How automation helped Aurinkomatkat bounce back from Covid-19

Highlights

• With a smaller support team due to Covid-19, Aurinkomatkat was having trouble training enough agents to field their 6,500 chats per month
• By implementing Ultimate’s virtual agent platform, they were able to easily handle the increased volume of chats
• The virtual agent achieved an automation rate of over 40%  and reduced handling times all around
• Aurinkomatkat was able to get the virtual agent up and running and integrated into their CRM, Salesforce, in under 4 weeks
• Their customers now enjoy quick and efficient support on their preferred channel

The Customer: The largest tour operator in Finland

Aurinkomatkat, a part of Finnair Group, is one of Finland’s biggest and most trusted travel brands. For over 50 years, Aurinkomatkat has been sending Finnish travelers on vacations that range from traditional packaged tours to customized theme trips. After successfully pivoting from mostly brick and mortar stores to almost entirely doing business online, live chat conversations now make up the majority of their inquiries.

The Situation: A small support team that needed to scale quickly

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Aurinkomatkat was forced to downsize their support team. When travel started ramping up again, they were facing a high volume of support inquiries and their team was feeling overwhelmed. Aurinkomatkat found it was a very slow process to get human agents fully trained. And with more and more customers turning to live chat, a virtual agent seemed like the perfect solution.

The Solution: A virtual agent to answer easy questions, so humans could handle hard ones

As longtime Salesforce users, Aurinkomatkat’s team loved that the Ultimate virtual agent platform integrated quickly and easily into their CRM.

Since launch, Aurinkomatkat was able to reduce their backlog significantly and reduce their average handling time. The team now has more time to work on more challenging cases, and find the virtual agent easy to maintain and improve.

The Success: 40% of all inquiries are fully resolved by the virtual agent

In less than 4 weeks, the virtual agent was ready to go live. The virtual agent now handles around 40% of all inquiries, allowing the team to easily handle the increased volume of chats.

The final proof of a successful go-live and training? Service Manager Olli Vikman remarking that, “We could not handle the amount of chats we have now without the virtual agent.”

And the next step in automation for Aurinkomatkat? Implementing 24/7 support so their customers can reach their virtual agent at all hours of the day.