#contactcenterworld, @callforcedirect

Author: Roshan Sookdeo, Global Outsourcing Director, CallForce Outsourcing Solutions

The continued drive from airlines to utilise self-service or non-voice channels is creating serious frustration and concerns for travellers.

Since the resurgence of air travel post the pandemic there have been some negative sentiments towards the airline industry – increased costs, unavoidable inconveniences, infrastructure challenges, staff shortages, missing luggage, just to name a few.

Traveling locally or abroad most certainly comes with its stresses, but not being able to talk to a person or find an effective channel for resolution when experiencing challenges causes a great deal of stress, having a direct negative impact on the customer experience.

Local development, job creation, and foreign currency are just some of the areas encouraged through tourism, and any decline in the airline industry will have an overall direct and indirect impact on the downstream industries that support and rely on the airline industry.

Managing one channel or driving clients to a total self-service option is no longer sufficient to ensure customers’ tourism experiences go smoothly. An organisation needs to effectively engage and support customers across channels their clients can communicate on. This means becoming holistically omnichannel enabled and not just a multi-channel environment. The key is having a partner that has the experiences in managing an omnichannel-enabled environment that are able to effectively integrate and connect these platforms into your specific processes to ensure an exceptional customer experience.

How do we close this loop in providing a holistic customer experience?

Embracing an omnichannel customer engagement journey in the airline travel space not only assists your customers with the basics of online check-ins/checkouts, WhatsApp/social media/email/SMS confirmation notifications, status updates, this also enables personalised marketing, quicker customer query resolution, that is hassle-free and provides a seamless customer experience.

But it is only effective if it’s human-centric!

People do not connect with overly robotic communication that seem to be a standard response to everyone. Customers respond positively to well personalised engagement that they feel speaks and connects with them directly, solving their needs in a relevant and meaningful way across their preferred channel of communication.

A holistic omnichannel approach has the benefits of:

-Customising experiences and engagements

-Simplifying processes for customers

-Utilising historic consumer data to further improve experiences

-Increasing customer process efficiency

#contactcenterworld, @callforcedirect