Vrbo – Escapia Unified Inbox
Responsive Communications Tool
Role: Design Lead
What if every customer message—email, text, chat, or DM—landed in one place, so your team never misses a beat?
Problem:
How might we create a single source of truth for all communications within Escapia?
Previous state: Not existing.
- Communicating with leads, guests, owners, and staff across multiple channels can make it challenging to ensure the job is being done effectively.
- Efficiency and thoroughness become challenging when communication channels are not integrated.
Research & demo:
I conducted a UX customer research study with 10 participants to gain insights into the current guest communication process for:
- Instant Booking request via Vrbo app (pre-booking).
- Submitting a maintenance request via SMS (during booking).
- Communicated with a traveler about their booking using templates.
Results:
If all communications could run through that, so no matter who touched the booking everything could be right in this one spot, that would be brilliant.
Web MVP
Instant Booking Request accepted
A traveler has booked a vacation rental via an Instant Booking Request through the Vrbo iOS app.
Sent policies
Upon accepting the Instant Booking Request, Escapia automatically sends the Rental Agreement and Cancellation Policy.
Additionally, Escapia prompts the admin to save the policies as a template for future use.
Once the traveler accepts the policies, the booking details are displayed to the admin in the right panel.
Welcome Guide
Once the traveler has accepted both policies, the admin sends over the Welcome Guide, which is a template saved in the Template Library for future usage.
Mobile Web MVP
Future Features
As part of an upcoming feature release, we’ve implemented a drag-and-drop functionality that allows admins to easily upload and share media (documents, images, videos, etc.) directly in the message window with travelers.
Start typing with "/" and see the unlimited opportunities.
Just click the templates icon in the message block and choose a template to add it to the conversation.
Visit the Templates Directory to customize existing templates or create your own from scratch.