Air Astana customer service takes flight with Zendesk

Aviation experts are pointing to Central Asia as one of the most lucrative new travel markets, and Kazakhstan’s primary air transport network is poised to take a big chunk of that growth. To keep up with their growth, Air Astana turned to Zendesk to support and overhaul their CX.

“We have tripled our agent productivity within six months – Zendesk has been pivotal in realising our vision of exceptional customer experience and the integrated platform aligns with our values of hospitality, professionalism and reliability.”

Talgat Jampeissov

CRM supervisor at Air Astana

“Zendesk has helped us enhance agent efficiency, reduce the need for additional administrative resources, and lower operational costs. The reduction in ticket volume and increased efficiency in handling customer inquiries have also led to less reliance on a larger workforce, ultimately contributing to our bottom line.”

Talgat Jampeissov

CRM supervisor at Air Astana

HQ

Almaty, Kazakhstan

Founded

2001

Agents

285

CSAT

90% despite 2x ticket numbers

73.8%

decrease in median first reply time (now ~45min)

57.2%

decrease in avg. first reply time (now ~24hrs)

62.5%

decrease in full resolution time (now ~54min)

803,000

annual Help Center views

The flagship carrier of Kazakhstan, Air Astana

The sky’s the limit

The sky’s the limit when your organisation is set up to deliver in a high-growth industry. Central Asia was one of the fastest regions in aviation to recover from the pandemic thanks to a population with an increasingly disposable income and a desire to travel, as well as interest from tourists elsewhere in the world. Air Astana, the flagship carrier of Kazakhstan, provides domestic and international air services, and is capitalising on this growth opportunity by significantly expanding its route network, all while prioritising safety, reliability and exceptional customer service.

Choosing Zendesk

Talgat Jampeissov, CRM supervisor, joined the 285-strong customer service team in mid-2022 shortly after the business had implemented the Zendesk Suite to respond to its ever-increasing number of customers and their questions.

Air Astana’s legacy system had significant functional limitations, with limited reporting, a lack of joined-up customer profiles, long response times and inconsistencies which led to customer confusion.

“The decision to switch was driven by Zendesk's reliability and platform flexibility tailored to our growing business,” Jampeissov explains.

The airline switched to Zendesk Support to manage all customer communication channels in three languages – Kazakh, Russian and English – with Messenger, along with Explore to handle analytics and reports, and Guide to help customers self-serve through its Help Centre.

As one of the first companies in Kazakhstan to take advantage of Zendesk’s technology, Air Astana is trailblazing a route to customer service success. While ticket numbers have doubled due to an influx of new customers, its CSAT score has increased to an incredible 90%. Meanwhile, first response time and full resolution times during the peak summer months have decreased dramatically.

Unified passenger profile

Using the Zendesk Suite, Air Astana has been able to put the customer at the heart of its business and create a unified passenger profile, allowing various departments and services to view customer queries and work together to solve problems.

Air Astana can now consolidate follow-up customer queries to reduce duplicate tickets about the same problem, such as a customer expressing dissatisfaction on social media and via a phone call if left unanswered. “This type of situation was a common challenge using our old software. Agents needed additional information from other departments, and that resulted in a longer wait time for the customer. Zendesk facilitated a prompt and comprehensive response to the customer, resolving the issue satisfactorily.”

He adds: “My agents can now see what’s already being worked on, if we see the same customer getting in touch about the same problem we can acknowledge that and not waste time by having a second agent working on the request – it reduces workforce demand. Zendesk helps us see and realise this pain point for customers, rather than leaving them feeling ignored.”

Not only are customers now responded to in record time, agents are more productive, with Jampeissov citing a tripling of productivity on his team. “Zendesk has been pivotal in realising our vision of exceptional customer experience and the integrated platform aligns with our values of hospitality, professionalism and reliability.”

He continues: “Centralising customer interactions enhances our personalised and efficient service. We foresee Zendesk remaining a pivotal tool for ongoing innovation in our customer experience offerings.”

Help Centre

Encouraging customers to self-serve where possible is another key part of the Suite which Air Astana is leveraging, with improvements to its Help Centre directing customers to helpful articles. The carrier’s Help Centre received 803,000 views over the last year, which Jampeissov can directly attribute to substantial cost savings.

Air Astana has a dedicated Editor Team working to create articles for potential queries and Jampeissov is in the process of procuring a translation agency to extend the reach of the Help Centre even further by creating articles in different languages.

“We established a series of technical specifications that were required to improve our customer handling processes. Zendesk was able to meet these specifications.”

The Future

Next on the roadmap for Air Astana is looking at integrating Zendesk’s AI functionalities to help identify issues ahead of time, flag customer intent and achieve further cost savings. “We want to consider bots for self-service, and train our data to provide a response without involving a human, this way we hope it will improve our customer experience.”

In the current uncertain economic outlook, these cost savings will be vital to the business. “Zendesk has been an invaluable partner for Air Astana,” says Jampeissov, pointing to significant cost savings alongside improved customer experience. “With a dedicated success manager, account manager and premier support team, Zendesk has played a crucial role in optimising our customer support operations.