Country: United States Industry: Travel & Hospitality

Company Profile

Continental Airlines is the seventh largest airline in the world, offering more than 2,200 departures daily to 127 domestic and 96 international destinations. Business Challenge

In a period of intense competition, Continental Airlines makes its website a priority. Continental sought to overhaul its online reservation process to improve conversion rates, reduce website abandonment and drive even higher customer satisfaction.

Solution

Continental Airlines deployed eStara’s Click to Call service. Click to Call connects online website visitors to reservation agents at key points of sale across the online process. It is a fully-hosted VoIP service that offers real-time collaboration and no significant internal IT resources.

A Travel and Hospitality Case Study

Continental Airlines

Results

• ROI from Click to Call of 50X cost of the service • Click to Call resulted in a 35% conversion rate- twice the rate of traditional leads• Click to Call reduced website abandonment by over 25% on web pages where the service was offered • 78% of Click to Call users say Click to Call increases the likelihood that they will use Continental.com in the future

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- Kevin McKenna, Managing Director, Continental Airlines

Continental Improves Online Sales and Reduces Web Abandonment with eStara

In a period of intense competition from other air carriers and travel portal sites, Con-tinental Airlines makes its website a mission critical business priority. The company works hard to make it easy for online customers to make reservations and get quick answers to their travel questions. In 2002, Continental sought to overhaul its online reservation process to improve conversion rates, re-duce website abandonment and drive even higher customer satisfaction. The company deployed eStara’s Click to Call as a key part of this process. The Click to Call deployment has doubled Continental’s online reservation completion percentage and generated a 50X ROI for the company. Business Challenge Continental Airlines, the seventh largest global airline, has one of the most frequently visited airline websites in the world. As air travel has become more competitive, Con-tinental has constantly worked to improve its online customer experience in an effort to drive higher online reservations and revenue from its site. The company deployed eStara’s Click to Call service to facilitate real-time collaboration and communication between website visitors and call center staff.

Solution

Continental Airlines uses eStara’s Click to Call service throughout the online reservation process. The Click to Call solution uses Voice over IP technology and provides online users the ability to make PC-to-Phone and Phone-to-Phone calls and collaborate from the Web in real-time. Continental used web traffic and call center analysis, customer feedback from over 5,000 online survey results and internal financial modeling to determine the success of the deployment. Continental deployed Click to Call at key points throughout the on-line reservation process.

In particular, Continental wanted to make it easier for customers to make online reserva-tions and resolve online problems during the Web session. Within weeks of deployment, Continental saw higher sales conversions, lower website abandonment, and stronger customer satisfaction.

Continental Airlines needed a technology solution that could be implemented quickly, without taxing internal IT resources or forc-ing the company to increase its call center staff. eStara’s proprietary Voice over IP plat-form met this key requirement.

Click to Call calls are routed and handled just like traditional inbound calls over eS-tara’s fully-hosted platform and deployed on the content layer of the Continental Airlines website, eliminating the need for significant internal IT resource allocation. The eStara deployment took less than two weeks and required minimal internal IT involvement. Results Continental used web traffic and call cen-ter analysis, customer feedback from over 5,000 online survey results and internal financialmodeling to determine the success of the eStara click to call deployment.

“Within the first few weeks, eStara’s service had already paid for itself, increasing onlin-esales and lowering abandonment rates,” says Kevin McKenna, Managing Director at Continental Airlines.

Continental’s Click to Call sessions resulted in a 35% sales conversion rate, approximately double the traditional sales conversion rate within the airline’s reservation group.

”From both a customer user perspective and a business results perspective, eStara has ex-ceeded our expectations from day one,” says McKenna. “eStara is driving meaningful busi-ness results, higher online sales conversions and almost unheard of levels of customer en-thusiasm.” In online survey results, over 25% of Continental’s Click to Call callers said that without the Click to Call option they would have abandoned the online reservation pro-cess and gone to a competitor.

“eStara’s Click to Call service generated glow-ing reviews from customers and is demon-strating strong business results,” says McK-enna.

Over 92% of Continental’s Click to Call callers said the service “greatly” or “signifi-cantly” enhanced their online reservation experience. 78% of Continental Click to Call callers said the service increased the likeli-hood that they will return to book with Con-tinental again.

“Our challenge is to make a visit to Continen-tal.com as positive as the overall Continental travel experience. Click to Call is a natural extension of our first-class customer service and further demonstrates our commitment to add value to our online customers,” says McKenna

-- Kevin McKenna, Managing Director of Electronic Marketing. Continental Airlines

The eStara’s Click to Callservice generates a ROI of 50X by doubling Continental’s sales completion percentage and reducing abandonment throughout the online reser-vation process by 25%.

Case Study Continental AirlinesA Travel and Hospitality Case Study