The rising use of online tools for passengers to manage their flight reservations, such as airline websites, social media platforms, chatbots, and even WhatsApp, has pushed several Southeast Asian low-cost carriers to phase out call centres in their home countries and redeploy their customer service agents elsewhere.
One such carrier is Cebu Pacific of the Philippines, which announced in mid-April 2021 that it will discontinue the use of its Philippines-based call centre numbers from 1 May, urging passengers to utilise the airline’s website or a chatbot named Charlie to manage their flight reservations.
While the two-week notice might appear abrupt to many, the carrier’s vice-president for marketing and customer experience, Candice Iyog, tells us the transition to a fully-digital support was a manageable one.
“We observed that in the first quarter of 2021, 87% of our passengers used Cebu Pacific’s website to directly book flights. Along with this, 67% were able to conveniently manage their bookings online when there were flight disruptions. This suggests that a suitable number of customers are ready for the transition to a fully-digital support,” says Iyog.
“While there were mixed feedback about chatbot Charlie as passengers took some time to adjust, we made use of these valuable inputs to ensure that we continuously improve his conversation design and logic. Through the live agent surveys, guest feedback helps us determine opportunities for better user experience.”
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/CebuPacificAir/status/1391694605096308737
Cebu Pacific also provides support via its Facebook and Twitter accounts, while those in China can utilise its WeChat “mini programs” tool, a “mini-application” built within the WeChat platform.
In filtering genuine requests made on social media, Iyog points to its customer relationship management tool, which has the automation capability to “filter, prioritise, and route customer concerns faster”.
“Common transactions that are not prioritised and routed are social posts with mentions, and these are automatically handled by the system and does not require agent handling. There is also an additional layer of checking done by the agents to determine if the message requires action from Cebu Pacific. Cases that do not require action are tagged separately for tracking,” says Iyog.
Shukor Yusof, an independent analyst at Endau Analytics, tells us that one of the advantages in using chatbots or social media for assistance is the faster response times experienced from its round-the-clock availability, as compared to calling a service hotline or visiting the sales office.
“Sometimes people are not comfortable talking to another person and prefer to type it out, and you can get [a near] immediate response,” says Shukor.
He also mentions the use of digital tools can benefit passengers and carriers greatly.
Shukor also suggests that using digital tools will educate users and improve the experience of booking a flight, while also reducing costs — including in the number of staff required.
To streamline its operations and processes, Cebu Pacific is implementing multiple initiatives. This includes cashless transactions for catering, electronic records management and logbook for its engineering and maintenance work, and enabling self-service check-in using airline-issued digital boarding pass.
This builds on the carrier’s digital innovation efforts, where in 2017 it began to implement electronic flight bags, established a customer command centre, and provided its ground staff with iPads to facilitate check-in operations.
As for the impact that Covid-19 has had on the airline’s digital innovation plans, Iyog says: “The pandemic provided us with a window to evaluate and improve where possible. We were able to accelerate various digital solutions for our passengers [and] employees. It is [also] necessary to keep abreast [of our] customers’ needs so that we can properly address them with feasible solutions”.
For airlines that remain adamant with their old ways, Shukor ends with a warning: “A lot of new technology and applications have been pushed through by the aviation industry, and that’s going to continue. Airlines that are stuck living in the past will be consigned to the past.”
Author: Firdaus Hashim
Published: 2nd September 2021
Photo credit: Cebu Pacific
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