Booking.com partner verification

Project description

In order to meet various regulatory requirements, Booking.com has to verify its business partners. Similar to how a bank performs KYC checks, Booking.com requires its accommodation partners to complete a form and get verified in order to keep their account.

This video explains what information partners need to provide in the form

Making this process simple for users is a challenge due to the following reasons:

  • legal language and requirements are not easily understood by the average user;

  • the product is used by an international audience and has to handle country-specific personal and business identification systems; and

  • the company has to comply with multiple regulations with different requirements.

Key achievements

As the first UX writer to join the Regtech track which owned the verification product, I started from the ground up. Looking back after 2.5 years, some of my personal highlights include:

  • Setting up a UX workflow that enabled effective collaboration across multiple teams including Product, Tax, and Partner services.

  • Building a product and communications strategy that enabled over a million partners (and counting) to get verified and continue doing business on our site.

  • Reducing the input of bad quality tax-related information from 23% to 0.1% via localisation efforts.

Setting up a UX framework

As compliance projects require multiple teams to collaborate closely and deliver quickly, it was crucial that we established a UX workflow in order to meet business goals.

Here’s what I did:

  • Set up a Jira product for UX work to keep our tasks on track. Product managers and developers appreciated that they could use a tool they were familiar with to get a deeper insight into how we worked.

  • Deepened collaboration by hosting weekly meetings where writers and designers can share work — regardless of which stage it’s at — with product and engineering colleagues. This created a continuous feedback loop that helped to smoothen handoffs to developers.

  • Formalised a cyclical and often asynchronous workflow to align with cross-functional teams based across several countries. This involved a mix of templated UX documentation, recorded walkthroughs on Zoom, face-to-face meetings, and standardised approval processes. I’ve received feedback from stakeholders — Product, Engineering, Legal, Finance, Partner services and Marketing colleagues — that these have helped them gain clarity into complicated projects.

Building a product and communications strategy

Throughout the product development cycle, I worked alongside different teams to deliver the best user experience as possible within the time and resource constraints placed upon us.

My contribution can be broken down into three main areas:

User research

  • Understand users’ expectations of communications and in-product experience regarding compliance tasks

  • Assess comprehension of prototypes

Product development

  • Collaborate with business partners to plan roadmaps and refine product requirements

  • Work with PMs, designers, developers, and compliance officers to build the verification experience

  • Create a localised library for tax-related terminology

Iterating

  • Used email metrics, web analytics, and user feedback to get UX improvements prioritised

  • Champion dynamic UX solutions that reduce operational costs and are future-proof