Delivering a great experience for every air traveller: the contact centre in the digital age.

BT has a long track record of working with the airline industry. We understand how digital technology can help the sector address its key business challenges, and accelerate into the digital age. And we believe the contact centre is a good place to start.Rhoderick van der WyckGlobal Industry Lead Transport, Travel & Logistics, BT Global Services

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Contact! Taking the customer experience into the digital age.Demand for air travel is booming. Passenger numbers are expected to reach seven billion by 20341, with the fastest growth in Asia, South America and Africa. The downside is that air travel is fast becoming a commodity product. Low cost carriers now control 25 per cent of the market worldwide2 and their business model has disrupted traditional patterns of business forever.

All airlines, budget and premium, regional and global, face rising competition for passengers.

In response, airlines around the world are seeking differentiation through the total experience they deliver for travellers.

Only so much can be done to improve what happens in the air and so focus must shift to the quality of customer interactions on the ground, before and after the flight.

In this paper, we argue that giving every passenger a great trip from start to finish requires the airline to have a single, global digital hub that houses all customer information, contact and services.

With this bedrock of customer knowledge and advocacy accessible anywhere, airlines can begin to create more personal, positive experiences for every traveller throughout their journey.

Such an approach can also help to maximise existing investments in people, technology and infrastructure at a time when margins remain low, fuel costs unpredictable and there is relentless pressure to be operationally smart and efficient.

Etihad Airways is re-imagining the digital guest experience. In a fantastic partnership with BT and Cisco, we’re leveraging technology innovation and each other’s strengths and guest orientation.Robert Webb Chief Information and Technology Officer, Etihad Airways

31. www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2015-11-26-01.aspx 2. www.strategyand.pwc.com/perspectives/2015-aviation-trends

What do customers expect?Eighty three per cent of air travellers carry smartphones3 and, like digital consumers everywhere, their expectations of service are escalating.

To be knownPassengers may make initial contact at the website or app and continue through multiple channels. But they expect their data to be collected, converged and available across all these media. Once they have given an organisation permission to keep their personal information, they do not expect to have to repeat it.

Airlines have a significant amount of customer data but it’s frequently stored in separate databases across the organisation, making it hard to prepare a single profile for each customer.

When the agent has access to a comprehensive customer record, he or she is more able to understand the background to the call, and to suggest a solution that is right for that individual customer.

To be in controlSelf service, which began as a cost cutting measure, is popular with travellers and the default for routine transactions. On the whole, customers like booking their own flights, carrying electronic boarding passes and almost half4 prefer to check in their bags themselves.

Passengers travelling through Abu Dhabi International Airport6 can now do so without any human interaction, from check in to boarding the aircraft, including self-check-in and baggage drop, automated passport control and smart boarding gates.

The ongoing challenge will be how to balance self service with a good customer experience and security considerations. How far should automation go? Customers don’t want to have to work too hard (a frictionless experience); self service only works when it is easier than the alternatives, and the customer clearly understands the benefits.

And to be informed Alongside self service customers expect to receive accurate and up to date information; they’d like the airline to proactively provide information on flight status, baggage delivery and visa, customs and health regulations7.

When customers have more complex issues, whether before booking or checking in their luggage, they absolutely want to talk to a person who can sort out the problem, there and then. And in times of disruption or crisis, the airline must have the capacity to communicate with customers and proactively send them essential information. Solutions to automatically handle natural language queries are already here.

Airlines estimate they have contact details for around half their passengers8. Too often, a passenger contact number turns out to be a travel agent located in another time zone. US and European carriers are the most mature in the quality and quantity of their customer information and Middle East airlines are catching up.

According to Diogenis Papiomytis of Frost & Sullivan: “in spite of the amount of customer information they have, airlines have not reached the level of customisation of other industries.”

Airlines have a big opportunity to rethink their customer strategies and reinvent the contact centre as a central resource to build customer relationships, champion the brand and ultimately drive revenues.

3. www.internationalairportreview.com/19604/airport-news/survey-reveals-airport-technology-improves-passenger-emotions-and-satisfaction4. 48% according to 2015 IATA GLOBAL PASSENGER SURVEY5. www.strategyand.pwc.com/perspectives/2015-aviation-trends6. www.khaleejtimes.com/business/aviation/abu-dhabi-airport-first-in-region-to-create-smart-travel7. 2015 IATA GLOBAL PASSENGER SURVEY8. letstalk.globalservices.bt.com/en/2015/02/headwinds-coopetition-give-passengers-turbulent-ride/

People have grown accustomed to seeing significant improvements in their experiences with things they buy. Large and small products are more reliable and more user-friendly than ever before... Yet air travel has not followed this pattern. It remains for many a disappointing, grumble-worthy experience.PwC Aviation trends 20155

The airline that wants to provide an exceptional end to end experience for its customers will need to collaborate with travel partners including airports, hotels and other service providers. Today, the global traveller has to interact with several airlines and airports to manage a single journey. If the airline and its partners can share information, they can begin to provide more personalised contact for passengers at an individual level.Rhoderick van der Wyck, Global Industry Lead Travel Transport & Logistics, BT Global Services.

