Youda
AI Meets Hospitality: Creating Tools for Modern People Teams
Industry
Hospitality
Tools used
Figma, Clickup
Product focus
First session match
Increase the number of customers who find and match with a potential musician for their event on their first visit.
Conduct customer interviews throughout the sales funnel to focus on key blockers and customer pain points.
Identify opportunities
Log and categorise the interviews and notice patterns to highlight areas to run new product experiments/features.
Run experiements
Improving the conversion rate to booking a musician from the first session matches.
Hypothesis - Customers who find the right match early are more likely to book.
Success metrics
Identifying the biggest growth levers
Customer interviews
To understand the customer journey end-to-end, we spoke with users at key points in the sales funnel, including:
Customers who had just booked a musician.
Customers who had completed their event.
Customers who dropped off before booking.
These conversations gave us insight into motivations, friction points, and opportunities to improve the experience across every stage.
The three standouts
One key insight from user interviews was the critical role of media in decision-making. Customers wanted more than just a profile—they wanted to experience the musician’s sound and vibe to imagine how they'd fit in a live setting.
Media is key
For most of the customers we spoke to, social proof played a critical role in building trust. Performance quality anxiety, especially for once-in-a-lifetime events, created a major barrier to booking. Detailed, up-to-date reviews helped reassure and convert hesitant users.
Reviews
Many customers expressed a strong preference for hiring musicians from their local area—not just for cost reasons, but also due to environmental concerns. Booking locally offered peace of mind, reducing travel-related uncertainty and making the experience feel more reliable and manageable.
Location
Running experiments
Hypothesis:
Does adding auto-play to videos make it easier for customers to make an informed decision?
Making media matter
Experiment 1
Results:
Increased the time the customer spent on each artist.
Not enough data to support a clear spike in conversion.
Validated enough to push changes live to all customers as a minor UX improvement.
Tinder style match making
Experiment 2
Hypothesis:
Does giving a match-making style make it easier for the customer to find what they want?
Results:
Customers successfully interacted with the change.
The split test showed there wasn’t a strong enough indicator to show that the change was making a large enough impact.
Simplifying the search
Experiment 3
Hypothesis:
Can reducing the steps in the enquiry reduce friction and accurately match the customer to a musician?
Results:
3x increase in customers starting the form vs the original.
Follow-up steps:
Look deeper into specific sections of the form to see the average drop-off spot.
Validate that the new enquiry form doesn’t affect the first session match results vs the original.
Using the customer’s language
Smaller improvements
Hypothesis:
Can updating the copy for primary CTA’s increase first customers’ interaction with a musician?
From early customer research, we noticed that interaction was being referred to simply as ‘then I’ll message the musician’.
Test 1: Change ‘Check availability’ to ‘Message’.
Results: Increase in musician tile click-throughs vs. original.
Test 2: Change the primary CTA to a blue button.
Results: Increase in click-throughs vs. original.
Smaller improvements
Keeping things clean
Based on customer feedback we had received, we decided to improve the visual elements of the musicians ‘tile’
Added autoplay videos on hover.
Increased price font size.
Showed initial deposit with price breakdown on click.
Reduced the amount of details and instead added ‘+x more’.
Showed the clear price breakdown of sets.
More space given to the musician’s profile picture, name and reviews.
‘Ready to book’ is introduced to highlight to the customer that they are available for a chosen date and location.
Assisting admins with information that matters
Smaller improvements
Problem? Admins were having to waste a lot of time going back and forth with musicians to check availability and struggling to know when to suggest a musician to a potential customer.
Solution:
Creating a clear breakdown of availability by date and travel radius.
Using colour signifiers to allow admins to work faster
Introducing admin notes per musician.
Showing direct response rate as % and ordering by highest so the admins are better informed on likely musicians and less likely to have disappointed customers with poor response rates.
Smaller improvements
Meaningful media player
Problem? Admins were having to waste a lot of time going back and forth with musicians to check availability and struggling to know when to suggest a musician to a potential customer.
Solution:
Creating a clear breakdown of availability by date and travel radius.
Using colour signifiers to allow admins to work faster.
Introducing admin notes per musician.
Showing direct response rate as % and ordering by highest so the admins are better informed on likely musicians and less likely to have disappointed customers with poor response rates.
Bridging the availability gap
Instant Quotes - Musician side
Problem:
Lack of clarity between customers and musicians when looking for accurate available dates.
Hypothesis:
Does introducing a new musician availability feature help reduce time to book for customers?
Steps taken:
Tested the instant quotes concept with a small group of volunteer solo musician beta testers.
Ran interview sessions to validate their pain points and worries regarding pricing and date overlaps.
Created clickable prototypes to test new features and ran testing sessions to watch behavioural patterns.
Solution:
Created a calendar feature that allows the musician to input their dates and automatically tell the system their availability, thus reducing workload in responding to direct enquiries they can’t accept. In turn, this would minimise customer frustration, ideally leading to an increase in bookings.
Learnings:
Positive feedback from all the testers, “easy to use” and “feels familiar”.
Most wanted to have the ability to integrate their Google Calendar and have it automatically add those dates as unavailable.
Privacy was mentioned often with a need to be clear on what is shared and what can be seen by Encore in if there were integrations used.
Creating dynamic pricing power
Instant Quotes - Musician side
Problem:
Pricing is often outdated and time-consuming for the musicians to update.
Hypothesis:
Does creating dynamic date-based pricing reduce the musician workload and improve accuracy, leading to more bookings?
Steps taken:
Ran interview sessions with the beta testers to find out more about their views on pricing.
Created clickable prototypes.
Tested prototypes and watched behavioural patterns, and got valuable feedback.
Solution:
Created a new way to add date-based prices and price increases for musicians.
Allowed granular levels of pricing for specific events e.g. New Year’s.
Showed increases as a percentage with a clear view of the new price adjustment.
Learnings:
Positive feedback from all the testers who liked the flexibility and ability to add specific events for price increases.
More testing would be needed to see if the system could be abused.
Feedback from some musicians mentioned the ability to see a guide price/range, e.g. “you’re x% higher than the average solo musician.
More work needed to see how to introduce pricing changes over time, e.g. a natural automatic increase based on inflation.
Some musicians said there are still too many factors at play for the quote, and further discussions with the customer often change the final amount.
The instant quote work needed to be reflected on the customer side. The solution was to use the ‘Ready to book’ terminology, which had been tested with customers.
The lightning bolt icon was used to signify the speed/power of the system, instantly delivering you valuable and accurate quotes from musicians.
Learnings:
We saw a clear increased conversion rate between the instant quotes that were delivered vs the standard quotes.
Next steps:
Increase the pool of beta musicians to validate the new booking method.
Ready to book
Instant Quotes - Customer side
Transparent & regional pricing
Instant Quotes - Customer side
For browsing customers, it was important to try and highlight the accurate cost of the musicians and try to be as transparent as possible with regional price differences.
The aim was to reduce friction and unwanted surprises in the booking stages.
From the customer interviews we ran, we noticed a pattern in customers wanting to know the full cost, and for the perfect musician, they would be willing to pay increased travel and had missed out on certain musicians as they assumed they wouldn’t be able to make the distance.
The musicians we spoke to mentioned that they wanted the ability to only perform in one area, e.g. London. Others said they wanted to be able to dynamically adjust the price if they were travelling a long distance.
Hypothesis:
Does adding regional pricing help to clarify pricing to customers and increase their likelihood to book?
Plan:
Introduce regional pricing for customers and musicians.
Allow musicians to choose the regions they are willing to travel to and update their costs accordingly.
Only suggest musicians to customers based on the right criteria, e.g. location.
