Air-Calédonie makes time fly with Qmatic

Air-Calédonie’s integration with Qmatic managed to reduced wait time from 5 hours to 2 minutes.

As part of Air-Calédonie’s offering, permanent residents of the Loyalty Islands and Isle of Pines are entitled to apply for Air-Calédonie’s Continuité Pays Card. The Continuité Pays Card enables permanent residents to purchase 5 return flights and 8 boat return tickets at a preferential rate along with other beneficial offers. In order to keep the membership, residents must renew the card annually in January.

Due to limitations, the airline could only issue a limited amount of 80 Continuité Pays Cards per day to its customers’. The situation needed a specific solution that limited the number of tickets to correspond with the maximum number of cards available during each day. In the beginning of January, hundreds of customers were waiting outside the different branches for the agencies to open. As soon as the agencies opened, 80 tickets were distributed, where the 80^th person in line had more than 5 hours of waiting time in front of them. Air-Calédonie needed to improve the situation to raise customer satisfaction and improve the work environment for its employees’. The airline relied on Qmatic Orchestra to create an appointment solution for the issuance of its Continuité Pays Card.

Upgrading from Solo Orchestra

The existing Qmatic Solo systems that were deployed at the different agencies were upgraded and integrated with Qmatic Orchestra. This allowed the airline to set up multi-service appointments straightaway. The multi-service option made it possible for customers to both issue a new Continuité Pays Card and purchase a flight ticket at the same time. Service agents were now able to add a ticket sale procedure, which enhanced the customer journey by connecting customers to more services and streamlined the workflow.

Today, customers can book appointments with Air-Calédonie either by phone or directly at an agency. The staff members manage the appointments through the Appointment Booking application from Qmatic Orchestra, which improves the efficiency and the customer experience by matching availability of competency. This makes it possible for Air-Calédonie to provide the best quality of service to their customers’ before they arrive to the agency. It also reduces the time spent waiting by the customer, which has a positive impact on the overall customer service experience.

The solution also enables the agent to send a confirmation of the customer appointment via SMS through Qmatic Message Services. The system was configured to send 2 reminders via SMS. The first SMS is sent 24h before the appointment and the second 3 hours before the appointment starts. When the customers later arrive to an agency for an appointment, they can either check-in through Qmatic self-service kiosk with a code or at the reception.

24,000 card appointments in a year

The upgrade to Qmatic enterprise solution Orchestra 7 undoubtedly made a tremendous impact for the customers and staff members of Air-Calédonie. In 2019, the airline issued 24,000 card appointments from its three main agencies. Customers that had previously waited for 5 hours in 2018, only waited 2 minutes in 2019, which resulted in a 98% reduction in waiting time. By transforming the customer experience, Air-Calédonie is now able to provide a fast and effortless customer journey that results in high levels of satisfaction from customers and staff members.

The management of Air-Calédonie now uses Qmatic Orchestra’s business intelligence (BI) module to generate comprehensive, up-to-date insights to find out how well their operations are working. For instance, the information gathered from BI have demonstrated an attendance rate of 71% for all booked appointments.

What’s next for Air-Calédonie?

Air-Calédonie is already looking to improve the customer experience by potentially integrating Qmatic's Online Appointment Booking to their website allow customers to schedule appointments online and smoothly move from check-in to service.

"Our clients are now able to make appointments at their convenience and doesn't have to wait anylonger, and there are no more queues in front of the agencies at the beginning of the year"

Marion Gentelet, Commercial Director, Air-Calédonie

A seamless patient flow

Although many healthcare institutions use Qmatic’s services to manage outpatient flows, the ADRZ has chosen to optimize all patient flows. “Including the clinical flow – Qmatic appears to be able to provide outstanding support in this area. In the past, patients were admitted in the morning. As soon as their OR program started, they became care-dependent, with all the medical attention that entails. But this is not necessary, certainly not in the case of minor operations. We have now opted to admit these people to an OR lounge. They check in at the Qmatic kiosk and are invited to go to the OR lounge, where the admission takes place and they can change clothes. Then they walk to the bed in the holding area themselves.

Want to hear the full story directly from ADRZ? Watch our customer interview [in Dutch]

Qmatic makes it possible to guide patients to the OR in a pleasant, human and cost-effective way. I’ve had this idea in my head for a while, and now I’ve turned it into reality with Qmatic. The patients themselves are extremely happy with this new procedure, and it also saves them time and frustration. Take people who need a cardioversion, for example. They used to have to undress and lie down in bed. But if their blood test was not good, they would have to get dressed again and leave. With Qmatic, we were able to change that procedure. Now they first go through a variant of the outpatient route. Only when all systems are go – the patient has not eaten, their blood test is good – do they proceed to the OR lounge. And if anything is not in order, they can go home again quickly.”