customer service and customer satisfaction · amadeus global report 2016 6. customer service and...

Amadeus Global Report 2016A business, financial and sustainability overview

Customer service and customer

satisfaction

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Amadeus Global Report 2016 6. Customer service and customer satisfaction > 6.1 Customer service70

6.1 Customer service

Amadeus Customer Service develops and delivers a wide range of learning, support, automation, content and security management services to meet the needs of its customers. This team of professionals helps our customers to succeed by:

_Helping customers understand, train in and use Amadeus solutions

_Providing the highest level of functional and technical support

_Securing and integrating travel industry content

_Offering related consultingCustomer service and customer

satisfaction

6.1 Customer service6.2 Customer satisfaction and loyalty

6Our main focus areas

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Amadeus Global Report 2016 6. Customer service and customer satisfaction > 6.1 Customer service 71

Amadeus Customer Service’s vision is ‘To provide the best customer service experience in our customers’ eyes.’ This is achieved by continually challenging the status quo to meet evolving customer needs, and developing and improving performance in areas such as:

_Service excellence and service evolution: empowerment of customers via the enhanced offer of online self-service support and learning

_Reduction of incident resolution time thanks to performance monitoring and proactive communication

_Amadeus Critical Incident Centre: notification of airline customers on critical incidents and on progress of the resolution. Deployment to other customer segments is planned for 2017

_Amadeus Learning Centre of Excellence: evolution of customised training adapted to customer needs and online training offers

_Consulting: evolution of consulting services on content management and security, in addition to continuously improving our training offer

Customer service locations

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In order to ensure customer proximity, we have a strong local, regional and global presence.

_Level 1 customer support is provided to our Distribution customers locally in each market by the Amadeus Commercial Organisations. Customers have the support close to them, in the local language and with knowledge of market-specific products. Airlines can opt for an in-house helpdesk or outsource Level 1 support to our Amadeus Customer Service experts.

_Level 2 support is provided by the Amadeus Service Management Centres, which build a virtual support network distributed across our centres in Sydney, San José, Nice, Erding, Bangalore, Bangkok, London, Miami and Dallas. We continue to develop our footprint by opening new Amadeus Management Service Centres close to our customers’ locations.

For our local customers, we offer functional support outside of business hours through our Regional Service Centres in Buenos Aires, San José, Johannesburg, Manila and Kuala Lumpur.

For global customers, Amadeus has a ‘follow-the sun’ service that provides seamless 24/7 coverage from Amadeus Service Management Centres. Its structure aims to guarantee technical and functional support at any time for all our customers worldwide.

_Level 3 support. In 2016, Amadeus Customer Service established a specialised technical support team bringing together R&D developers and quality assurance professionals. The synergies of their expertise allow for continual improvement of the investigation and recovery of non-code-related incidents in complex areas. The team will contribute to customer satisfaction by minimising resolution time, reducing R&D incident backlogs and improving the accuracy of responses. Our Customer Service engineers are already on board with the goal to resolve up to 90% of incidents without further escalating to R&D for a solution. Today Level 3 covers a wide range of functional areas for airline customers (schedule and flight operations, e-commerce, seating, ticketing documents and Passenger Name Record queues).

Amadeus support services

Support services: we are always there for our customers

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We anticipate customers’ needsA team of technical analysts is dedicated to reducing the incident resolution time at Amadeus Global Operations. It monitors business performance to detect major issues before customers report them, correlates incidents to changes, drives recovery efforts, anticipates the impact of incidents and proactively communicates this to customers in order to ensure their business continuity. Since the creation of this team in 2015, the results on the Mean Time To Recover for major business incidents has been significantly reduced. Additionally, the team has improved communication with customers, allowing them to make faster business decisions by reducing the time it takes for them to receive critical incident notifications, from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. This is done via the Amadeus Critical Incidents Centre online portal.

We contribute to continuous improvementWe use valuable information collected from our customers in order to better respond to their needs. Amadeus Customer Service helps to re-inject the voice of the customer back into the organisation. Its objectives: to avoid where possible any recurring issues, to proactively propose consulting services and to work with the Amadeus Account Teams to help customers succeed.

In order to ensure that our customers receive the training they need to make the best possible use of our technology, Amadeus Customer Service delivers training on the full suite of Amadeus solutions.

Training is provided online via our e-learning catalogue, and is also available via classrooms and webinars. We ensure easy access to learning information via online help, user guides, videos, games and practice exercises.

Thanks to our global, regional and local training presence, we adapt to customers’ needs. Training experts are based in six locations: Nice, Antwerp, London, Frankfurt, Bangkok and Dallas. Customised options are also available.

Whenever possible, we deliver training in local languages, including for example French, German and Korean. Amadeus Commercial Organisations also provide a range of training to travel agencies in local languages.

We provide a comprehensive range of standard training courses (product functional training, sales training). Furthermore, we adapt to customers’ needs by offering customised training on a global basis to support specific requirements and special training situations.

We have established the Amadeus Learning Centre of Excellence, aiming to provide a more tailored offer of learning solutions with the focus on:

_Developing and delivering customised and bespoke training

_More hands-on practice and scenarios

_Providing training consulting

_Supporting our customers’ training strategy plans for end users

Learning services

See ‘Global operations’, p. 60.

