Is technology improving airline customer service?

The pandemic was a
tipping point for the role of technology in airline customer service. The huge
rise in service requests and complaints caused by the virtual shutdown of
global travel, coupled with travel companies furloughing staff, meant that technological
solutions had to step forward.

Customer service
requests have grown since the pandemic. A survey of 4,800 travelers by
Teleperformance in 2022 found that passengers had contacted airlines 23% more often
than before COVID.

The survey also found
that while phone and email are still the most popular ways for customers to
contact airline customer support services, using a mobile app is now the third
most popular channel with 20% of respondents having used an app-based service
and 16% having contacted an airline via social media.

The survey also found
age differences. It said younger millennial and Gen Z customers were more
likely to favor instant messaging, social media, mobile apps, video and
automated chat services to older demographics and that airlines needed to
prepare for this.

In line with these
findings, in November 2022, Frontier Airlines said it was to stop offering
customer service by phone.

Airline spokesperson Jennifer DeLaCruz said at the time, “We have found that most customers prefer
communicating via digital channels.”

Policy change

Yet the airline
reversed the policy this year. It now once again offers live phone support for
members of the airline’s Frontier Miles loyalty program and passengers who have
traveled within the past 24 hours or are intending to travel in the next 24. A
callback service is offered for passengers traveling outside this window.

DeLaCruz told
Phocuswire, “While the majority of customer service inquiries are easily
handled via our online chat option, we know there are times when people need or
prefer live phone support and we have implemented changes to make that support
much more readily and easily available. Live support via online chat continues
to be available to all customers, regardless of travel date.”

In July, a United Kingdom consumer rights watchdog, Which, said airlines were the third worst
performing sector for customer service, only slightly ahead of utility
companies. The worst performer was delivery companies. 

Which said that in its survey of more than 4,000 airline passengers, 41% had contacted an
airline in the last year with at least one problem with customer services and that that low-cost
European carriers Wizz Air and Ryanair were among the worst culprits for poor
service. Wizz Air received a satisfaction rating of +13 for overall
customer service, 39 points behind the sector average of +52. Ryanair scored
+28.

Airline technology
provider Amadeus said that one of the frustrations of today’s airline customer
service is that it can be hard to identify passengers across different
touchpoints, meaning repeated verification is necessary. 

“Not only do
passengers find this annoying, as they constantly have to provide the same
information only to start from scratch again, but it also hinders airlines’
ability to deliver personalized experiences across multiple channels,” said Meg
O’Keefe, vice president airline solutions product and portfolio at Amadeus. 

Amadeus believes its Nevio airline platform that integrates traveler
experience management alongside other modules can help overcome this.

Nevio, whose users
include Saudia and Finnair, uses open technology to access an existing
ecosystem of business partners offering real-time data and uses AI to leverage
customer preferences.

O’Keefe said this
would allow the airline, for example, to offer a passenger who has previously
shown an interest in lounge access and been disrupted on an earlier flight,
discounted lounge access using a
previously saved payment method, improving the customer experience but also
giving the airline a revenue opportunity.

In 2019, Air Canada
implemented Amadeus’ Passenger Recovery system to help automate the rebooking
of passengers in the event of disruption. Previously, it took the airline’s
staff around 10 minutes to rebook each passenger; it now takes around five
minutes to reaccommodate an entire flight with passengers offered a range of
rebooking options within half an hour in the event of cancelation.

When a powerful
snowstorm hit the Maritimes province in eastern Canada in February this year,
the airline used Passenger Recovery to rebook 11,500 travelers, and less than
10% required manual intervention, improving customer satisfaction and reducing
the resources required by the airline to manage the incident.

Chatbots on the rise

AI chatbots are rising
in usage but customers still prefer human interactions in 77% of cases, the
Teleperformance survey found.

Yet the rise of AI
chatbots holds potential pitfalls for airlines.

In November 2022, Air
Canada customer Jake Moffatt booked a flight following the death of a family
member. While making the reservation, Moffat used Air Canada’s chatbot to ask
about bereavement fares 

In its reply, the
chatbot said that if a passenger had already traveled following a bereavement,
they could apply for a reduced bereavement rate retrospectively. Moffatt booked
the higher rate fare. Later in a conversation with an airline representative he
was told that the airline did not permit such applications and that the full
fare would be charged, at the same time admitting that the chatbot’s words were
misleading. Unable to reach a compromise with the carrier, Moffatt filed a case
with a small claims tribunal for the difference in fares.

In the case, the
airline argued that it could not be held liable for information provided by one
of its agents, servants, or representatives — including a chatbot. 

In his judgment,
tribunal member Christopher C. Rivers, said, “While a chatbot has an
interactive component, it is still just a part of Air Canada’s website. It
should be obvious to Air Canada that it is responsible for all the information
on its website. It makes no difference whether the information comes from a
static page or a chatbot.”

The airline was forced
to pay Moffatt $812 in damages, interest and fees. 

Air passenger rights
advocate Gábor Lukács said, “Air Canada cannot walk away from its
responsibility to passengers and cannot use creative contractual drafting to
evade liability.”

Hybrid future

The future may
therefore be a hybrid approach, perhaps like the one taken by technology provider
Cielo, which said it has developed what it calls “the world’s first monetization
engine for customer service” It uses advanced technology “to keep humans
(and empathy) at the center of customer service.”

Its FastLane product
lets callers to airline call centers pay a small fee or subscription to skip to
the front of the call line, for example. The model could also mean additional ancillary revenue for airlines.

With customer service
requests rising and technology not yet delivering on its potential, hybrid may
be here to stay.