IBM Call center triggers Air China Marketing Office

From passive service to active marketing

Air China Call Center was officially launched in August 2006. Over the past two years, it has made unprecedented sales for Air China. Only 2008 1-September, the total sales of the call center was up nearly 100% from the whole of 2007, and the customer satisfaction rate of telephone service was more than 95%.

Before that, Air China had only a fragmented hotline service in the country, and almost every business department had a small telephone seat without a national uniform number. These decentralized hotlines lack a clear positioning, and their functions remain largely on the passive service of answering inquiries or receiving complaints. At that time, Air China Hotline Service Management and effectiveness are quite backward.

2003, Air China integrated Southwest Airlines, began to prepare for listing. In the second half of 2003, Air China accepted the advice of an internationally renowned consultancy to prepare for the establishment of a National unified call center to support the overall business operation of the company. However, in the project research process, Air China has a controversy, the location of the call center is difficult to form a unified understanding. As a result, the project, which has not yet been considered mature, is temporarily stranded.

The blink of an eye to 2005 years. During the period, the Southern Airlines in 2003, the Eastern Airlines in 2004 has built a certain scale of the call center. Combined with the development of the company's own situation and aviation industry trends, Air China believes that the opportunity to build call center is ripe, as the company began to promote customer relationship management system, after careful consideration, Air China decided to start from the call center, as the basis for customer relationship management and starting point. At this time, Air China has a new clear positioning of the call center, that is, integrated traditional call center functions and air ticketing business functions, and sales as the first function, so that call center become an important part of E-commerce, as well as the focus of direct marketing channels. This positioning prompted Air China to remove the call center from the original sales department, unified into the sale of management.

At that time, from the big environment, the popularity of electronic tickets is the trend, the International Air Transport Association clearly stipulates that by May 2008, all member companies must use electronic tickets. With the popularity of electronic tickets, the traditional ticket sales model has gradually transferred from the counter to the telephone or network. This has undoubtedly brought great business opportunities to the airline's call center.

You can also put your vision farther. Many European and American Airlines through direct sales channels to obtain revenue has exceeded the turnover of 50%, and domestic airlines through direct sales channels of less than 10%. This gap is a challenge and an opportunity. Air China is becoming more and more aware that building a perfect call center is to open up a direct and efficient direct channel, not only for Air China to win customers, increase sales, but also means a huge cost savings, as well as customer experience and satisfaction of the promotion.

The end of 2005, Air China Call Center project open tender. IBM has a wealth of industry experience and technical advantages to pull the top, and in 2006 formally signed with Air China to build call center.

Sales and service goes hand in hand

In the early days of construction, Air China first identified the business objectives of the call Center: to establish a unified telephone sales service center in China, establish a customer database, customer value management, improve customer service quality, reduce costs, and eventually become an important window unit of Air China and e-commerce sales channels. According to this goal, the main business functions of the call center are also implemented to two large parts: first, the sales business, that is, ticket sales management and order management, the second is the service business, including business consulting, complaints and suggestions, ticket confirmation, change and refund services.

Air China expects the call center to have a complete sales and service function, which puts forward some unique requirements for its IT system architecture. As a partner and total integrator of Air China call center projects, IBM believes that it is important to start with the grooming and improvement of business processes. After careful investigation of Air China's existing sales and service processes, IBM consultants for its characteristics, together with customers to develop e-commerce in line with the development of the sales service process, and transform it into technical requirements. IBM has completed the software and hardware integration of the traffic system. Application system platform software design and research and development, system maintenance and later protection, to help solve the intelligent routing allocation problem, in order to achieve the intelligent management of the seat, at the same time, solve the traffic system and application system, database, recording quality control, fax and other systems, high integration, To meet the flexible business needs.

In addition, IBM also provides consulting services for the operation management of Air China call center. IBM consultant to Air China Business Committee leader, sales department leaders, call center managers conducted in-depth interviews, based on the characteristics of Air China for Air China to develop call center operation and management norms to provide useful advice, and the Air China Call Center provides a large number of operations management training, so that Air China call center operation and management level to improve a grade, Realized "Four", namely work flow, operation system, management digitization, service initiative.

