Ethiopian Airlines Taps AI’s Predictive Power to Personalize Passenger Experiences and Grow Revenue

As passengers scoured Ethiopian Airlines’ website to adjust or cancel flight itineraries amidst COVID-19 travel restrictions and bans, its contact center agents knew precisely how and when to intervene. Genesys Predictive Engagement, an application that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, helped the airline use real-time statistics and data to engage passengers in more efficient, personalized interactions. Even as companies in every industry have struggled with long customer support hold times throughout the pandemic, Ethiopian Airlines has successfully reduced the average dwell time for its passengers by 72%. This is the result of using customer data and insights to provide more relevant and timely service.

Unrivaled in Africa for efficiency and operational success, Ethiopian Airlines serves 127 international and 22 domestic destinations. Like many businesses, the company is always looking to lower costs and improve margins. Growing direct sales by capturing every potential booking from callers and website visitors is vital to meeting those goals.

Accelerated Service and Tailored Offerings

In the months preceding COVID-19, Ethiopian Airlines began using Genesys Predictive Engagement from within the Genesys Cloud™ platform to glean insights from its passengers’ website visits and uncover trends about their behaviors and interests. This allows the company to use real-time statistics and data to tailor deals for individual customers, which employees can offer via webchat. For example, consider a passenger who recently added an airline ticket to the online cart but did not complete the purchase. The airline can use this intelligence to determine how and when to offer a chat with a sales rep to help convert the sale. In addition, the insights help identify pricing issues that are limiting certain ticket sales.

Maximizing Conversion Rates With the Power of AI

“We knew we were missing out on revenue from thousands of prospects browsing and leaving our website,” said Getinet Tadesse, CIO at Ethiopian Airlines. “Genesys Predictive Engagement has enabled us to capture significantly more website window shoppers. Conversion rates rose by 14% in the first two weeks and by 49% at the six-week stage. And, we’ve only really scratched the surface of what the tool can do.”

Ethiopian Airlines is strongly placed for growth as the industry adjusts to a new normal. The airline is poised to ramp up from 30,000 daily calls and 12 million passengers annually. It also plans to integrate Genesys Predictive Engagement into its mobile app and enable AI-powered virtual assistants to respond to basic customer requests and frequently asked questions.

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Customer Experience Gets Personal

While Genesys Predictive Engagement was built to leverage insights from website visits, the application’s most recent release helps businesses, like Ethiopian Airlines, tap into data from numerous native and third-party systems. This includes data from a CRM, an ATM event, and a webchat, for example, to give organizations a more holistic view of an individual customer’s behavior and make accurate predictions to drive even better business results.

Genesys also recently added deeper machine learning capabilities including identity stitching, sequenced learning, and reinforced learning with A/B testing. Organizations will benefit from more comprehensive intelligence about each customer, enabling them to deliver more prescriptive actions and service to produce optimal results, such as converting a sale, avoiding churn, and more.

“Today, Genesys Predictive Engagement connects an innovative chain of actions, including past customer events, profile information, and history, across multiple systems and channels, such as web and mobile, providing richer behavioral data,” said Olivier Jouve, executive vice president and general manager of Genesys Cloud. “This enables organizations to deliver even more personalized offers and service while improving important business KPIs like lead conversion rates, for example.”

Newly embedded in Genesys Cloud, Genesys Predictive Engagement is a core component of the AI engine that enables Experience as a Service, the company’s vision for the contact center industry to power unprecedented levels of personalization.

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