Aeroflot is an indisputable leader in civil aviation and one of the largest commercial organizations is Russia. A new step of the company’s development of state-of-the-art passenger services is implementation of a contact center, widely using natural speech recognition technologies. Automated contact center has not only allowed to substantially increase quality of passenger service and cut expenses, but also has enhances Aeroflot’s image as an innovative company.

Before modernization, Aeroflot used distributed call center which used three sites in different regions and services of two independent outsourcing companies. Call distribution was done by means of additional tone dialing.  Callers were put on hold for 30-60 minutes.

Automated Contact Center Implementation Results
With over 2 mln. annual incoming calls, number of contact center operators was cut by 20%, and the first year savings exceeded 30 mln. rubles (according to report made by Aeroflot IT Director K.I. Bogdanov at Call Center World Forum 2012). Among successfully automated processes was call distribution, giving flight and ticket availability information, collecting data for booking and schedule changes. In addition, automated contact center allows to notify 87% passengers compared to 68% before its implementation. Level of query recognition exceeds 96%, with 61% of all queries processed without assistance of operators.

Examples of Voice Self-Service Center Operation
The system can recognize caller’s natural speech. Thus, after “I would like to buy’ query the contact center will automatically switch to “booking information” application. The phrase “I would like to update information about collected air miles” will switch the caller to “Aeroflot Bonus” resource. 

Below you will find statistics chart of Aeroflot voice platform operation:

Query recognition level varies depending on topic of query, as the chart below shows:

Special “Flight information” application automatically processes 61% of flight schedule and ticket availability queries, and simultaneously collects information for ticket booking. The chart below shows the application statistics:

A very important application within Aeroflot Voice Platform is “Flight change notification” application. Thanks to its implementation, 98% of passenger notifications are made automatically – some passengers are notified directly, others - via travel agencies where they have bought tickets. The Platform gets through to clients better than operators did. Percentage of the Platform’s successful calls is 87%, compared to operators’ 68%.

The Platform allows to check automation level at any time and to monitor saving rate on a daily basis.