August 26, 2006, the first phase of the construction of Air China call Center completed as scheduled, call center officially opened operation. The sales channel based on e-business model is very powerful, fully demonstrated the call center sales and service dual functions: can provide passengers with ticket inquiries, booking, payment, ticket, distribution and other services, for domestic and foreign bearer ticket passengers to provide advice, booking, purchase tickets, payment, rescheduled/upgrade, scheduled meals, flight change notice, Advice and suggestions and other services, provide after-sales service for electronic tickets, electronic ticket status monitoring, audit and so on, to the visitors to promote the company launched new products or services, the development of frequent passenger related business, reception of passengers to Air China service complaints, suggestions and praise. Call Center in accordance with the choice of customers to control the call route, automatically transfer the customer calls to the specific seat representatives, to provide the corresponding manual or voice services, self-service voice service can provide passengers with flight information, the opportunity to notice and other inquiries services.

For the system architecture and business design considerations, IBM in line with Air China's business needs, the Chinese air to call center in the domestic advance construction of Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai 3 centers. Air China will also complete its 4th center in Guangzhou, taking into account the needs of Cantonese travellers in southern Guangdong. Because the telephone content involves customer data and sales revenue and other important data, in order to ensure information stability and security, Air China in Beijing, the main center, the strong technology of Chengdu into a back-up center, if the Beijing Center network failure, Chengdu Center can temporarily replace the central role, Ensure that the sales and service of the call center will never be interrupted. Not only that, IBM also provides a platform to support overseas operations in the system design to expand the global business of Air China's call center. Based on this platform, Air China European Call Center has now been completed and opened services.

Now, customers in Air China can access the call center by telephone, mobile phone, fax, network and so on, according to the guidance of Automatic voice prompts, select the required services. Through the call center platform, airlines can directly master a large number of high-quality customer data-not only to integrate the regular passenger database, improve the quality of the regular passenger database, but also to increase the number of new customer information-so as to gain a multiplier.

A variety of operating "profit center"

Air China Call Center to a large customer database based on the gradual realization of personalized service, prompting the call center from the past simple "cost payment center" gradually towards a variety of operating "profit center." It is understood that 2008 1-September Call center total number of telephone calls than 2007 increased by nearly 50%, and 2008 1-September through the call center to complete the total sales are more than the full year of 2007 growth of nearly 100%. To the international leading airlines as the target, Air China call Center continues to develop and perfect the call center sales function, so that its maximum benefit.

Air China's call center construction, to help Air China opened a convenient and flexible direct marketing channels, and in the business and Air China's website sales carried out an organic integration, for Air China to improve the direct sales capacity of air tickets made an important contribution. As a direct channel of passenger ticket, Air China call center has greatly reduced the cost of traditional agency expenses. Although the sales model and agents are similar, but Air China call center ticket Direct sales have obvious advantages. Air China's call center and the company's various departments through different business modules linked to bring together the entire company at all levels of information, to complete a number of complex business processing, to provide customers with a variety of value-added services. Because the service chain of the airlines is very long, each link can design some value-added services, with the help of the call center can be a value-added part of the service, and air tickets packaged to sell to consumers. For example, through Air China call center to buy tickets high-end passengers can directly handle the registration card, do not go to the airport, such as this year during the Beijing Olympic Games through the call center to buy Air China's international air tickets, can be awarded Olympic Games tickets. In different seasons, for different consumers, different flights, Air China launched a special, intimate value-added services products, greatly enhanced customer service experience. Since the opening in 2006, Air China's call center passenger telephone satisfaction rate reached more than 95%.

To this end, the Air China Call Center won the CCCS (Customer Contact Center standard system Certification body) issued by the aviation industry class 2007 China's Best call Center Award, and the 2008 Chinese Best Contact Center Award. It can be said that the call center has become another external window of Air China, not only to bring sales revenue, but also for Air China to improve service levels and service capabilities to provide a good platform.

In the past three years, the scale of Air China's call center has been expanding, and the sales task and service content are more and more. Since 2007, Air China has taken electronic commerce as one of the 8 strategic priorities and asked the call center to complete two-thirds of E-commerce sales tasks. At the same time, Air China's call center has begun to feel the pressure of continuous expansion-the first phase of the call center construction has not been completed, you must consider the expansion. Take the Beijing center as an example, the design of the peak number of calls per day is 5,000, and by 2007, the maximum daily telephone volume has reached 13,000. The growth rate of the telephone volume exceeded the initial expectations of the construction, and the expansion of the existing center and the expansion of the new center would have to be kept abreast. In addition, in North America, Europe, Korea and Japan to build sales as the main function of the call center, has been put on the agenda of Air China. It also means that IBM will work with Air China to create a new journey for the call center.

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