European airline easyJet has brought customer conversations into Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Centre, helping advisers find answers faster, resolve more routine enquiries automatically, and further enhance its service for customers.
The low-cost, point-to-point airline carries more than 100 million passengers a year via a fleet of more than 350 aircraft. And its 2,000-strong customer-service team handles an estimated 15 million to 20 million contacts a year in seven or eight languages.
Those conversations are often an important element of the way easyJet’s customers experience their end-to-end journey with the airline, from booking all the way until boarding their flight.
Until recently, an easyJet customer-service adviser might have needed five or six systems when helping their customers. A call arrived in one place, the contact was logged elsewhere, and moving to live chat or social media meant opening another platform. Training teams to navigate these systems could take around six weeks, says Ayesha Walker, easyJet’s global training manager.
“Previously, for a single enquiry our teams were working with multiple systems across call, logging and webchat which, even though we wanted to provide customers with a variety of channels to be able to contact us, managing this required a lot of movement for the team members helping our customers.”
Today, thanks to the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Centre, the way the team have been equipped to support customers advisers has been significantly streamlined.
Context at-a-glance
Dynamics 365 Contact Centre gives easyJet customer support teams a complete view of the conversation, whatever channel the customer has used to contact the airline. Microsoft Copilot can find an answer in easyJet’s approved knowledge articles while an adviser is speaking to a customer. It can also draft an email, which the adviser reviews, personalises and approves before sending.
Live summaries provide context for why a customer is making contact, while live transcription helps advisers log the entire conversation faster.
For John Leighton, easyJet’s Customer Service Director, live transcription has been especially striking: “That’s the thing that has proven to be most impactful for our teams in how they assist our customers when they contact us.
“Our teams can now focus on that conversation rather than using six different systems,” he says. “We want people who really need our support to have that support.”
Deeper knowledge
The impact of the new AI-powered platform has been dramatic, Leighton says. Roughly 70% of contacts used to be telephone calls. Now this has reduced to 20%, with live chat accounting for 60%-to-70% and the remainder split between email and social media, with Leighton saying that customer feedback shows they feel they get a better resolution via live chat.
Resolution results have been boosted by 20% since the roll-out, while first-contact resolution has improved by around 10%, and customer satisfaction has increased by several percentage points.
Another significant outcome has been the deeper knowledge the platform has given the airline about its customers, says Leighton, which means the airline has a better understanding of the main reasons for contact. For example, when customers ask to add additional assistance to a booking, that is providing valuable business insights that can help the airline improve service, Leighton believes.
Efficiency and service
easyJet selected Microsoft as its call-centre-as-a-service technology provider following a competitive procurement process involving 10 providers. Leighton says the deciding factors were Microsoft’s ability to offer a working demonstration, consolidate communication channels, and analyse customer contact data with a view to further enhancing customer service.
“We believed there was an opportunity to produce automation and find efficiencies, but ultimately improve the service experience,” he says. “Service experience is so vital.
“What we have always been clear on from the outset is that this is about enhancing and supporting our teams’ day-to-day activities, not only to help them support customers more quickly and effectively, but also to free them up to focus more on complex scenarios.”
Fine-tuning support
easyJet now plans to apply finer call categorisations, so that a booking query, say, can be broken down into sub-categories, such as a request to add a bag or a seat to their booking.
Routine requests with simple answers will be able to be handled automatically, says Leighton, leaving team members free to concentrate on more complex queries where judgement and reassurance are most important.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Centre is the foundation on which further AI agents will be built, designed to carry out specific tasks with team oversight, he says.
For an airline whose aim is to make low-cost travel easy, it’s all about giving team members more time for the customers who need them most.
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