate call center environment, customer experience environment, for those loyalty customers. They got a special number, they got special treatment. We would send out gift bags for our most loyal customers so that they felt like they were a part of something bigger.”
*”It’s okay for customers not to have to call in. The best experience is the experience where it’s so easy and simple that they don’t need to call in. I think over the last 10 years, I’ve learned in my career how to build the most amazing experience where you don’t need somebody to call in.”
*”If we can make it super easy for the consumer, then we’re helping the city improve the flow of traffic through the city. And we’re making it so much easier for somebody to live in that space because they can use a mobile app with ease.”
*”We need to fail fast and learn from it. How do we put something out there in an A/B test fashion without too much exposure so it doesn’t risk the business, but in a way that we can test it on a micro level and understand what the impacts are?”
[1:23] Introducing Scott Booker, Chief Customer Officer at EasyPark Group
[3:26] Learn about Scott’s background and path to CCO at EasyPark Group
[6:17] Hear about Scott’s first job out of school at Accenture
[7:12] What did Scott learn about customer experience while at Blockbuster?
[12:49] How did Scott fundamentally shift the CX at Hotels.com to drive growth?
[20:36] How did Scott create the loyalty program at Hotels.com?
[25:56] How do you create a low- or no-touch customer experience?
[31:33] What’s Scott’s take on striking a balance between automation and human interaction in the customer experience?
[34:02] What’s Scott’s appetite for risk? And how does he handle change management at speed?
[37:02] What’s in the future for EasyPark Group?
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