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The Amadeus Content Management and Security teams ensure content quality and Level 3 customer support activities for reservations, inventory, ticketing and data load, as well as security and access management. The teams provide worldwide and centralised security administration for Amadeus employees and customers. The activities cover the integration, implementation and security of all travel industry content, ranging from schedules, fares, currencies and airport codes to security settings for offices, terminals and printers, as well as credentials for employees and new customers.

Content management and security

These data management experts ensure that appropriate, reliable and accurate content is available for our customers 24/7. Their core business knowledge allows them to provide expertise on a wide range of products and domains, and they are the dedicated entry point for external data providers.

The experts analyse customer issues and provide recommendations through tailored services such as on-site customer training, data reports or filing on behalf of customers. One of the key services in this scope is consulting on how to make the best of Amadeus solutions.


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Our online presence is key to supporting our strategy. We develop innovative self-service solutions to empower our customers and grant them the independence they need with our online support and learning tools.

The Amadeus e-Support Centre provides 24/7 access to a range of support and learning materials in 17 different languages. This knowledge base provides a powerful search function, case and claims logging capabilities, real-time news and other features. Today, more than 210,000 users – including retail and online travel agencies, airlines, ground handlers, airports and hotels – are serviced online via the Amadeus e-Support Centre. Customers can also access product user guides online, short ‘how-to’ videos, e-learning courses and training catalogues, and can self-enrol on training programmes.

In 2016, we introduced the Amadeus Service Hub, an online portal that brings new enhancements in multisearch through Amadeus knowledge repositories, the Amadeus Critical Incident Centre and the Amadeus Airline Self-Service tools (e.g. customer dashboard).

Amadeus is working on the development of new engaging online services1 which, among other things, intend to automate specific notifications to customers, make the learning experience more enjoyable and share knowledge among customers:

_Amadeus Critical Incident Centre: by automating the notifications to airline customers and updating them with valid information on the resolution of their critical incidents. The solution will be soon extended to the rest of our customer groups.

_Amadeus Kingdom: we have launched a game to learn more about Amadeus’ solutions, functionalities and our industry. Amadeus Kingdom is a mobile gamification application that enables users to play against each other, gain credits and contribute to the pool of questions.

_Publicly accessible content: 4,000+ knowledge solutions are available publicly via internet search engines.

_User-help-user community: customer forum to leverage knowledge sharing among customers.

_User-generated content: Amadeus Service Hub is a customisable platform where customers can upload their own content.

Boosting our online presence

1 Services depending on market availability: customer forums, games and user-generated content.

The initiatives to improve the distribution customer service experience are managed by the implementation project SENSE – Service Excellence and Service Evolution. The project aims to empower customers to find the right service at the right time in order to enhance their operational efficiency.

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Amadeus Global Report 2016 6. Customer service and customer satisfaction > 6.2 Customer satisfaction and loyalty76

6.2 Customer satisfaction and loyalty

Listening to our customers and understanding the different needs of travel providers and sellers is critical to our company.

At Amadeus we are aware that customers’ business needs and challenges are constantly evolving. Therefore, we have built a Voice of the Customer program that monitors customer satisfaction and then evolves in order to open new feedback channels between customers and Amadeus.

The mechanisms to gather customer feedback and measure customer satisfaction vary slightly across business lines in order to adapt to the characteristics of each segment and market. Nevertheless, there is a consistent process structured around

the Net Promoter Score methodology. Targets are set in order to reflect Amadeus’ customer loyalty strategy. Then, once customer satisfaction has been measured, results are communicated both internally and externally to customers. Finally, action plans are defined and implemented.

The main purpose of Amadeus’ Voice of the Customer program is to transform customer feedback into insights that the business units and functions across Amadeus can use to improve our performance. Then, we can measure the impact of these actions in the following round of customer satisfaction surveys.

Amadeus Executive Briefing Centre at Bangkok.

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Amadeus Global Report 2016 6. Customer service and customer satisfaction > 6.2 Customer satisfaction and loyalty 77

The Amadeus Customer Loyalty Programme is one of the elements assessed in the evaluation process for the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI).

In 2016, Amadeus scored in the 93rd percentile of its sector in the Customer Relationship Management section of the questionnaire, meaning that Amadeus scored better than 93% of the companies in the same sector. For the question on customer satisfaction, Amadeus was evaluated on the following criteria:

_Level of customer satisfaction and its long-term evolution

_Percentage of customers covered by the programme Amadeus provided details on the satisfaction levels over the past four years, scope of customers covered, quantitative objectives for the year and external communication of objectives and results.

Dow Jones Sustainability Index

Customer satisfaction in 2016In 2016, Amadeus executed satisfaction surveys for five customer segments. This year we focused on piloting new approaches to customer feedback collection and on making sure that the survey results were widely communicated across the company.

There are certain key customer satisfaction drivers across all customer segments:

_Quality and reliability of Amadeus solutions, which is a reflection of Amadeus’ focus on research and development

_Relationship with account management teams, which highlights Amadeus’ staff engagement

For areas with potential for improvement, action plans are defined with the goal of establishing specific measures that will improve customer satisfaction.

As an example, based on customer feedback, Amadeus has put in place several initiatives with the aim of improving tools and processes when resolving airline incidents. The goal of these initiatives is to improve customer experience when interacting with Amadeus support. Another example would be Amadeus Airport IT. Based on the 2015 satisfaction survey, this unit has deployed initiatives to improve customer experience through enhancing administrative processes and post-implementation support.

See ‘Environmental sustainability’, p. 100.

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customer service and customer satisfaction · amadeus global report 2016 6. customer service and...

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