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CASE STUDY
Cloud

Flight path

A North American Airline takes their call center to the cloud.

Call for change

An Airline with a clear vision for the future

Throughout its nearly 100-year history, this North American Airline has continually improved its services, fleets and technical innovations, serving nearly 12 million passengers each year.

Most recently, the Airline turned its attention to upgrading one of its interactive voice recognition (IVR) systems. The legacy system, which handled calls for multiple functions—from baggage claims to crew scheduling and employee support—was reaching the end of its life. It was difficult to maintain and it was even more difficult to enhance. Critically, the old system was also becoming increasingly unstable. This not only affected operational efficiency, but the extended downtimes also negatively impacted customer and employee experiences.

After reviewing its options, the Airline selected Amazon Connect running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure as the new omnichannel for its proven resilience and high degree of flexibility. For help with setting up the new system, the Airline turned to Accenture to architect and implement it.

This aligned with the Airline’s “cloud-first” strategy, and ensured scalability and access to native cloud features such as analytics, AI and machine learning.

When tech meets human ingenuity

This North American Airline and Accenture quickly migrated seven contact centers to the Amazon Connect solution. Because Amazon Connect runs on AWS, the team was able to take advantage of several native AWS capabilities such as S3 storage, disaster recovery and Lambda automated computing during the solution’s design, build and test phases.

Agile methods were employed to enable the team to quickly configure the new solution to meet users’ needs. New callback features, a customizable contact control panel, and new call-recording functionality were just some of the enhancements made.

Throughout the engagement, the team shared knowledge, know-how and system documentation with approximately 200 system users and system administrators. Training sessions for trainers and end users further ensured that the Airlines’ people could easily navigate the new system and that there would be no business disruption when the new system went live.

A valuable difference

A blueprint for a truly cloud-first organization

In just eight weeks, the Airline was ready to transition from an unstable, on-premise IVR system to a robust, resilient and highly secure cloud-based contact center solution. Customers and employees now have a stable and reliable means of communicating with the Airline across multiple channels. The improved audio quality of the Amazon Connect system is particularly noteworthy. That translates into more efficient service and better customer and employee experiences.

From an operational perspective, AWS’ disaster recovery processes and three availability zones help ensure the system will stay up and running even during outages. For employees, the dashboards provide real-time insights and metrics into call volumes and contact center performance, allowing administrators to continually optimize staffing levels and service delivery.

While this North American Airline monitors the performance of its new system, which Accenture now runs, it expects to use this rapid deployment as a model for additional cloud modernization programs. In that regard, the Amazon Connect deployment provides a valuable blueprint for building a truly cloud-first organization.

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