Case Study | Transforming CX to take the aviation industry to new heights
INTRODUCTION
It’s a fierce market out there for airlines across the globe. Changing customer behaviour and a push to innovate means airlines have to deliver an excellent customer experience across multiple digital touch points – all while staying profitable and embracing the travel tech revolution. Customers expect value for money, while airlines are under the thumb to and new opportunities for growth. Serving aviation customers since 2009, Merchants has been focused on striking the right balance between ensuring aviation businesses are digitally geared for the future, and giving skilled people the right tools and technology to provide a consistent service experience.
BUSINESS CHALLENGES
Business survival depends on loyalty, and any airline’s future success relies on continuous innovation. And that’s a tough ask – especially when customers have high service expectations, and other airlines and travel companies offer even better deals. To keep airline companies flying high, Merchants has been a trusted partner with the right expertise that knows how to address aviation-specific business challenges such as:
• Delivering a consistent, seamless experience across multiple touch points
• Identifying new ways to reduce costs, drive sales and grow customer loyalty
• Optimising the use of AI, chatbots and self-service for a better customer experience
• Using big data effectively for better customer insight and behaviour prediction
• Keeping up with continuous changes in rules and regulations
• Driving process efficiencies and driving cultural change
OUR IMPROVEMENT ACTIONS
When delivering solutions for the aviation industry, we take a thorough and practical approach to finding new opportunities that are focused on growing your business. Through specialist contact centres, these success stories have relied on an expert ability to deliver the right blend of people, processes and technology to embrace the digital future that customers want.
ATTRACT
Differentiation through service means attracting the right profile person for the role. We recruit for the right positive attitude, to deliver the right customer experience. By understanding the needs and profile of each role within your business, our approach is focused on matching talent to each profile to deliver the right fit – in personality and cognitive ability. Through digital recruitment and pre-screening, we give airlines the ability to scale to meet demand, through easy access to immediate talent at a fraction of the cost. To help manage attrition, we offer career progression opportunities for growth.
TRAIN
Empowered people deliver quick, helpful and professional service. That’s why our training is focused on ensuring faster speed to competence through audit-approved aviation training programmes, real-time decision navigation tools and innovative gamification tools to drive engagement and identify skills gaps. To address specific business needs, we’ve delivered Quality 360 specialist training along with WFM technology and specialist training on an ongoing basis.
ASSIST
Service complexity and consistency is a challenge, as is the growing demand for multi-skilled agents that can resolve customer queries. It’s why we assist agents, teams and managers through:
• Decision support tools and assisted knowledge databases
• Improved customer insight drawn from big data
• Quality methodologies and assisted support and training
• WFM tools that aid in capacity planning and operational eficiency
OPERATE
Providing integrated multi-channel customer service centres across multiple business units, we provide the right customer experiences to support your operations. Driving a customer-first culture, our track record of delivery includes:
• Technical support services and back office processing
• PCI compliance, fraud and credit card chargeback reductions
• Outbound B2B and B2C sales services and revenue protection
• WFM optimisation, audits and planning services
• Quality insight, audits, optimisation and compliance
• Identifying process efficiencies and automation opportunities
• Powerful reporting to measure CX and active intelligence for customer insight
COACH
Continuous coaching is built into our learning and development plan. Our focus on ensuring our people deliver the right experience, means we can hit the mark when it comes to achieving low attrition rates. Through an open conversation style and motivational approach, we coach people to boost productivity and performance. Our focus is on the individual and we look at behaviours, needs and strengths to drive high employee satisfaction and a culture of belonging. To help grow future leaders and support career progression, informal and formal coaching is offered, with wellness programmes to support personal health and wellbeing.
IMPROVE
Customer behaviours are changing, as are their expectations when it comes to dealing with any airline. As customer advocates, we help you identify opportunities for growth, while ensuring you’re prepared for the future. Our partnerships in the aviation industry are built on a rm focus on evolving your customer strategy and we achieve this through:
• Driving more customer convenience and personalised insight at every touch point
• Advising on IT tools, AI and digital platforms for future success
• Helping identify upsell, cross-sell and other sales opportunities
• Global benchmarking and competitive horizon scanning
• Reducing costs through active intelligence, self-service and automation
• Guiding you on recruitment profiling, training and coaching needs
• WFM and quality assurance that drives operational efficiency
RESULTS
• R124 million saving in operational costs over a five year period
• Solving six month back office backlogs to real-time resolution
• PCI solution for card payments
• 97% drop in chargebacks through additional authentication and security
• Over 90% drop in complaints
• Call efficiency rate up from 7% to 80%