Air-Calédonie’s integration with Qmatic managed to reduced wait time from 5 hours to 2 minutes.
Air-Calédonie and Qmatic have worked together since 2012, when the airline implemented and equipped Air-Calédonie’s agencies with Qmatic’s Queue Management Solo system. The development and implementation of products and solutions have been gradually updated to meet the needs of Air-Calédonie’s staff members and customers.
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 80th 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 to 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.
