Improve Customer Satisfaction with Speech Recognition: Dubai Airport Success Story

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Improve Customer Satisfaction with Speech
Recognition Dubai Airport Success Story

• Abdul Salam Abujaber, PMP
• Development Manager, Dubai Airports

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Todays Agenda

• Dubai Airports Project Background
• Flight information project
• Benefits to DAC
• Reports
• Project Issues and Lessons learned
• Speech in Travel Industry
• Simply Speak! approach
• Q As

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Dubai Airport 1959
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Dubai Airport 2009
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Strategic Pillars of Dubai Airports
- enabling growth and prosperity - enhancing
global standing
Managing the Worlds Leading Airports
Providing capacity to meet airline and economic
growth plans
Providing a safe, secure and responsible airport
environment
Delivering world class service and innovation
Competent people thriving in a great place to work
All underpinned by - effective systems and
processes - sound corporate governance and
reporting
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Dubai Airport Statistics
FAST FACTS
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Dubai Airports Passenger Traffic
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DAC Scene

• DAC Profile
• Best Airport in Middle East 2009
• Received 50 awards over the last 10 years.
• One of the top 10 largest airports in the world
• 6th busiest airport in the world by international
  passenger traffic, 2008
• Growing at an average of 10-15 annually
• Call Center Challenges
• Massive growth in customer traffic resulting high
  call volume (15 average)
• Increase customer satisfaction without adding
  more staff and efficiently handle all the
  incoming calls
• Provide better customer experience by simplifying
  the complex touchtone IVR system (Flight codes,
  125 airlines, 205 cities)

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Why The Change?

• 92 of all customer
• interactions happen over the phone

• Revenues from voice-driven
• services should grow to
• approximately 27 billion

Studies show that 80 of the callers encountering
DTMF systems will quit or select to transfer to
an operator. This rate drops to 20 using
speech-enabled systems.
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Why Speech Technology?

• Unsatisfied Customers
• Touchtone menus score relatively low
• Customers face difficulty in entering flight
  numbers using touch tone
• Customers need to remember flight numbers,
  3-letter city codes etc

• Dramatically improve the customer experience
• Speech is a more intuitive interface
• Speech flattens menu
• Easy to use 205 cities, 120 airlines
• Facilitates hands-free usage

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Business Case
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Flight Information Project

• 60 ports Bilingual Speech System
• Flight information
• Arrival Departure Schedule
• Transfer to operator
• Invisible agent assistance (Agent desktop app.)
• XML integration to UFIS
• Reports

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Speech IVR map call treatment
Flight Information 04-216-6666
English / Arabic
Flight Number, Arrival or Departure ?
Arrival
Flight Number
Departure
Confirmation
Airport Flight Coming From
Airport Flight Going to
Play Flight Schedule
Confirmation
Confirmation
Play Flight Schedule
Yes/No
Another schedule
More flights Same route
Good Bye
Play Flight Schedule
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Project Plan

• 79-day project lifetime
• Key Deliverables BRD, Call Flow, Prompts,
  Recordings, Manuals, Training, etc
• Launched officially during GITEX 2006

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Flight Information
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Benefits to DAC

• Significantly increased customer satisfaction
• Improved call handling levels from 8,000 to
  10,000 calls on average per day
• Handled efficiently the high call volume
• Reduced the average call duration from 3 to 1.5
  minutes
• Lowered the staff operating costs
• Scaled down the staff count from 13 to 5 live
  agents
• Increased call center efficiency
• Reduced the average hold time
• Agents are available whenever needed
• Provided the call center to support 15 annual
  growth

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Cost Savings
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Speech IVR Reports Statistics
2008
2007
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Arabic vs English Calls
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Project Findings Lessons Learned

• Incorporated Flight number input in the design
  later
• PBX-IVR issue, some channels were not receiving
  calls
• System not receiving up-to-date Flight schedule
  data
• Risk Register helped for successful project
  delivery on time, within budget, and meeting our
  standards of Quality

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Improve Customer Satisfaction with Speech
Recognition Dubai Airport Success Story

• Sassine Mazraani
• CEO, Emerging Technologies

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Global Deployments - Travel
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Emerging Technologies Simply Speak!

• Your customers can now make inquiries or
  transactions over the phone by simply speaking
  their requests. There is no need anymore to press
  buttons or wait for a live agent to become
  available.
• Simply Speak! allows businesses to
• Automate Transactions
• Eliminate Customer Frustration
• RESULT?
• HAPPY CUSTOMERS

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Business Benefits of Speech

• COST SAVINGS
• Reduce High Agent Costs
• Reduce Call duration
• Eliminate call hold times
• ROI in 4 to 6 months
• INCREASE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
• Eliminate customer frustration
• Improve caller experience
• Available 24 x 7
• DIFFERENTIATE FROM COMPETITION
• Deliver excellent service
• Extend company brand (new modern look)
• GENERATE REVENUE
• Free agents to upsell/cross sell
• Introduce new services

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Top Industry Applications

• Flight Information Arrival Departure
• Reservation
• Fare Inquiries Seat availability
• Itinerary Confirmation
• Frequent Flyer Program
• Help Desk Lost Baggage
• Employee Travel Bookings
• Employee Schedule Inquiries

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Thank You

• Q As