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The Etihad Contact Centre, a cornerstone of Etihad's customer service and experience, is constantly evolving to meet unprecedented changes. Our unique cloud solution, chosen for its scalability to meet growth demands, has transformed our contact centre. We have prioritised enhancing our digital and self-service capabilities to better meet customer needs. Our platform now boasts AI features that significantly improve both customer and agent experiences.
Additionally, we offer a range of internal applications that provide full integration capabilities and comprehensive reporting tools. Our multichannel customer care solution unifies traditional communication methods with digital ones, implementing technology that serves multiple channels effectively. This approach ensures seamless interactions for guests, whether they contact our call centre, engage with live chat agents, or use automated channels such as chatbots, WhatsApp, or Facebook bots. A combination of technological innovation and a strong emphasis on customer experience drove this transformation.
By adopting a multi-vendor strategy, we diversified operations and integrated technology to enhance efficiency. We partnered with E& to implement NICE, a cloud-based AI solution. This expanded our contact centre from two to four vendors. Now, we have seven global centres that can assist customers in 13 different languages across 41 online markets where direct Etihad flights are available. We also provide a special support line for these customers. Plus, we help customers from 19 offline markets—countries that do not have direct Etihad flights—by offering them a dedicated support line. This evolution has been significant, with our agent headcount growing from 800 in 2023 to 1,100 across all five sites, reflecting our commitment to excellence in customer service.
At Etihad, we proudly embrace emerging technologies, our chatbots, live chat, WhatsApp, and Facebook bots improve customer care, boost agent performance, and increase contact centre efficiency, all available 24/7 globally. By integrating these channels into our apps, we can automate reservations and ticketing, encouraging guests to use non-voice interactions. Our bots recognise policy documents and intents, providing guests with a self-service option for many inquiries.
At Etihad, we are committed to prioritising security and data protection when developing our bots. This shift enhances customer interactions and significantly reduces costs, as bots are one-third the cost of traditional calls while generating additional revenue.
- Our resolution rate has increased to over 50%
- The deflection rate from voice to chat is an impressive 94%
- From Q1 to Q3, we have achieved net savings of 2.9 million AED
- We generated an additional revenue of 3.1 million AED from chat use cases
We continue to evolve our customer care touchpoints constantly looking for innovative approaches to enhancing customer experience. We take pride in our responsiveness, ensuring we reply to social media messages within a 15-minute service level agreement (SLA).
To optimise our operations, we utilise Sprinklr, a powerful tool that automatically assigns cases to agents based on priority, thus streamlining our response efforts. Additionally, we harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to filter out non-engageable comments, allowing us to concentrate on those interactions that truly matter. AI technology also enables us to assess the initial sentiment of cases and monitor our success in transforming negative experiences into positive outcomes.
Our online community team plays a crucial role in this process by actively monitoring online discussions about Etihad Airways around the clock. The team uses listening tools in Sprinklr to categorise customer feedback and report any challenges or risks to management, ensuring we remain responsive to our customers' needs.
Integrating Sprinklr with our assisted channels like chatbots, live chat, WhatsApp and Facebook bots has enhanced flexibility in tracking customer interactions. This allows Online Community agents to access insights from live chats, fostering a seamless experience and building long-term relationships while addressing immediate guest concerns.
Nomination Title: Etihad Airways Contact Center Innovation
