PETALING JAYA: Against the onslaught of the Covid-19-fuelled disruption, the aviation industry has borne the brunt of the impact, as the clockwork mechanism of air travel has been thrown into disarray with an ever-evolving set of challenges and restrictions.
In the wake of the pandemic, AirAsia’s chief customer happiness officer, Adam Geneave (pix), identified the influx of queries and requests due to flight cancellations as the main challenge in managing customer expectations.
“Another challenge was to monitor and immediately adapt our customer service strategy to reflect the ever changing nature of the pandemic – including increased travel restrictions and international border closures affecting all of our markets throughout Southeast Asia and Asia Pacific,” he told SunBiz.
Incidentally, in January 2019 the carrier launched its artificial intelligence-pow-ered chatbot, AirAsia Virtual Allstar (AVA), which sup-ports 15 languages and man-ages up to 25,000 queries simul-taneously. Geneave commented that AVA has proven to be an incredible support throughout this turbulent period as it successfully handled and resolved around 80% of requests.
From January to July this year, the chatbot has handled over 34 million queries, a fivefold increase over the same period of last year, while the remaining 20%, of the more complex queries were handled by agents.
He said with the announcement of AirAsia’s fleet hibernation in March due to Covid-19, queries skyrocketed to 11.2 million.
At the same time, just like any other airline, the low-cost carrier faced the challenge of managing a huge volume of refund and credit requests resulting from the pandemic-borne disruption.
“By the end of July, we managed to process over 73% of all refund requests – either through cash refund or credit account, which is about 3.5 million cases in total,” the chief customer happiness officer said.
Geneave disclosed that refunds were only available in certain circumstances and required a lot longer to process due to a lengthy review and bank processing time frame which could take up to 16 weeks during the peak of the refund period.
To provide immediate support, AirAsia worked to offer its customers a same-day credit account as a solution with an extended validity period of two years from issuance date, which has been made available since June.
Since the option was made available in June, Geneave has been pleased with the reception as a majority of its customers understand the extreme circumstances.
“This was the best solution to balance the needs of our guests wanting an immediate response, and also for the business, as we work hard towards resuming services in the future and continuing to provide the best value airfares so everyone is able to fly once again.”
Geneave highlighted that another challenge AirAsia has been facing is maintaining a prompt and effective line of communication between its customers and stakeholders regarding the ever changing developments in travel requirements imposed by governments.
In this fluid environment, AirAsia’s customer happiness, ground operations as well as regulatory affairs and communications teams keep each other abreast of the latest requirements imposed by the government and health organisations around the world, in order to pass the right message to its customers immediately.
The carrier regularly issues travel advisories to the media for important updates, communicates directly to affected passengers and updates its online presence and social media channels to keep customers informed of any latest development.
It also meets frequently with consumer authorities and regulators across its network to ensure the communication channels are open during these challenging times.
For the future, the chief customer happiness officer saiud AirAsia’s in-house developers are constantly looking to improve AVA to enhance its user experience.
On this front, he pointed out that it has made the chatbot available on WhatsApp in addition to its website, Facebook messenger and Wechat. The carrier is looking to include Line and Viber messaging applications which are prominent in specific markets.
AirAsia is also looking to enhance the single-sign-on capability of AVA, allowing customers to log on to their BIG Member account once on their respective device for the AI to recognise their name, flight bookings and other details.
“This will add greater convenience for guests. Once logged in, AVA will be able to instantly retrieve necessary information required for most of our guests requests, cutting down current processes where our guests might be asked to insert their flight booking number and other information.
“Low cost doesn’t mean low customer service. Innovation and continual improvement is critical in times of crisis,” said Geneave.
