The Opportunity: Vrbo’s Partner Success teams has shown that they can effectively coach partners through one-on-one calls, but they can’t scale this to reach all new hosts. Consequently, due to a lack of adequate training, retention rates are negatively affected.
The Outcome: I led the production of the Welcome Video Series, a self-serving tool for Partner Success and Customer Experience to use during coaching conversations with new hosts. This involved creating content, researching and meeting with stakeholders, creating script, designing visuals, overseeing production, and driving web traffic through innovative designs. In a short 11-week timespan with no budget, the team I led created 32 minutes of content in a 5-part video series
Note: Partners are property owners who list on Vrbo, also known as hosts
The Process
The image above showcases the major 15 steps that were taken in order for the Welcome Video Series to come to life. Being able to entirely own this project end-to-end with minimal supervision and work cross-functionally with multiple teams allowed me to gain exposure to multiple fields: website design, email marketing, company legality requirements, and more.
On July 30 of 2019, the Welcome Video Series launched and lived on its own discovery hub page for the 3 North America brands: Vrbo, HomeAway, and VacationRentals.com. On the hub, partners also have access to Call to Action links and a feedback survey. Partners were driven to the video series through an email within the onboarding cycle and a feedcard on the mobile Vrbo app.
Note: Feedcards are banner posts
Due to the project’s success, I was invited to present my project in front of the 3,000+ employees worldwide at Vrbo’s Monthly Product Review as a Big Win under the Effortless Experience section. This gave me the opportunity to gain visibility and critical feedback from employees from various Vrbo teams and executives, such as the Chief Product Officer.
However, this is just the beginning. Although my internship has come to an end, I left my team with a detailed offboarding plan that details next steps on how to continue expanding this initiative so that the video series can continue living on, such as adding captions for inclusivity and launching global versions for wider reach.
To this day, Vrbo’s frontline Partner Success teams are still using the video series as a training resource to improve host experiences.
Click here to view the landing page and the rest of video series.
Key Learnings
1) The importance of being able to adapt in a fast-paced work environment. The start of my internship was full of ambiguity. I knew my main project was to develop the video series from ground up, but where do I start? That’s when my learn-it-all mindset kicked in. Schedule 1 on 1’s with full-timers, ask questions, brainstorm a list of ideas, ask more questions, learn the firm’s internal processes and culture – let my creativity and startup-self flow. Although not having close management initially intimidated me, I learned that it gave me the opportunity to own my project and make a profound impact.
2) Learn to not let setbacks affect your growth mindset. With the nature of how time-consuming a video series can be and how it requires the cooperation of multiple people and assets, there were numerous instances when things did not go as planned. Hence, I had to continuously revise the launch date. Although initially discouraging, these events eventually taught me that these types of occurrences are common in a large, growing company that is going through a rebranding phase. It is essential for one to know when to push for something and when to be flexible. In this scenario, I knew that some other initiatives took priority.
3) Ultimately, I truly experienced how much Vrbo embodies what it means to be one, cross-functional, and cohesive team. Im so thankful for all the individuals and teams that I’ve worked with to make Vrbo’s Welcome Video Series come to life – it would not have been possible without everyone’s contribution and I’m excited to see how the video series progresses moving forward.
Overall, my time here at Vrbo as taught me so much: how to work cross-functionally, take ownership, adapt in a fast-paced environment, and more.
