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Club Wyndham: Counter Campaign Concept
Club Wyndham® is one of more than 20 brands in the premier portfolio of Wyndham Destinations, offers 100 resorts and more than 14,000 vacation ownership units across North America and the Caribbean for approximately 509,000 owner families around the world.
Vacation ownership is most often referenced as “timeshare” within the hospitality industry.
the goal
Reimagine the Wyndham Care online experience (WyndhamCares.com), an informational website that attempts to counter negative perception of the timeshare exit process. Drive more service support calls in order to connect with owners before they decide to exit out of their Wyndham vacation properties. Provide 4-5 tactics to reduce ownership churn.
The Challenge
Customers attempting to exit their vacation property contracts cause Club Wyndham $80M churn per year. Exit customers generally fall into 4 categories:
They made a mistake and want out within the 30-day grace period
They don’t want to pay annual maintenance fees
Major life events (widowed, divorce, bankrupt etc.) affect interest in ownership or ability to financially support ownership
They no longer see any value in ownership
The industry is not customer-centric. It is all about aggressive hard selling, in-person events and phone centers. It is not digitally enabled or empowered. For a decade, there has been a steady rise in “Get out of your timeshare” campaigns and companies specifically focused on timeshare exit strategies.
Customers end up feeling hopeless and frustrated.
my role
I lead a 2 person experience design team that was responsible for generating concepts for the reimagined website experience. Our design solutions needed to align to a larger creative vision that was being developed by the Global Chief Experience Officer and regional Executive Creative Director.
The Design process
A large, multidisciplinary team was assembled to tackle this challenge. It included strategic inputs from social strategy, marketing and advertising, experience design and media. We spent 3 weeks mapping out the typical customer journey and then brainstorming concepts. We performed a competitor analysis and heuristic analysis of the current state website. We had sketching sessions and selected concepts were translated into high-fidelity visual renderings that illustrated the core experience principles.
The design concept
The initial ask was very tactical, and very narrow in scope. After analyzing the industry and the customer journey, and taking a look at the how Club Wyndham was currently engaging in the timeshare exit discussion, the larger team concluded that this tactical approach was not going to solve the true customer problem.
We agreed that exit was our immediate challenge—but what we quickly realized is that there was a clear opportunity to dispel the myths and become the category leader through transparency and clarity. From these insights, the team created a campaign that could touch all customer types. The campaign strategy:
Reassures exit customers that Club Wyndham is the best source of truth and resolution when re-evaluating their membership
Empowers acquisition customers by opening the online channel to drive additional leads from those who connect with the true value of Club Wyndham
Makes vacation ownership a frictionless experience
Builds transparent experiences that are more human
Counters negative messaging about timeshares
We focused on a few key tactics:
Social community and loyalty: Building community and empowering customers with open conversation that builds trust and relationship with Wyndham. Monitored by a community manager with occasional guest takeovers from influencers
WyndhamCares.com “Try Before You Buy”: Creating ways into the site that are responsive to where you're coming from with rich UCG and Wyndham-authored content.
WyndhamCares.com Profile Builder: Personalizing the experience with profile-building engagements as well as content feeds
WyndhamCares.com Concierge Experience: Reimagine the experience with rich, curated content, to go beyond servicing angry customers
The result
The client was very excited about the campaign strategy even though many of the tactics were not part of their original digital strategy, they decided to move forward with planning execution on many of the ideas we recommended.