Industry
Travel
Supporting fast expansion with omnichannel customer service
Travel
Support expanding customer numbers with effective and efficient omnichannel customer service
Cyprus Airways currently operates flights to 18 destinations across Europe and the Middle East. A fast-growing airline, it has ambitious plans to widen its route network to 30 destinations by 2026. It prides itself on quality service and the highest levels of customer satisfaction.
As the airline began to expand its operations, flying to more destinations, it was seeing a significant increase in customer calls to its contact center. Its six bilingual Greek and English-speaking agents were handling up to 200 calls per day from travel agents and customers looking to buy tickets, rebook flights, and check rules on topics such as luggage.
Cyprus Airways’ existing contact center solution was unable to cope with the rapid growth in calls – and was also voice-only, meaning it couldn’t match the company’s goals to transition to an omnichannel communications approach in the future.
“Our growth is a testament to our success in providing convenient and affordable travel options for our passengers. However, this expansion has brought new challenges, including disruptions to flights and other issues that can result in rising call volumes. We needed a new solution that could scale to better meet our requirements and help us deliver reliable and efficient customer service,” said Nicolas Nicolaou, Contact Center Supervisor, Cyprus Airways.
After extensive research, Cyprus Airways chose Enghouse Interactive’s Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solution. Recommended by local Enghouse partner GCC, Enghouse CCaaS provides a combination of advanced technology and cloud-based scalability to deliver efficient and effective customer service to all passengers. Initially implemented in under a month on the voice channel, Enghouse CCaaS has now been extended to cover web chat for live agents, adding the omnichannel capabilities to the contact center that the airline’s customers are increasingly demanding.
Cyprus Airways chose Enghouse CCaaS not just because of its state-of-the-art technologies but also based on its own commitment to customer service. Nicolaou explains, “Enghouse’s focus on customer experience aligns with our own commitment to providing the highest level of service to our passengers. The company’s dedicated team of support professionals work closely with us to ensure that we are leveraging the platform’s full capabilities and providing the best possible customer experience.”
Cyprus Airways is using a range of Enghouse CCaaS functions to improve customer service. For example, through Enghouse CCaaS’s Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) intelligent routing feature, incoming calls are now distributed to agents based on their specific skills and availability. If call wait times are high, such as when flights have been disrupted, the platform automatically offers call backs, enabling agents to return calls after having checked rebooking options.
The incorporation of live chat now provides another means of helping customers, by providing online assistance in real-time along with the capability to serve multiple customers in parallel. The fully featured Enghouse CCaaS platform also delivers a complete range of tools to monitor, improve and support constant customer service improvement. All inbound calls are automatically recorded for training and dispute resolution, while advanced reporting enables Cyprus Airways to track every interaction within the contact center.
Thanks to the Enghouse CCaaS solution, Cyprus Airways is seeing a range of benefits, supporting its objective of delivering the best possible experience to its passengers.
Since implementing Enghouse CCaaS, Cyprus Airways has seen customer satisfaction scores improve over time. Features such as offering call-backs when demand is high help the company better serve its customers, particularly if flights are subject to disruption. This leads to greater customer loyalty and recommendations, and increases sales of tickets and ancillary services, such as hotels or car hire as passengers are more receptive to cross-selling due to the improved experience.
The Enghouse CCaaS platform’s user-friendly interface simplifies the agent experience and reduces training needs. Full call recording enables ongoing coaching of agents, helping them to learn and develop their skills. Additionally, by using Enghouse’s Supervisor Assist tool, agents can request in-call help from supervisors, either via chat or through them joining the call, resulting in enhanced support, and increased morale. Due to this, overall agent satisfaction has increased since the Enghouse platform went live.
Enghouse CCaaS’s powerful reporting capabilities and streamlined, cloud-based operations enable Cyprus Airways to improve efficiency within the contact center. Overall, this enables the airline to meet growing demand cost-effectively, without requiring additional resources, and provides scalability and flexibility to cope with increased call volumes and customer demands.
The airline is committed to exploring new and innovative ways to enhance its service offering. It has already launched web chat via the Enghouse platform and is considering adding new channels to its solution to deliver a full omnichannel experience. Furthermore, the company is looking at additional integrations such as to CRM and payment solutions. Thanks to Enghouse CCaaS’s extensive capabilities, Cyprus Airways can simply add these new channels and features as required, providing a future-proofed omnichannel experience.
“Overall, Enghouse CCaaS has empowered us to streamline our operations, improve our efficiency, and provide the highest level of service to our passengers,” concludes Nicolaou. “We are constantly monitoring and adapting to changing customer needs and are confident that our partnership will continue to drive success and growth for Cyprus Airways in the years to come.”