Customer Experience Management – The untapped potential at Qantas

I fly around Australia a lot and my airline of choice is unashamedly Qantas.

I had an interesting experience today and it got me thinking about how situations could be handled more efficiently and effectively – particularly given the availability of technology like Smart Speak. Through our partnership with RightNow Technologies I had a chance to look at the Smart Speak solution earlier this year and was really impressed.

The situation that triggered this is I received an SMS from Qantas informing me that my flight home later today has been cancelled and could I please contact their call centre for more information. There was nothing personalised about the message as they (helpfully) directed me to their general call centre (not the premium flyer call centre) as well as offering a number to call should I happen to be calling from NZ (odd given I was flying from Sydney to Brisbane).

So I rang the premium flyer call centre and was helpfully informed that I’d been booked on the next flight – Great. But I then received a call from Qantas 10 minutes after I arrived at the airport wanting to speak to me about the change of my flight. Given I’d already checked in for the new flight, this was in fact a complete waste of Qantas resources.

Knowing the Smart Speak product, I got thinking about how Qantas could use this technology to (a) deliver a richer customer experience for their customers, and (b) reduce the impact of cancelled flights on their call centre operations – which would clearly mean lower operating costs and better experience delivery for other customers not affected by a flight cancellation.

Smart Speak lives in the Cloud and kicks into gear when an inbound call is received. Recognising the inbound number, Smart Speak can interpret a real time database (for example RightNow’s Service module) and recognise that the caller ‘might’ be calling about an open service incident. Smart Speak can ask the customer if that is what they’re calling about, or even give them an update before asking if they still need to speak to an agent.

Here’s what I would do.

A flight is cancelled – Qantas creates incidents against each affected passenger

The SMS is sent (I’d like to see this message personalised more – for example – “Qantas flight QF544 13 NOV from SYD has been cancelled. We’ve booked you on a later flight, pls call 131313 for details”)

• As passengers are moved onto later flights, the open incidents are closed off

Inbound calls are now routed via Smart Speak which identifies the caller and interprets the incident database.

Smart Speak asks the caller if they want information about their new flight, or would they like to speak to an agent.

If they want information about their new flight, it’s offered and the caller confirms their needs have been met.

Smart Speak is sophisticated enough that it can inform the customer that incident information has been updated, deliver this information, and then ask the customer if they are satisfied or still need to speak to a call centre agent.

What does this mean?

Well firstly, it means the customer gets the information they need with a minimal investment of time.

Secondly, Qantas wins as it means they deliver automated information to customers and prevent each and every customer hitting the call centre looking for information.

I can see this being a real winner for Qantas, particularly among their regular customers. Most of us understand the demands of running a modern airline and most of us get the system so this really is a case of Qantas developing the system so that we can use the system to help them help us.