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From DIY to clienteling – contact centres for the digital age.The airline’s contact centre is the obvious choice for a single, central capability that handles passenger information and relationships in the age of the digital traveller.

Contact centres have been under-rated in the past but they now have the potential to become a key strategic resource for serving and understanding customers, and developing deeper relationships with them.

A digitally enabled, cloud-based contact centre will help the airline deliver high standards of self service, supported by tailored content and skilled human experts who respond to passengers and solve problems on the spot.

So what does it look like?It’s straightforward for customers to make contact, including by phone. Make it easy for customers by offering a single telephone number that people can remember, or call back options. That also means a great mobile experience with visual IVR overlay on a smart phone so that passenger can quickly speak to the right person.

Customers can use any other channel they choose. Four in five people9 say contact centre agents should be instantly familiar with their contact history. It only takes one piece of information about a customer (telephone number, email address, loyalty card), to anchor information from different channels in one place.

Customer data is accessible anywhere, at any time by the agent. And when the airline knows the customer’s preferences for seating, meal choices or car hire, it can use this knowledge to streamline the booking process and tailor services for individuals.

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Callers are automatically connected with the most appropriate adviser. This not only improves service to customers, but by ensuring the problem is resolved at first contact (rather than leaving customers to ring in again) reduces pressure on the contact centre.

Advisers can see immediately who is calling. With access to personal information, prior contact and purchase history, agents can greet the caller by name and be already aware of the problem he or she is experiencing.

Proactive contact alerts customers. From a change of gate to a delayed departure, keep customers in the know by whatever means they prefer – SMS, instant message, email or social media.

Customers can be contacted quickly in times of disruption or emergency. With customer contact details and permissions in one place, it is easier to contact them quickly and individually at times of crisis, whether natural disaster or terrorist incident. The sooner they are contacted, the less likely they are to ring the call centre.

High value ‘super agents’ handle the most complex customer queries. As more routine transactions are automated, customers will come to contact centres with more challenging issues that require top flight, empathetic human problem solvers. These people can be located anywhere in the business or at home.

Video is used appropriately. Video is not suitable for every interaction but sometimes a face to face chat is exactly what is needed.

Retail-style ‘clienteling’ extends a premium personal service to individual customers. For example, alerted (via proximity technologies) that a passenger has arrived at the car park, the customer service representative can meet him or her at the terminal door and help with check in and transfer to the VIP lounge.

Tracking technology and proximity sensors enhance the passenger experience. Location-based services will be able to identify a traveller arriving at the airport site; the contact centre will automatically send a message with details of where to find the allocated parking place, which will be close to the check in desk/gate, to save customers from walking too far carrying heavy bags.

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“We’re able to use our 450 multilingual agents around our centres much more effectively. We’ve already started to see a 10 per cent increase in their efficiency.Ruth Birkin, Head of Global Contact Centres, Etihad Airways

In an era of customer autonomy, self-service and automation it is easy to write the contact centre out of the pages of history. In truth, the contact centre is potentially transforming from a transaction processing factory into a strategically important resource. The issue is whether organisations actually recognise this and respond to it. SuperAgent 2020, BT10

9. Autonomous Customer 2015: On hold for Intelligent Customer Service, BT & Avaya 2015 10. SuperAgent 2020: The Evolution of the Contact Centre Dr Nicola J. Millard & Dr Tanya Alcock, BT 2014

How the contact centre can benefit the business.A cloud-based contact centre that is a strategic hub for customer information and communication has many business benefits:• When you have a single, central information set for each

customer, you can make the real life customer experience as convenient and personal as it is online.

• All your customer information in one place means you can use advanced analytics to make sense of all the data that is flooding in – from phone calls, loyalty programmes, travel partners, social media and, in due course, sensor-based Internet of Things (IoT), proximity and location technologies.

• With new insights into your customers, their behaviour and preferences, you can develop new services and strategies that will encourage them to be regular customers. You can use this data to optimise other parts of the business.

• Using the cloud means you’ll never run short of capacity. Airline contact centre traffic is notoriously difficult to plan: while routine traffic is relatively predictable a crisis will trigger exceptional demand that can overwhelm resources. You’ll be able to add contact centre capacity quickly and easily when you need it, and turn it off again once the disruption is over. As a consequence, customers will get excellent service when they most need it.

• Consolidating contact centres and streamlining inbound calls will reduce duplication of resources and reduce costs. And with more job satisfaction for skilled advisers, the contact centre should experience less agent churn and need to hire temporary staff.

• IoT will have a major impact on air travel. From self-tracking bags to personal geolocation to proximity technologies, the business is going to have a great deal more data to handle. Moving to a cloud based contact centre model means the airline will be ready to exploit big data.

• It will be easier to collaborate with travel partners to create a better end to end experience for customers. IoT will create more intelligent airports, where IoT data is shared between airports, their tenants, government agencies, ground handlers and airlines.

• Strengthen the balance sheet by moving non-core assets to an opex model. Outsourcing the contact centre to a cloud provider removes the need for capital expenditure on new sites or major upgrades and Pay As You Go contracts make budgeting much easier.

