Freshworks Helps UK Travel Group Address COVID-19 Queries

In the call center space, information changes regularly, and it’s important to have a system in place to ensure agents are giving the most up-to-date information to customers. In the travel industry, this is more important than ever, as the global COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an ever-changing set of rules for travel, testing, masking and crossing international borders.

Collinson Group, a UK travel experiences and insurance company, recently tapped Freshworks Inc. and its Freshdesk customer experience platform to react to fast-changing business and travel requirements caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The platform is helping Collinson Group pivot its medical assistance division to offer COVID-19 testing at partner airports and clinics in the UK, USA, and APAC regions, setting up facilities in just three weeks.

Using Freshdesk, Collinson introduced chatbot-first support and automation into its customer communications to help manage the enormous surge in traffic and queries. The company set up over 120 automated workflows including email triage, automated ticket type routing, and chat bot self-service. Help articles were created to enable the global operation to manage backlogs effectively, run as efficiently as possible, and share work across customer service locations and teams.

The Freshdesk ticketing dashboard also helped Collinson to better track customer interactions across disparate communications channels. Using Freshdesk, customer service agents can now view metrics on contact resolution, total time to service, and subject matter of enquiries, and track and respond proactively if a particular subject keeps arising in communications. As a result, Collinson now handles an average of 1,200 testing-related customer enquiries per day, rising to a daily peak of around 10,000 new tickets per day in 2021, 24/7 across multiple global testing locations and service customer teams in English and Indonesian languages.

“The Freshdesk implementation has helped to consolidate our customer communications, while ensuring that omnichannel sits at the heart of our strategy,” said Sacha Puffett, Group Customer Service Director at Collinson Group. “For the first time, we have a unified view of customer interactions in nearly real time, meaning we can see trends emerging and work to mitigate issues quickly. It’s a win-win situation that’s more efficient for both the customer and us.”

Edited by Maurice Nagle