Building the Amadeus Multisite Call Center Based on Noda Contact Center

Amadeus is the world's number one global distribution system (GDS) and technology provider, serving the marketing, sales, and distribution needs of the world's travel and tourism industries. 

The Challenge 

To serve customers in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Amadeus’ Russian division used to use two of its own call centers, one in Moscow and the other in St. Petersburg. These call centers had been created at different times and worked independently of each other, though, due to the increasing volume of calls, the company was forced to improve the quality of customer service without hiring more staff in order to save costs. In addition, there were frequent technical issues when the existing call centers were subject to high traffic, something that also had to be addressed. 

Main Project Objectives 

• Integrate the geographically dispersed company offices into one information and communications system featuring a single phone number for the convenience of customers calling from across Eastern Europe and Central Asia (several time zones)
• Make the call center more robust by implementing a state-of-the-art solution, upgrading existing call center equipment, and migrating to VoIP technology
• Improve customer service, in particular by reducing the number of missed calls and the average customer service time 

Solution: Noda Contact Center 

After a comprehensive review of different vendors’ proposals, Amadeus decided to implement the solution offered by Noda at its sites in Moscow and St. Petersburg. 

To create a single point for receiving inbound calls, the company decided to deploy the main Noda Contact Center servers in Moscow. The cutting-edge Noda Contact Center solution facilitated building an IP call center (VoIP) for 24/7 fail-safe operation with a guaranteed fault tolerance of 99.99%. The call center’s redundancy was improved thanks to the hot backup of call center equipment and communication links. 

As a result of the project, the company’s geographically dispersed offices were integrated into one information and communications system. One phone number was assigned for receiving calls at the centers in Moscow and St. Petersburg, while the company can meanwhile use the services of agents, supervisors, and second-line specialists located at other sites. 

To service customers located in different time zones far from Moscow and St. Petersburg, a number of distributed (remote) workplaces were arranged for agents in several Russian cities. This step allowed Amadeus to avoid the costs associated with hiring more staff members and paying for a night shift in the main company offices. 

To ensure uninterrupted call handling in the case of equipment failure at one of the call center sites, the other site automatically switches to stand-alone mode in this case. The sites therefore retain the ability to work independently of each other. 

To obtain information about Amadeus’ organizational structure and customers, Noda’s specialists integrated the Noda Contact Center solution with the My Amadeus information system. 

Project Results 

Staff working at the Amadeus call center can now use its new functionality, something the old system was lacking: a state-of-the-art, geographically distributed, multisite IP call center. 

Customer service has considerably improved: 

• The number of missed calls fell by 15% and the average agent-response waiting time was also reduced 
• The number of calls made to absent employees decreased thirtyfold 
• Automatic caller identification and displaying the customer profile on the agent’s monitor reduced the average call handling and registration time in the CRM system by 30% 
• The implementation of agent scripting reduced the time spent on training agents and launching new campaigns by 20% 
• Up to 15% of all customer calls to the center are now processed automatically using the IVR system intended for customer self-service 
• The number of calls processed by the center rose by 15% 

The number of agent errors when handling phone calls was reduced 

Load balancing between the call center’s agents is achieved by using a flexible routing algorithm: inbound calls are automatically distributed among target groups working on certain projects and campaigns. When routing a call within a group, the project’s priority, the wait time of queued calls, and the agent’s level of proficiency and load are taken into account. 

It is now possible for agents to exchange text messages and provide IVR services to customers. Transferring calls to internal numbers became much more convenient as the software-phone interface now displays each staff member’s current status: “available,” “not available,” “switched off,” etc. 

Callback request from the company website 

By using this feature, customers visiting the company website can request a callback to their phone. To call the number specified by the customer, the Amadeus employee only needs to click the hyperlink received along with the call request notification. 

At the customer’s request, the Noda project team developed reports providing various performance indicators for the two call center sites and service quality information, including real-time reports on the call center’s operation, notifications about critical events occurring on communication links, recordings, conversations between agents and customers, and so on. 

Thanks to the Noda Contact Center solution, Amadeus managed to avoid increasing the number of staff at its main offices while meeting all target KPIs and giving the call center’s customer service level a significant boost.