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SITA is a multinational information technology organization offering IT and telecom services to the air transport industry (ATI). Looking after around 400 members and 2,500 customers worldwide, the company has 4,700 employees and covers some 90 percent of the global airline business. After the pandemic, SITA helped airports and airlines safely resume flights, strongly positioned itself to get passengers back in the air, and helped 490 million arrive at target airports, while delivering 2.1 million mishandled bags to the right destinations.
Conferring competitive advantage in an uncertain climate
Looking ahead, SITA is focused on automating the passenger journey at the airport and border, digitizing aircraft operations, and helping the ATI journey towards net zero.
The most recent innovation is Flex as a Service (FaaS) a digital transformation program that’s freeing airlines to reimagine passenger journeys. FaaS offers customers competitive advantage by being first-to-market with new services to meet today’s passengers’ high expectations. They will enjoy touchless and fully mobile experiences at every step of their journeys, while providers can make more flexible use of agents and infrastructure.
Nevertheless, the challenges SITA is experiencing include market uncertainty and flight irregularities. Well-publicized hikes in energy costs, the effects of global inflation on consumers and businesspeople, and political instability compound the problem. Moreover, agent shortages in the wake of the pandemic — worsened by fast demand spikes — have been frustrating for travelers and SITA customer-facing teams.
Operating inside and outside the contact center
Built on a next-generation Genesys Cloud platform, SITA Omnichannel Contact Services (SITA OCS) has 25,000 connected users around the world and manages 1.2 billion calls per year. Addressing the entire passenger journey, SITA OCS handles omnichannel customer interactions while leveraging cloud capabilities, mobility, and social media.
Against that background, SITA is changing the customer engagement dynamic to maintain and protect its brand reputation. For example, Genesys is introducing automation and self-service into the SITA OCS contact center architecture, not only to reduce costs but also to insure a seamless customer experience (CX) and agent experience (AX). New options like email and chat make services more fulfilling for customers.
Genesys Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) provides agents with better facilities, retains valuable staff, and boosts recruitment. Outside the contact center, kiosk integration and visa processing facilities go hand in hand with interconnection to airport management systems. Further, middleware provides interworking with legacy apps. Leveraging Genesys Cloud open APIs, SITA has introduced click-to-call features on its check-in kiosks, for airline staff to resolve issues in minutes, while new customers are issued PIN codes faster.
Perfect contact center solution for carriers large and small
Tailoring solutions using unique integrations, SITA helps customers build customized contact centers to differentiate their offers and ensure they are more efficient. Particularly for Tier 2 and Tier 3 carriers with mixed legacy systems, an end-to-end SITA solution avoids the need to deal with multiple companies. SITA would deliver and manage all Genesys services, for substantial cost savings.
Another advantage is, whatever the carrier’s size, using the SITA OCS platform avoids complex migration projects. With Genesys APIs the process is much closer to plug-and-play. Constant development is consigned to the history book. Any SITA customer gets access to the Genesys innovation production line. Rapid developer community growth has resulted in nearly 2,000 premium AppFoundry® solutions for seamless integration of cutting-edge AI, digital, collaboration and analytics capabilities.
Furthermore, SITA provides the world’s largest ATI global network, AirportHub, to carry contact center traffic. It offers toll-free services in over 127 countries – ensuring passengers can contact their airlines wherever they are. In addition, over 600 pre-connected AirportHub airports are readymade for any customer to plug into a new Genesys Cloud-based solution, which means higher contact center availability and a better passenger experience.
Assuring capacity planning and disaster recovery
SITA chose the Genesys Cloud platform for ease of use and high availability. Calls are collected worldwide and transited through regional points-of-presence in Montreal, London, and Singapore. Close monitoring from a command center ensures IT systems and links are dependable and available, around the clock and around the world.
Vichaig Douangpaseuth, Senior Manager, Service Improvement SDN Network and Voice Practice at SITA, said: “The changeover was remarkably simple. It only took us five minutes to switch SIP traffic from 160 numbers and 150 countries. To get our old system to support digital channels as Genesys Cloud did, we would have had to spend another $2 million, plus huge amounts of engineering man hours.”
The Genesys Cloud platform gives SITA the perfect blend: a follow-the-sun model with seamless handovers between the command center across Singapore and Montreal, with 24/7 contact center 24/7 service desks in multiple geographic locations. “It’s very easy to spin up virtual teams or re-route traffic between sites, so we’re in a much better place when it comes to capacity planning and disaster recovery,” added Douangpaseuth.
Now, SITA can access more data and adjust call flows better than ever before. Managers always have their fingers on the pulse, with an instant view of customer queues and service desk performance. Response times have accelerated too. “With Genesys Cloud, if there’s a power outage at an airport or an airline loses its network, we can get onto the problem straightaway, ensuring passengers aren’t inconvenienced and their flights depart on time,” concluded Douangpaseuth.