The technology puts agents in control and has improved the speed of answer by 30 per cent.Ruth Birkin, Head of Global Contact Centres, Etihad Airways

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Principles for success.Based on our experience of putting in place thousands of contact centres, here are some of the key principles for success:1. Whatever your current set up, a transition to the cloud

is inevitable. Only by storing customer data and contact centre solutions in the cloud can you deliver a consistent customer experience everywhere. The cloud also makes it easier to scale capacity up and down in line with the inevitable peaks and troughs of demand. Cloud services also make it simpler for the airline to add new contact centre locations and/or services as the business requires.

2. You don’t have to move everything to the cloud at once. Virtualising existing contact centres is a good first step, connecting disparate contact centre sites into one single operation with easy to remember phone numbers. Then you can begin to move to the cloud, and manage your workforce and resources more effectively. When you have customer data in one place, you can begin to analyse it and develop a more informed view of current patterns and future requirements.

3. Creating a better customer experience only works when it is part of a larger strategy that embraces people, processes and technology. You can change the technology, but it is harder to change people and processes. It requires a wider business transformation programme that includes, for example, new performance measures.

4. If customers don’t like your digital contact services, they won’t use them. So it is critical that customer service and marketing people are involved in the development of new contact centre strategies so that the voice of the traveller is heard.

5. The cloud gives you huge flexibility and choice. You are not locked in to one way of doing things and can adapt as the business grows and evolves.

6. It is difficult for any business to go it alone. Transitioning contact centres to the cloud and delivering seamlessly excellent customer service is a big ask, even for the most technologically sophisticated organisation. The costs and the risks of doing it all yourself are high. That’s why leading airlines are choosing an independent technology partner whose networking expertise, integration skills and cyber security credentials can ensure the level of performance they expect.

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Digital technologies and cloud services give every industry limitless opportunities to rethink and reshape the way they do business. Every enterprise will find a unique approach. For airlines, harnessing the possibilities of digital to create a better customer experience is a good place to start reaping the business benefits.

Air China.When fast growing Air China needed to establish a contact centre in Europe that would be sensitive to local cultural and language requirements, it chose Estonia and gave BT responsibility for the collection and delivery of voice calls from customers across Europe.

Using caller identity technology, the BT network routes incoming calls to the right linguist according to their country of origin. The result is that Air China customers are saving about 50 per cent on their call costs and there have been significant improvements in customer satisfaction. The solution also projects a professional image for Air China that helps the airline to reach its twin goals of service excellence and greater global recognition.

Etihad Airways.Etihad Airways has quickly established itself as one of the world’s leading airlines and places great emphasis on the quality of its service. The airline’s three contact centres (Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and Manchester) are central to ensuring every guest interaction is of the highest quality which is why the airline decided to bring them together into one virtual entity using BT’s cloud platform.

This hosted, cloud-based contact centre allows Etihad to centralise its resources and exploit economies of scale. All inbound calls flow into a single queue and direct each guest to exactly the right agent. Advisers are more productive - the airline has already seen a ten per cent increase in the efficiency of its 600 multilingual agents - and with new tools giving agents more control over their work, call responses have increased by almost a third. This approach helped Etihad guest numbers reach a record of 15 million during 2015.

Emirates.Consistent, memorable customer service is at the heart of the Emirates brand. To support its global operations, Emirates has seven contact centres around the world: in Dubai, Mumbai, Manchester, Guangzhou, Melbourne, New York and Budapest. It uses BT technology to run them as a single, virtualised, global resource.

More than 2,200 agents work as a single team to serve customers in 19 languages across 48 countries, handling an average of 35,000 calls and 6,000 emails per day. Calls are collected and routed through the cloud to an agent speaking the caller’s preferred language. Customers can make and change reservations, book seats, redeem airmiles and, for First Class and Business Class passengers, book a complimentary chauffeur driven car.

BT also provides Emirates with next generation contact centre technology which will enable the airline to provide additional services including secure payments solution and a personalised customer experience through automated voice response system, efficient interaction management and agent blending strategies.

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BT has helped to make a significant difference to the business with tangible benefits. Alex Holcroft, Project Manager, Etihad Airways

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BT – a global technology partner for airlines.We’ve worked with the airline industry for decades and understand its business challenges.We even share key characteristics and commercial pressures with the sector: we also operate in a rapidly changing, globally competitive, internationally regulated industry. And we work across many industry sectors that partner with airlines: banks, logistics, hospitality, retailers and energy.

Nine of the ten largest global airlines use our contact centre solutions. We’ve helped hundreds of large organisations

introduce contact centres and so we know what works, where the pitfalls might be and how to avoid them. We’ve also done it in our own business.

With global reach and local knowhow, we can support you wherever you are with network services, contact centres and digital security. (Both Gartner and IDC rate us as the world’s leading network service provider.)

If you would like to talk more about the ideas raised in this paper please contact us: named.contact@bt.com www.globalservices.bt.com/uk/en/industries/airlines_and_travel

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