Web Self-service Takes Off at bmi During Volcanic Ash Disruption

Transversal technology helps 1300 bmi customers every day solve queries themselves

Leading UK airline bmi (British Midland International) is improving customer service with advanced Web self service technology from Transversal. This allows customers on its Web site to "ask" questions in their own words, using conversational language. The new solution was vital during the recent six-day volcanic ash disruption, when it helped over 12,000 customers with questions relating to issues such as rebooking. Returning more accurate results than standard keyword search, the service helps more than 30,000 flybmi.com visitors per month to resolve queries themselves.

Unlike search engines that simply match keywords or patterns, Transversal’s technology understands the underlying concepts of natural language, so that it can provide intelligent answers to questions and suggest a "train of thought" to guide a customer to a desired outcome. So successful has the implementation been that the bmi Web site recently came top for customer support in a comprehensive study of UK air travel sites, beating its rivals against a range of criteria including ease of use and design. bmi will also shortly be extending the use of Transversal to its Republic of Ireland site.

Sarah Collett, Online Experience Manager at bmi, comments: "The Transversal solution was very easy to implement and came into its own during the ash cloud disruption. During those six days over 12,000 customers had their queries answered, greatly easing the pressure on our contact centre and ensuring that customers were provided with timely, accurate information. A key benefit was that we were able to easily track the questions that customers were asking and add new answers to the core knowledgebase ensuring that information was up to date and relevant."

As well as answering queries, the Transversal solution also routes emails to the correct specialist department for any queries that are unable to be answered automatically. bmi is then able to update its knowledgebase with new content to ensure that similar customer questions are automatically answered next time.

Davin Yap, CEO of Transversal, comments: "Traditional keyword search tools are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. Because they’re not contextual it can be a real battle for customers to get to the information they need. The airline industry is highly customer-focused and margin-driven; as such, when customers become frustrated and call the contact centre, this makes them more costly to serve and adversely impacts on their relationship with the airline. The experience of bmi shows that by answering questions using natural language they can offset a lot of these calls and serve customers quickly. This is absolutely vital in a crisis situation such as we saw with the grounding of flights due to volcanic ash.”