"S7 Airlines is more than just an airline. Travelling for us is more than just a flight from one city to another. It is an absolute miracle and from it searches of a bigger miracle that we call happiness start…

Our mission is to support people in their travel to happiness and inspire those who wish for it to find their way …"

When S7 airline team defined their mission, only a few of them could suggest what had to be done to transport more than 16mln happy passengers at year-end 2018.

Early 2018 the airline was offering their customers standard options: information on the website, call center number, lots of email addresses for requests and a primitive chat service.

You can't say it was working badly, more likely it was the same as for others. A calling passenger was being transferred between agents for a long time, emails were replied to within many hours or days. The chat didn't help much either, the platform productivity was not enough. The customer satisfaction index (or their happiness level) was 60-70%, again, as on average in the industry.

Having vast experience, airline specialists wrote more than 1000 Q&A articles but they were unable to apply this knowledge base in practice. The customer who had to wait for a reply from the agent or a specialist of a definite company division for a long time was unable to use it either.

How could they reach what they defined in their mission? How could they make hashtag #Займитесьсчастьем (that means #Enjoyyourhappiness) really near and dear for the passengers? This required a new universal platform of passenger support that could develop effectively itself and keep up with the company development.

The project started in February 2018. For the platform a multi-channel solution Zendesk Support was chosen which could effectively process more than15000 requests and 50000 chats a month.

Digital channels integration server has completed the system with the support of 6 channels at the same time: phone line, email, 5 social media (VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube), Help center, and an effective chat-service.

During the first implementation stages, Zendesk Сhat launch was carried out. De facto the launch was executed within one day on airline website, then a chat service was launched in the mobile application. A few more days were required to urgently teach the staff, and now the passengers support goes unrestricted.

Developed SDK and API became a key success factor together with vast customizability of the system. The agent communicating with the customer in chat now has all the information to immediately solve the passenger's problem (bookings, contacts, correspondence track, loyalty cards etc.).

From the first month the implementation of chat-bot into Zendesk Chat system started that became a very successful project and a benchmark for the whole industry.

Now 22% of all the requests are closed by the chat-bot by itself. 35% of requests more are closed together with a person after the bot has collected all the information that is completed more than 95% of work (the person has only to make a decision).

All in all Zendesk Chat system accepts more than 50000 requests (chats) from passengers a month, having actually become the main channel of business communication with customers.

At the same time a unified Help center was created on Zendesk Guide platform, which is now used both by the staff and the smart chat-bot, as well as the customers, and has more than 1000 unique articles. Agents' experience can be accumulated now and used for the good of the whole company and the passengers.

BI solution Zendesk Explorer (in-built tool of business intelligence) gave the management the tool for timely support quality assessment, allowed to evaluate the «level of happiness» of the passenger, allowed to identify bottlenecks in passenger service, and make pro-active recommendations for airline business processes customization.

This is how the aim - #Займитесьсчастьем (#Enjoyyourhappiness) defined in the mission 2 years ago was reached. In 2019 the airline already transported almost 18000000 passengers, having reached the customers satisfaction level of 89%. In the online poll the readers of National Geographic Traveler magazine called S7 Airlines the best Russian airline of the year.

Duration of chat with agents (median value) is 9min

Response time is 51sec (comparing to average 31hrs in the industry)

22% of requests are closed by the chat-bot by itself

35% requests more are closed by the chat-bot together with a person after the bot has completed 95% of the work on the request

CSAT is stable 89% (20% more than the average in the industry)