Top international airline, Air China, employs around 23,000 people and serves 70 domestic and 36 foreign cities. It is a member of the Star Alliance and engages in code sharing co-operatives with over twenty prestigious airlines worldwide.

Committed to innovation and service excellence, the company is always looking for new ways to meet its customers’ requirements. Increases in trade, tourism, and Chinese citizens’ wealth have seen Air China gaining approximately 20 per cent more customers year-on-year. Many of these are European-based, and Air China was keen to capitalise on this expansion by bringing the point of service closer to the customer. The intention was to enable calls from European customers to be directed to a multi-lingual contact centre where they could be routed to an agent able to deal with the enquiry in the caller’s own language.

Davey Chen, IT Director at Air China, explains: “Air China needed to establish a presence in Europe that would be sensitive to local cultural and language requirements. We chose Estonia as the base for a new contact centre, based upon the existence of a strong pool of skills and talent as well as favourable labour rates.”

Air China considered that BT has the best global network coverage and service capability. We felt confident that BT could support its services throughout Europe and had the resources to sort out any problems that might occur.”

Davey Chen, IT Director, Air China

It was important that this new facility would meet the airline’s first-class standards of service excellence. From a number of potential suppliers, Air China chose BT Inbound Contact global. Using the reach and quality of the BT global network infrastructure, Inbound Contact would enable BT to take end-to-end responsibility for the collection and delivery of Air China’s voice calls right across Europe.

The service package was negotiated between Air China and BT China. The in-depth understanding of Air China’s requirements that the BT China team demonstrated added to the level of confidence in the solution. The BT global service delivery model enabled BT China to specify requirements for speedy delivery by a team based in BT Europe.

Davey Chen describes the benefits of choosing BT:

Air China considered that BT has the best global network coverage and service capability. We felt confident that BT could support its services throughout Europe and had the resources to sort out any problems that might occur. BT was also lowest on price, so the price performance ratio was very strong.”

The BT Inbound Contact global package includes features such as caller identity, which enables the network to route incoming calls to the right linguist according to their country of origin. Despite the international nature of the calls, there is no delay or interference, and BT provides a solid guarantee of service.

Although there are no figures available as to cost savings, the Inbound Contact service has already proved popular where it counts – with the airline’s customers:

Our customers are saving about 50 per cent on call costs and there have been significant improvements in customer satisfaction too, based upon comments received.”

Davey Chen, IT Director, Air China

The BT Inbound Contact solution projects a professional image for Air China that helps the airline to reach its twin goals of service excellence and greater global recognition. The collaboration has been so successful that both companies are looking to develop it further. In fact, Air China is so satisfied that it is in discussion with BT to provide an IP Connect MPLS-based network connection between the new contact centre in Estonia and the company’s head office in Beijing.

Davey Chen concludes:

BT adds value by responding rapidly to changing market conditions. We are very satisfied with the service.”

• BT Inbound Contact global
• Global voice network services
• Global network monitoring and management
• BT Advise Professional Services including design consultancy, systems integration, and project management of the implementation