Finnair is renowned as one of the safest, longest-operating and most innovative airlines in the world.
With a complex route network connecting Asia, North America and the northern regions of Europe and beyond through its hub at Helsinki Airport, and a total of 60,000 monthly contacts, Finnair was looking to improve the efficiency of its customer service team, and increase focus on its online sales channel.
The challenge
In 2014, Finnair found itself in a complicated situation. Its team was keen to provide excellent customer service and reach a customer satisfaction score of 4.4 or above, but it was also painfully aware of the costs associated with phone and email service channels.
Meanwhile, its web traffic was on the rise, and its customers were eager to book flights, make changes and access flight information, pressuring Finnair to make its service more convenient for online customers.
After reviewing several software providers, Finnair decided to partner with giosg – a provider of artificial intelligence (AI) -powered live chat that integrates with chatbots to help businesses engage more successfully with online visitors – to take advantage of its user-friendly interface, agility, and minimal need for IT support.
The solution
Finnair now uses a sophisticated live chat function to offer its online visitors prompt and personalised resolutions to queries no matter what channel they are using.
Using the “Rules” function of the software package, the Finnair team is now able to identify a visitor with intentions to contact customer service and automatically display a chat window, promising to help visitors before they even need to email or pick up the phone.
Finnair also worked with giosg to identify problematic areas on its self-service sites, where visitors often got lost or confused. For these situations, Finnair set rules to proactively open the chat discussion, so the visitor wouldn’t leave the site with a bad experience.
But, because no two queries are the same, Finnair introduced a chat button on every page of its site (excluding its homepage), allowing its web visitors a chance to call upon its customer service team whenever customers needed to.
Giosg chief executive officer, Ville Rissanen (pictured above) said: “Finnair was really able to tailor what it needed from giosg’s Live Chat to suit the exact needs and requirements of its customers, and transform its customer support offering.”
The outcome
Finnair now employs 12-15 of its most knowledgeable service agents to man its different chats every day.
Using giosg’s powerful, easy-to-use software tools, Finnair now processes more than 16,000 of its monthly contacts through live chat. Plus, all Finnair chat agents can manage at least three to five chats or queries simultaneously, with its best agents capable of resolving up to seven simultaneous discussions.
Thanks to the proactivity of the display chat windows, calls to the Finnair support team have decreased, and with its ability to handle multiple service cases at once, Finnair has been able to streamline its services significantly, shutting down several old email channels.
Finnair aims to respond to every chat message in fewer than 10 seconds, with a 70% resolution rate achieved across all its live chats. This has established chat to be the fastest and most convenient way for customers to reach Finnair and have queries resolved.
Plus, giosg allows Finnair’s service agents to see which page, flight route and ticket class a given visitor is looking at, meaning its team is constantly up to speed with visitor situations.
Finnair service manager, Satu Karaksela said: “Our agents love the swimlane-view of the giosg console. They are constantly up to speed with what routes and ticket class the visitor is looking at and can adjust their service accordingly.”
Rissanen added: “We’re devoted to empowering organisations with our interaction tools – giosg Live Chat and our AI-powered giosg Target which help our clients engage more successfully with their online visitors in order to build stronger, more successful relationships.”
