Etihad Airways raises the bar for customer service with Power Virtual Agents

Etihad Airways connects the central Abu Dhabi hub to hundreds of passenger and cargo destinations across the world. For Etihad Airways, innovation is the driving force to make this happen. “We want to be the airline of choice. This means high-response rate and accuracy of delivery is highly required, or in other words, superior customer service to all our customers,” says Gilles Jean Mascaras, Head of Product-Digital Transformation at Etihad Airways.

To serve its clients across multiple channels, Etihad Airways deployed Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service at the start of the pandemic. “We had to deal with a rise in customer queries, duplicate cases from the same users across multiple channels, and a growing expectation of instant support,” explains Lamia Hassan Mohamed, Senior Social Media Manager at Etihad Airways. “There were also a lot of new or quickly changing travel regulations. Customers were having trouble staying informed,” adds Senthil Nadar, Digital Solutions Delivery Lead at Etihad Airways. The team needed to manage the influx of customer enquiries and constantly changing regulations more effectively.

Implemented with flying colors

Etihad Airways used Microsoft Power Virtual Agents to build a chatbot that would enable customers to get instant answers to their questions. The chatbot would also save time by allowing customers to submit all the necessary information before requesting to talk to an agent.

“Microsoft Power Platform solutions offered good functionality when launching the services, allowing us to customize the tools and adapt the feel of the product as needed,” adds Nadar. The team was able to develop and launch the service in just four months. “At the start, our knowledge was limited, so we partnered with Microsoft to deliver the chatbot. Over time, we built up our skills, and now I’m proud to say we are now in a much stronger position.”

“The bot freed our agents up so they could focus on more complicated cases. It not only improved our productivity but reduced customer calls as they could resolve their issues via the bot. Overall, it tapered our costs,” says Nadar. “Once the chatbot was live, we realized we could extend it by feeding new information to service other areas such as refunds, cancellations or booking. The good thing about a tool like this is you can serve millions of customers at the same time. It’s scalable,” adds Mohamed.  

In February 2022, the chatbot successfully served 52 percent of customers, and keeps continuously self-learning through AI technology. “The average waiting time has been drastically reduced. Our reports show that user experience has improved,” says Nadar. The results speak for themselves: the company’s NPS rose, winning Etihad Airways the Stevie Awards in 2021. 

“We plan to expand our live chat and chatbot services, making them available in more markets and languages. Looking ahead, what would make our customers even happier are proactive triggers—human assistance whenever they encounter an issue on the website,” says Mohamed. “We also want to enable the same chatbot experience on social media channels,” adds Nadar.

“Our goal is to serve incoming enquiries in a sustainable way by leveraging all the tools we have at our disposal. We were therefore happy to work on building this digital landscape up so that we can continue to deliver the high level of customer service that our customers expect from us,” Mohamed concludes.