Case study

UK HeadquartersBetjeman House104 Hills RoadCambridge, CB2 1LQ

Tel: +44 1223 488 700Fax: +44 1223 488 701 USA Headquarters745 Atlantic Avenue8th FloorBoston, MA 02111

Tel: +1 917 717 5101

www.transversal.com

“...Providing customers with the ability to self-serve via the website means that contact centre staff are better equipped to deal directly with sales enquiries.”.

Sales and Customer Services DirectorP&O Cruises

Sector:

Travel and hospitalityImplementation:

Contact centre | Self-service

“The fact that 50,000 questions are now answered every month shows how important it has become to the business.”

Complete Cruise Solution

Customer background

Carnival UK was formed on 17 April 2003 following a merger between Carnival UK and P&O Princess Cruises plc. The merger created one of the world’s largest leisure travel companies. Carnival UK’s brands include Cunard Line, P&O Cruises, Princess Cruises and Seabourn.

“Transversal’s solutions are able to understand and answer complex questions.”

95% of queries resolved first time. Only 5% of customers escalate queries to the contact centre.

100% of email queries answered within 24 hours (compared with four days pre-implementation).

Knowledgebase has become an integral part of customer service, queried 40,000-50,000 times each month.

Contact centre call volumes reduced as more customers “serve themselves” online.

The challengeCarnival UK competes for holidaymakers at the “top end” against the backdrop of a world emerging from recession. The travel market has become even more competitive in recent times and holidaymakers need to be convinced that a cruise – with a Carnival UK brand – is the right choice for them. To make these decisions, timely, accessible and easy-to-use information is essential.

Carnival UK identified that if it could enable more of its customers (both travel agents and members of the public) to solve routine queries online, it would provide customers with an added level of convenience while enabling contact centre staff to concentrate on more complex enquiries. This is particularly pertinent given that as a result of intensive marketing activity, Carnival UK is experiencing an exponential increase in traffic to the websites of its major brands. Visitor numbers

on the P&O Cruises site were 97% higher in March 2011 than in March 2010.

The Carnival UK contact centres also receive an average of 24,000 calls every month from direct customers and travel agents.

With such large volumes of customer interaction, Carnival UK recognized that it needed not only to make it easier for customers to interact with the business but also to supplement its procedures for capturing their feedback.

The cloud-based nature of Transversal's solution meant that Carnival UK had no need to change or invest in technological infrastructure. The biggest challenge was in getting employees to use the system. Carnival UK resolved this in a number of ways:

treasure hunts whereby employees could win prizes by finding redemption codes hidden within the knowledgebase

‘buzz’ sessions – knowledge sharing exercises with small groups of staff to immerse them in the system

webinars and online tutorials for travel agents.

“The Carnival UK contact centres also receive an average of 24,000 callsevery month.”

The solutionIn late 2009, Carnival UK engaged specialist web self-service provider Transversal. In doing so Carnival UK wanted to provide its customers with a powerful tool that was simple to use, saved time and provided them with answers to their questions 24 hours a day without needing to call a contact centre.

Transversal satisfied Carnival UK that it alone was able to fully capture and exploit the “know-how” behind customer interactions through its unique Memory EngineTM search technology, which was tailored to match how the four main user groups – direct customers, travel agents, contact centre staff and on-board staff – ask questions.

This proprietary technology enables computers to store and recall information by relating concepts — like human memory. The Memory Engine starts with a generic understanding of how things are related. For example, it can identify that an apple is a type of fruit that grows on trees.

Due to this rich baseline knowledge, Transversal’s solutions are able to understand and answer complex questions. As more content is added to the knowledgebase, the Memory Engine adapts its relationships and will quickly learn, for example, that an Apple can also be a type of computer.

The new Transversal self-help function has caught on quickly. The fact that 50,000 questions are now answered every month by the system shows how important it has become to the business.Sales and Customer Services Director P&O Cruises

Customer background

Carnival UK was formed on 17 April 2003 following a merger between Carnival UK and P&O

Princess Cruises plc. The merger created one of the world’s largest leisure travel companies.

Carnival UK’s brands include Cunard Line, P&O Cruises, Princess Cruises and Seabourn.

Carnival UK’s vision is to be “the most spectacularly successful cruise company in Britain”.

The solution The results

Since its implementation, the knowledgebase has been queried 141,000 times by Carnival UK’s customer relations staff – indicating a very high level of use. It has also proved to be an invaluable training tool, with new recruits able to get up to speed more quickly than before.

All customer queries are tracked by the system which makes it easy to monitor performance. Customer feedback is captured, enabling answers to be continually updated and improved.

Users can give each answer a “star rating” out of five. They can also send suggestions for improving the answer. Agents can use this

feedback to update the knowledgebase, so that enquiries can be solved even more efficiently.

There are now approximately 2500 entries in the knowledgebase. These provide a vast amount of information about dress codes, drinks packages, the Carnival UK “Go Green” initiative – to name just a few subjects.

Prior to implementing the Transversal solution, Carnival UK was not able to communicate all this information to its customers quickly and consistently across all touchpoints. Now, however, it’s able to supply the “know-how” necessary for all its customers to enjoy their holiday.

Direct customers now have an easy-to-use tool that answers 95% of their questions first time, without the need to escalate queries further. Web traffic has doubled without increasing the volume of incoming email.

Travel agents have more face-to-face interaction with customers since they don’t need to phone the contact centre during appointments.

Contact centre staff are now able to focus their efforts on more complex queries. They have decreased email response times to under 24 hours, compared with an average of four days prior to the implementation.

Staff on-board ship have a new tool to help customers. Loyalty staff use it to sell future cruises.

www.transversal.com

UK HeadquartersBetjeman House104 Hills RoadCambridge, CB2 1LQ

Tel: +44 1223 488 700Fax: +44 1223 488 701

USA Headquarters745 Atlantic Avenue8th FloorBoston, MA 02111

Tel: +1 917 717 5101

Copyright © 2016 Transversal. All rights reserved.Product specifications and features are subject to change without notice.

Publishers note: Information contained in this document is intended for guidelines purposes only. Transversal product documentation supersedes information contained in this document.