Cathay takes to the cloud and customer satisfaction soars

Transforming customer experience

Cathay Airways understands the importance of going the extra mile for exceptional customer experiences. The organisation is endeavoring to establish itself as one of the world’s greatest service brands, which starts and ends with ensuring customers are delighted with their service interactions, regardless of the channel they use. This commitment is reflected in the airline’s contact centre strategy — and influenced its decision to implement a cloud-based customer experience (CX) platform.

A previous legacy platform had outlasted its utility and was no longer strategically compatible with the airline’s operational goals. The limitations of this outdated system prompted Cathay to search for a new solution that could better support its ambitions and enhance its customer experience.

After conducting extensive research of multiple platforms and vendors through an RFP process, the airline landed on Genesys, thanks to its reputation as “a leading, multichannel platform provider,” said Linjo Oommen, Global Head of Customer Contact Centre at Cathay.

“What we also particularly liked about Genesys is its ability to integrate with multiple channels, as well as its vision for the future,” added Oommen.

Ensuring a smooth take off

The airline’s mission of delivering enjoyable customer experiences every time includes enabling customers to contact the airline through the channel of their choice in their preferred region. This includes apps like WhatsApp, WeChat and KakaoTalk, traditional voice calls and web messaging, as well as a robust presence on social media.

These interactions all land at the Cathay global contact centre operation, which spans six major hubs and multiple satellite sites that support local markets. The airline’s 1,500 advisors handle some 500,000 contacts across its various messaging channels per month.

Cathay needed a scalable solution but didn’t want to invest in a massive project to deploy a CX solution across all its hubs. “After learning that the solution was available on cloud, it was pretty much a no-brainer for us to go with Genesys. Genesys was the solution that ticked all the boxes for us,” said Oommen.

The airline was able to tick the box on a smooth deployment. Oommen said that the migration experience was straightforward and seamless. “The entire project was delivered in four phases and in under two years,” he added.

This implementation also enabled Cathay to meet its goal of allowing customers to more easily get service whenever and wherever they need it. “We’re able to execute our ‘follow-the-sun’ strategy, which allows our customer contacts to be answered by the next available advisor in one of our hubs, regardless of time, anywhere in the world,” said Oommen.

The Genesys solution has also helped Cathay to simplify customer journeys. The airline now uses Genesys Cloud Predictive Routing to direct a specific contact type to the next available advisor with the right skill set, delivering streamlined service for the customer and greater operational efficiency.

Service and satisfaction soars

Analysing data from calls, web messages and all digital channels can help any organisation uncover insights that can enhance customer experiences and optimise support services. Cathay was able to notably improve this capability once Genesys was in place.

The airline monitors service-level data across multiple half-hour intervals to enhance its overall customer service proposition. “With the deployment of Genesys, we have much richer data now available. We’re able to more accurately track our service levels — an important metric for us — and we’re now meeting these targets consistently month after month,” said Oommen.

Cathay also has better visibility into any service “hotspots,” which further allows the airline to improve abandonment rates and average speed of answer.

“As a result of both technological enhancements and our operating model enhancements, our Net Promoter Score has improved 7X compared to the baseline,” said Oommen, adding that “with the implementation of Genesys, we’ve also seen an uptick in customer satisfaction.”

The benefits of the Genesys implementation have extended to the internal team, as well. “Our people are quite happy that they can access their schedules at their leisure and are able to trade their shifts or swap their breaks, et cetera,” added Oommen.

Genesys Cloud Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) capabilities have helped the airline streamline processes by forecasting contact volumes with over 90% accuracy, optimising employee scheduling and managing operations in real time.

Future flight paths

Cathay aims to be the digital leader in the travel category. To help reach that goal the airline plans to leverage AI to improve customer experiences, better orchestrate journeys and streamline workforce management operations.

“We’d like to be able to track our customer journeys end to end with a view to optimise them and make them more fulfilling,” said Oommen. “That includes a particular focus on managing the customer’s experience through their most anxious moments, especially when there is a disruption or irregular operations that impact their travel plans. Genesys provides us with the right platform to build on this foundational capability.”

The airline is also developing a more robust, channel-agnostic approach to service that will continue to allow customers to interact with the company however they choose and receive a consistent experience — as if all channels are acting as one. “As new channels emerge, we assess whether those should be extended to our customers. So, this is an ongoing exercise,” said Oommen.

Also ongoing is the ability to continually innovate its customer experience. The Genesys Cloud platform enables that. “We have future-proofed our operations,” concluded Oommen. “And I’m excited to be working with Genesys on what the future holds for us.”

To learn more about the solutions featured in this case study, visit www.genesys.com.