Case Study

Commercial Airline
 

“Never before have I had customers calling just to compliment our service. It is truly an extraordinary situation, and we couldn’t be happier with our decision to partner with Alpine Access.”                                                                     VP of Airline Marketing

Challenge

Launch full-service customer care and reservation center in just six months

An airline based in Houston, Texas was interested in launching a new service–oriented brand in 26 markets. The airline executives believed that to be successful in the highly competitive airline industry, they needed to provide the best service with a strong focus on the customer as cost effectively as possible. With only six months to ramp up, building a call center was time and cost prohibitive. They sought out a partner with a proven record of delivering quality service and economic scalability. After evaluating several call center solutions, they selected the home-based model pioneered by Alpine Access to handle all ticket sales and customer service.

The Alpine Answer

Use proprietary hiring process to find and manage the right people

With only two month to recruit, hire and train hundreds of customer care professionals; Alpine Access had its work cut out for them. Alpine responded quickly with its proprietary hiring process to find customer care professionals with the experience and customer focus to match the airline’s requirements and corporate culture. Alpine sought out professionals who had previous travel-related experience, had flown twice within the last year and exhibited true customer empathy. Because Alpine is not limited by geography, finding the best people around the country that met these criteria in a very short amount of time was not a problem. Once hired, all customer care professionals were trained on the airline’s processes and business philosophies to deliver top-notch service.

Alpine Access was a compelling choice for the airline for many reasons—quality, scalability, cost. But the fact that both companies shared the same culture of service made a potentially difficult launch go very smoothly.

Results

Provided great customer service and economically handled increases in call volume

When the airline opened its doors, Alpine’s customer care professionals were ready to handle in-bound calls and accept reservations. The launch was a success with more than 200 agents handling 78,000 calls per month. When call volume tripled in one month, Alpine employed a flexible staffing model and made real-time staff adjustments to economically respond to the increase in call volume. To meet the continued increase in calls, Alpine hired 50% more employees within just two weeks. The partnership between the airline and Alpine created a seamless customer experience, and Alpine’s customer care professionals received praise from multiple customers for their friendliness and the excellent service they provided.