If you’re an airline looking to fill busy regional routes you need reliable reservations numbers for people to call – or your profits could be grounded.

Rodrigo Ribeiro was only too aware of this when his company, Lufthansa, decided to rationalise its Latin American inbound calling suppliers. But finding a company that could meet all the airline’s needs across the region wasn’t easy.

Then someone suggested BT. Now Lufthansa has a single supplier for all of its customer phone lines across Latin America. And it can order more for new routes in a matter of days, with a simple email.

Ribeiro’s life is a lot easier and Lufthansa is really taking off across the region.

single supplier

CASE STUDY

Previously if we had to look for a new telephone number for somewhere we didn’t have an office, I wouldn’t even want to think about the effort involved. Now I just send an email to BT and in a couple of weeks the numbers are ready.

Rodrigo RibeiroIT-Telecommunications Manager, Latin America & Caribbean Deutsche Lufthansa AG

for all inbound customer service calls in Latin America

Lufthansa

One of the world’s biggest airlines chooses BT as a

Lufthansa uses BT Inbound Contact global to reduce costs and streamline its Latin American operations

Core BT services

¾ BT Inbound Contact global

¾ BT Traffic Reporting System

¾ BT Customer Traffic Design tool

CASE STUDY

ChallengeGerman flag carrier Deutsche Lufthansa is the largest airline in Europe and fourth worldwide in terms of passenger numbers. Furthermore, in Latin America it is still growing – adding new territories and routes on a regular basis.

Until recently, this growth posed something of a problem in telecommunications terms. The airline relies heavily on telephone reservations to fill its flights. It also supports a number of other customer services, such as its Miles & More frequent flyer programme, using dedicated phone lines. But it had different phone number suppliers for each country, which complicated administration and did nothing to keep costs down.

Not only that, but in territories where Lufthansa did not have an on-the-ground presence it relied on local telecommunications suppliers sourced via its in-country travel agents. “If there was a problem we had to contact the travel agent who then had to phone the service provider to open a ticket,” recalls Rodrigo Ribeiro, Lufthansa’s IT-Telecommunications Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean.

With this complexity threatening to become a management nightmare as the airline’s operations expanded, in April 2010 Lufthansa sought to find a single supplier for inbound calling across the region.

SolutionWith its main call centre located in Buenos Aires, Lufthansa originally looked at suppliers in Argentina to provide local numbers for countries across Latin America.

The major Argentinean telecommunications operators, however, were only able to provide expensive toll-free numbers in other territories. A number of voice over IP suppliers were able to offer local numbers but Lufthansa considered them to be too risky. “We weren’t just looking for a service, but also for a level of quality that we could trust,” Rodrigo Ribeiro explains.

Then his superior Peter Hogger in New York suggested BT, a company that Lufthansa had worked with in Europe. Through its Inbound Contact global offering, BT was able to provide local numbers in most of the major Latin American markets the airline operated in, complemented with toll-free numbers through third-party providers for about 40 per cent of destinations.

In August 2010 Lufthansa began consolidating its Latin American numbers with BT. In addition to BT Inbound Contact global services, Lufthansa uses the BT Traffic Reporting System for monitoring and reports, and a BT Customer Traffic Design tool for planning and forecasting. The changeover took eight months, allowing for staff training, and progressed without a hitch, bar a trunk configuration issue in Mexico which the BT team was ultimately able to resolve.

ValueIn countries where BT is able to provide local numbers, Lufthansa is making a saving compared to when it had to pay for toll-free numbers. The airline’s administrative burden is also significantly reduced through only having to deal with a single supplier. Lufthansa has even handed responsibility for faults to its third-party Buenos Aires call centre team, which liaises directly with BT in the event of a problem.

But perhaps one of the greatest assets of the BT service is the way it helps Lufthansa expand across the region. Whenever a new route is confirmed the airline has to provide an array of local phone numbers to handle reservations, customer service, Miles and More, and so on. Getting these provisioned in a timely fashion is essential for the airline.

“Previously if we had to look for a new telephone number for somewhere we didn’t have an office, I wouldn’t even want to think about the effort involved,” Rodrigo Ribeiro concludes. “Now I just send an email to BT and in a couple of weeks the numbers are ready.”

We weren’t just looking for a service, but also for a level of quality that we could trust.

Rodrigo RibeiroIT-Telecommunications Manager, Latin America & Caribbean

Deutsche Lufthansa AG

Lufthansa

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