International Airline

Background

A major multi-national European international airline founded over sixty years ago, was facing increasing competition and price and cost pressures. This was in an environment where Customer Service and satisfaction was an increasingly decisive factor for clients when choosing their airline.

Key Objectives

The organization had identified that increased automation of Customer Service was required in order to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. Specific objectives were:

• Automate and optimize Customer Service processes.

• Increase customer satisfaction.

• Significantly reduce Customer Service costs.

• Move enquiries from expensive service channels (phone) to cheaper and more efficient channels (chat).

The Solution

By working closely with in house teams a structure for a pilot programme, as a 'proof of concept', was created. The pilot was designed to focus on two key areas:

• A clear improvement opportunity in the phone channel - there was evidence of many lost calls and long response times.

• A clear improvement opportunity in the chat channel - research had shown that many customers had difficulties finding the information they were looking for.

The initial solution involved the deployment of a combination of CSO Virtual Chat Agent and CSO Agent Based Chat. The Virtual Chat Agent was designed as a 'first line' delivering interactive dialogues and a helpful, friendly and accurate answer to customer queries and questions on the organisation's web site. This was supported by a seamless handover to live Agent Based Chat for questions that could not be answered effectively from the initial Knowledge Base.

The initial pilot was extremely successful - see key results - and led to a full deployment which continues to deliver increased cost savings and efficiencies.

Initial Conclusions

Virtual Chat Agent

• Highly efficient in dealing with simple questions (including follow up questions and dialogue).

• Gives fast, short and accurate answers.

• Helps the customer to find the correct content/url.

• Can redirect the customer to the right live service agent/knowledge centre or call back/E-mail solution.

• Can handle a high number of customers in parallel who have the same query (example terror threat, weather information or strike information).

• Can push customers to new offers or services.

Agent Based Chat

• Can handle complex questions or issues.

• More efficient than a phone call or E-mail.

• Can use the web (push url's) to solve the questions/issue.

• Increase the convertible rate in the booking dialogue.

• Add-on sales.

Key Results

After an initial period of six months, the project had the following results:

• 18 % reduction on inbound telephone calls.

• 133 % increase in volume of customer queries dealt with.

• 65 % migration of Customer Service queries to online channels.

• Increase in overall customer satisfaction levels.