Glasgow simulation software specialist, Simul8, has partnered with Air Canada to help the airline streamline its call centre systems and improve customer experience.
Through the international partnership, Air Canada is using Simul8’s advanced simulation software to optimise its customer care lines, reduce call wait times, improve call routing and prioritisation and optimise the telephony platform to handle spikes in call volumes during busy periods.
As Air Canada’s global contact centre operation has grown and evolved, the airline accumulated several different telephony systems from a range of providers. These disparate systems were impacting service. With around 25,000 telephone calls coming into the contact centre daily, long wait times and unanswered calls were leaving customers hanging. Air Canada reached out to Simul8.
Kieran Hurley, programme manager – contact centre IT at Air Canada said: “Simul8 came in and went well above all of our expectations. They helped us to build the tool and then run simulations. By leveraging a custom-made simulation-powered digital twin, we were able to rightsize our systems prior to committing to a full migration. I cannot thank Simul8 enough.”
The advanced simulation-powered digital twin worked to replicate Air Canada’s call routing system and here the airline could perform tests and optimisation in a safe digital space that accurately reflected real world demand. For example, looking at how the system would cope if there was an influx of customer calls due to bad weather and cancelled flights. This not only ensured a smooth transition to the new system, but it also brought great improvements in the overall service.
Operating from a centralised telephony platform, customers can now call into the switchboard from a single number and have their queries ordered by priority and answered accordingly. This marks a significant improvement from Air Canada’s previous compartmentalised systems. Following the roll out of the new systems, the airline received zero customer complaints, and zero internal business complaints from the team.
Tom Stephenson, director of services and strategic partnerships at Simul8 said: “This challenge required a rapid response to ensure that there would be no further impact on customers while the migration took place. Our consulting team is very familiar with the inner workings of contact centres so we were able to take some fundamental building blocks for a digital twin in this setting and fine tune them to Air Canada’s requirements without any delay.”
