loveholidays engages DVELP to accelerate Twilio Flex contact centre deployment
Agent productivity improved by 20% - despite massive increase in contact volumes during COVID-19 lockdown
loveholidays, one of the UK’s fastest-growing online travel agencies, selected Sabio Group company DVELP to implement a configurable cloud-based contact centre based on the Twilio Flex platform. Since deployment, and thanks to Flex’s agility and single user interface, the loveholidays customer service team has been able to increase agent productivity by 20%.
loveholidays needed to update its on-premise contact centre to a cloud platform so that its agents can work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Working with DVELP, one of the leading Twilio Gold Partners in Europe, loveholidays was able to transfer over 300 contact centre seats to its new Flex platform in under six weeks. Additionally, integrating the live chat function on the loveholidays website, took the team only a further seven days.
“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,” explained loveholidays’ Director of CX Engineering and Business IT, Eugene Neale. “Our experience since May has seen loveholidays 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.”
“We’re often asked why organisations should make the move to a configurable contact centre platform such as Twilio Flex. The fact that loveholidays 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,” added Tom Mullen, DVELP’s Founder and CEO. “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 loveholidays 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 internal loveholidays engineering team by integrating email into the new Twilio Flex environment. By writing software to capture incoming emails and convert them into tasks for agents, the loveholidays CX team could handle all their tasks via a single pane of glass using their customised Flex interface. This has resulted in significantly improved response times.
DVELP also implemented a bot that makes things easier for customers by informing them of their place in a queue when joining a chat. The bot asks customers to leave a phone number so that they can receive an SMS text when an agent was available. The next stage was for DVELP to integrate social contact channels into the agent flow, which was achieved in just a few weeks – ensuring a much more seamless journey for customers.
About loveholidays:
loveholidays was founded in 2012 and is the fastest growing online travel agency in the UK, with a mission to create the ultimate online travel experience. loveholidays values building trusted relationships with customers, offers bespoke ways of searching for a holiday, and also provides a range of flexible payment options to make holidays more affordable for everyone. For more information, visit www.loveholidays.com
About DVELP:
DVELP is a cloud software product and consultancy company focused on real time communications and customer service automation. The company is a leading European Twilio Gold Partner and Twilio Flex contact centre expert, working closely with organisations to deliver better customer experiences and improve operational efficiency through innovative technology and processes. Based in London, DVELP’s customers include a range of major brands including Google and Marks & Spencer. https://dvelp.co.uk
