Love Holidays reveals unprecedented impact of COVID-19 on contact centre call volume

OTA integrated Twilio Flex cloud-based technology to help ramp up capacity during lockdown

OTA Love Holidays estimates it has supported 12 years’ worth of contact centre interactions in just four months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The leading online retailer estimates that new cloud-based contact centre technology implemented to deal with increased demand has increased agent productivity by 20%.

Love Holidays selected Sabio Group company DVELP to implement a configurable contact centre technology based on the Twilio Flex platform.

The agency acted to update its on-premise contact centre to a cloud platform so agents could work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

Working with DVELP Love Holidays transferred over 300 contact centre seats to the new Flex platform in under six weeks.

It also integrated a live chat function on its website, which took the team a further seven days to implement.

Eugene Neale, director of CX engineering and business IT, said: “The COVID-19 outbreak is clearly having an enormous impact on the travel industry and, while we initially began this project as a way of supporting our agents while remote working, it has proved to be more far-reaching.

“Our experience since May has seen Love Holidays customer interaction volumes scale dramatically.

“Indeed, we estimate that due to unprecedented levels of contact, with customers seeking re-assurance about their holidays and travel restrictions, we have actually supported the equivalent of around 12 years’ of contact centre work over the last four months.

“And thanks to the agility and configurability of Twilio Flex we have been able to do this without missing a call or dropping a message.”

Tom Mullen, DVELP founder and chief executive, said: “We’re often asked why organisations should make the move to a configurable contact centre platform such as Twilio Flex.

“The fact that Love Holidays embarked on this journey during the busiest period its CX has ever experienced clearly shows the value that they placed on being able to quickly introduce new channels or scale existing ones within hours.

“Having a customisable contact platform has also proved invaluable as travel advice changed from day-to-day over the last few months.

“Twilio’s flexibility has enabled the Love Holidays team to prioritise urgent inbound interactions, while also adapting the platform as frequently as required to make sure that the context is right and that customers were getting the right experience.”

DVELP supported the Love Holidays by integrating email to capture incoming messages and convert them into tasks for agents.

The form said the Love Holidays was able to handle all their tasks via a single ‘pane of glass’ using a customised Flex interface improve response times.

DVELP also implemented a bot to inform customers of their place in a queue when joining a chat.

The bot asks customers to leave a phone number so they can receive an SMS text when an agent is available.

Social contact channels were also integrated into agents flow to provide a more seamless journey for customers.