Air New Zealand confident digital tool will calm passenger credits storm
Air New Zealand customers redeemed $70,000 worth of credits in under two hours after a self-service tool was launched for passengers holding credit directly with the airline. Air New Zealands online credit redemption tool went live at 10am on Monday, for more than 300,000 customers to view their credit, and use it to book new flights. The tool was for customers who bought a ticket in New Zealand dollars from Air New Zealand. Customers did not have to call the airlines contact centre. The issuing of credit instead of refunding tickets cancelled as a result of Covid-19 disruption to air travel has angered many customers, but Air New Zealand was not legally required to refund passengers for many non-refundable tickets. READ MORE: * Coronavirus: Air NZ could divert flights from Melbourne as areas go back into lockdown * Air NZ urged to improve its call centre service * Air New Zealand has refunded 15,000 passengers for compassionate reasons We know this hasnt been quick to resolve, and we would like to thank our customers for their patience, said Air New Zealand chief commercial and customer officer Cam Wallace. Pre-Covid-19, we didnt have the systems in place for customers to redeem credits at this scale, so our teams have had to build this long-term solution from scratch. Wallace said a significant number of customers would be able to use the tool, and there had been a surprising amount of bookings processed through it on Monday. He was not aware of glitches, but said the system would be closely monitored. We have done a tremendous amount of testing, so we are confident it will work well. The airline first created the credit facility when it started to cancel flights as the Covid pandemic hit, and had been working for four months on a digital solution, he said. And as weve provided more flexibility for more customers, its got increasingly complex, but its the right thing to do. In the days before Covid, if we cancelled someones flights we would simply just transfer them onto the next flight. But the situation now is were cancelling flights and were unclear about when well be flying back to some of these destinations unfortunately. The complexity of transactions which could take half an hour as opposed to under 10 minutes to resolve meant Air New Zealands call centre had been swamped, causing further frustration for customers. Weve moved the contact centre from about 254 up to 704 people, so weve really got a massive amount of extra people in the contact centre, and thats a lot of redeployed Air New Zealand staff who are on contracts now, Wallace said. Passengers could use credit from an international flight to book a domestic flight, or the other way round, and the credit owner could choose who used the credit. Around 57,000 customers had their fare returned as Airpoints Dollars during June and July. At present, the tool could only process credit from single bookings. Customers with multiple flights would need to call Air New Zealand's contact centre until the tool was extended. The airline was working on a solution for international customers, people who had booked through a travel agent, and for a number of other ticket types such as group bookings. The period in which customers could use their credit had been extended, with booking until December 31, 2021 and a further 12 months to travel. Air New Zealand was looking at all aspects of its business, including insurance, fares, its products and destinations, Wallace said. We think this is one chance you get to in effect really restart an airline. Bookings had been very strong during the school holidays, but the airline was looking at ways to extend demand throughout the year with fares, and packages with hotels and other tourism operators. Its in our best interests to stimulate demand - weve got the planes, weve got the people, weve got to keep people travelling around the country. International tourists would have absorbed some of the capacity in previous years, now our requirement will be to stimulate the local market, and one of the main tools you have to do that is price.