Soaring to more personalised and rewarding interactions

Flying higher with extraordinary service

As Mexico’s flagship carrier, Aeromexico has been in business since 1934 and flies to more than 100 locations across the Americas, as well as the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. The airline has the largest connectivity network and cross-border market in the world and has been recognised as a five-star global airline by the Airline Passenger Experience Association.

Based in Mexico City, the Aeromexico contact centre handles an average of 5.5 million transactions per year with a team of 1,200 agents. The airline takes customer care very seriously and prides itself on the warmth of its service to customers. Aeromexico strives for continuous evolution and improvement, always in search of ways to deliver extraordinary service to its customers. Customer satisfaction is exhaustively monitored to ensure the airline is living up to its values, which are to “deliver sustained growth by providing a consistent service from the heart and creating personalised experiences with safety and reliability.”

The inflexibility of a legacy on-premises system in its contact centre was hindering improvement, not only for customer experience (CX) but also the employee experience (EX). Relying on an externally hosted server in a vendor facility, the company lacked real-time access to data. This limited its ability to effectively manage call flow and staff schedules, as well as make quick, data-driven adjustments.

To uphold its values and help its contact centre reach its full potential, the Aeromexico team started exploring more modern technologies that could meet the ever-increasing market expectations. After evaluating several platforms, the airline decided that Genesys Cloud, built on top of Amazon Web Services, would help take its contact centre to the next level.

“What stood out about Genesys was the ease of adapting the platform to fit our needs,” said Griselda Stankiewicz Chávez, Senior Contact Centre Manager at Aeromexico. “The ease of integrating with other third-party systems such as Salesforce, as well as the user-friendly interface, really caught our attention.”

With the help of Genesys Professional Services, the migration to Genesys Cloud took about four months. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, the B2B servicing Aeromexico team was prepared and could quickly enable home working for employees.

“With the pandemic, fortunately, we already had Genesys and it was very easy for our agents to work from their homes,” said María Gabriela Vázquez Mellado, Sales Manager at Aeromexico. “The truth is that it was the best decision we could have made.”

The Aeromexico team opted to implement chat, email and voice within Genesys Cloud, with the possibility of adding more channels in the future. All agents are multi-skilled, so the platform distributes interactions interchangeably across channels to the next available agent. Chat has been especially beneficial for use by travel agencies who find it more convenient to message with the Aeromexico contact centre instead of calling, particularly while they are face-to-face with clients.

“Moving to the cloud with Genesys has given us the flexibility to connect the entire team, from anywhere, in a more agile and immediate way,” said Hugo Israel Reyes, Contact Centre Manager, Loyalty Program at Aeromexico. “Now we can serve customers when they need us, not only when we are available.”

Making employee experience a priority

The implementation of Genesys Workforce Engagement Management capabilities has enabled intelligent contact centre staffing that can quickly be adjusted. This has been useful for Aeromexico in times of unexpected circumstances, such as weather delays. Now, the airline can properly staff to meet the upmost service-level and quality goals it has committed to customers. When it comes to scheduling and forecasting with workforce engagement management (WEM), Aeromexico has seen a time savings of around 66%.

“The new platform has represented a significant shift, from a segment-by-segment search for information to complete visibility of all client interactions with just a few clicks, while delivering recordings and quality assurance insights for targeted feedback,” said Stankiewicz Chávez.

WEM has also improved EX for Aeromexico agents. Engagement has increased through a more accountable daily experience enabled by real-time staffing and performance dashboards, scheduled break alerts, and notifications for coaching appointments and evaluations. Plus, supervisors can easily share call recordings through a direct link to an agent’s inbox that has been used to give individual or group recognition for good performance. With these enhancements, the airline has seen an improvement in employee satisfaction of 6.5% and a decrease of 20% in voluntary monthly turnover year over year.

More personalised interactions

Through improved visibility provided by Genesys Cloud, as well as integrations with Salesforce CRM and Pureinsights, agents can identify customers and personalise their interactions, driving customer satisfaction while resolving complex issues more effectively.

Aeromexico agents have better insights into why a customer may be calling by combining Genesys transaction records with passenger data in Salesforce, such as frequent flyer status, favourite routes, purchase history and special services required. They can also see whether they are a first-time or repeat caller, if there is an open claim and if they are having website-related trouble.

“The integration with Salesforce has been a holistic change for our contact centre,” said Stankiewicz Chávez. “It has enabled agents to have complete knowledge and understanding of the demographics of our clients. If we combine it with the behaviour and transaction data that Genesys gives us, we have a new outlook that allows us to make global decisions in real time according to the clients’ needs.”

Interactions flow more organically, and customers feel individually appreciated by the brand. Agents also value being able to have the necessary information to prepare better for any request or situation.

“Today, agents feel much more empowered, as customer information is presented to them before they interact with a customer,” said Vázquez Mellado. “This helps them make more-informed decisions, offer assistance and seek alternatives.”

In the IVR system, each interaction becomes a seamless experience: the customer is greeted by name after interacting with bots and completing the authentication and needs identification process. Then the customer is connected to the agent with the right knowledge to resolve the issue — quality service that eliminates the need for the customer to repeat the same information. Because support staff can work more efficiently, they now handle 13% more claims than they could before.

Elevating to new heights

The Aeromexico team describes their contact centre transformation journey over the last year with Genesys Cloud as evolving from a Wright Flyer to a Boeing Dreamliner. Not only have they been able to catch up with the latest trends in CX and EX, but now they can fly above — at the altitude of industry visionaries.

Since implementing Genesys Cloud, Aeromexico has seen improvements in the service it provides to customers. For instance, its average speed of answer has decreased 90% (from 289 seconds to 30 seconds), its FCR rate has improved 13% and its call abandonment has decreased 75%. This has all led to a higher contact centre NPS, which has increased by 55%.

To top it off, there has also been a substantial cost savings. Monthly telco costs have decreased by 40%, and Aeromexico lowered its operation costs by $250,000 within the first six months after implementation. This was a result of resource optimisation due to IVR redesign, tool integrations and omnichannel desktop features.

Going even further to reach new heights, Aeromexico plans to implement new Genesys Cloud capabilities, such as agent assist, gamification and speech and text analytics, to improve employee performance and continuously enhance service to customers.

“With Genesys, we have magic in the contact centre,” concluded Reyes. “We are better able to understand our customers and give them not only what they expect, but also what they really need.”