TUI harmonized its customer contact strategy globally. Part of this transition included switching from a multitude of BPOs to two strategic partners, including Transcom. Much has changed and improved since then. Ramón Delima, global head of customer service, sales & operations, and Leo Ooms, head of outsourcing BPO at TUI, discuss the transformation.

 

In brief:

• TUI has been working with strategic partner Transcom for four years
• Intensive collaboration, transparency and co-innovation are central
• In innovation and improvement, the combination of customer value + costs + sales is the starting point
• Without additional FTE: 20% more customers, 30% reduction in contact reasons, CSAT towards a 9

 

Just over two years ago, Ziptone spoke with Ramon Delima after his first 100 days as global head of customer service, sales & operations at TUI. Consolidation of the IT landscape was then at the top of his agenda“At that time, customer service was using more than 85 systems,” he recalls. “There was little alignment between technology and processes.”

The fragmentation had serious consequences: "Our customers needed a lot of support. And to provide that, we often made it difficult for our agents with so many systems and complex and laborious processes. The number of contacts per customer was high, as was the AHT. This, in turn, led to high customer contact costs and a relatively low customer satisfaction rating, as did the conversion rate."

Sourcing focused on flexibility and innovation

Fragmentation also occurred in the area of ​​outsourcing: until four years ago, TUI did business with a range of BPO service providersPart of the transformation was the use of outsourcing as a strategic tool to achieve continuous improvement and increase innovation, in addition to achieving flexibility. TUI now operates with a model in which 60% of customer contact is handled internally; the remaining 40% is handled by two strategic partners, including Transcom. Both contracts have a five-year term, and the final year has now begun, explains Leo Ooms, head of outsourcing BPO, from.

Tough start

In the first year, both BPO partners had to deliver under suboptimal conditions, one might say. This was because, at the start of their operations, TUI hadn't yet addressed the processes and systems. "Our own employees were accustomed to all the complexity. But for our partners, it was a huge challenge at first," Ooms recalls.

Over the past few years, TUI has been busy implementing improvements at the intersection of customer, cost, and sales—what Delima calls the "sweet spot." "Everything we did last year had to lead to a positive contribution to each of these three elements. So not an "if, or," but a "and, and" approach." One of the components of the transformation: the CCaaS platform AWS Connect and the CRM platform SAP are now global standards within TUI.

Strategic partnership

This improvement process involved close collaboration with Transcom, among others. According to Ooms, it's essential that outsourcing is structured as a strategic partnership. "We don't just throw anything out there and then manage solely by KPIs. We truly consider Transcom a part of our own organization. We opted for a five-year contract for a reason; otherwise, you can't build a close partnership."

The combination of the refined sourcing strategy and the harmonization of processes and technology is clearly visible in the results. Thanks to improved processes and the experience and expertise acquired by the BPO partners, performance has improved significantly, including in terms of customer satisfaction. Without growth in the number of customer contact FTEs, customer volume grew by 20%, the number of contact reasons decreased by 30%, and the CSAT rose towards a 9. "There are now periods when our partners achieve higher CSAT scores than our in-house teams," says Ooms.

Partnership instead of customer/supplier relationship

A partnership where you want to achieve results through close collaboration requires mutual trust. "Openness, honesty, and transparency are absolute prerequisites. Do partners tell the whole story?" Transcom had the least difficulty with this, says Ooms; he attributes this to less hierarchy and less stringent procedures regarding what can and cannot be shared. Delima, laughing: "Over the past few years, Transcom has consistently shown us where our processes were failing. They are very direct and open about where we could improve."

The partnership now involves daily communication across multiple functional levels, regular visits to delivery centers, and structured consultations on process and technology improvements. Transcom is playing multiple roles simultaneously: innovation projects and pilot projects are running alongside each other in various countries and across different lines of business.

Partnership as a basis for innovation

This brings us to the chapter on innovation. How is this embedded in the collaboration with Transcom? It starts with the challenges in customer contact. One of them is complexity. TUI's customer inquiries range from parking to hotel facilities and from car rental to excursions. When answering these questions, employees have to navigate various databases, platforms, procedures, and exceptions. That sounds like a piece of cake for the application of agentic AI.

Delima responds: “Of course, there's great potential for agentic AI. Technology can help make things less complicated for customers or employees. The latter is at least as important as deploying agentic AI directly for customers, but that will take some time.”

“There is no discussion about the fact that agentic AI is coming, including when it comes to customer facing.”

That's why Transcom and TUI are collaborating on two fronts. On the one hand, Transcom and TUI are looking three to five years ahead, while on the other, they're primarily exploring ways to make agents work smarter. "We're focusing on innovations that contribute to lower costs and higher conversion rates. That's currently much more profitable than unleashing AI on your customers too early. We saw something similar with the first generation of chatbots: it primarily generates a lot of customer contact," says Delima. "But there's no question that agentic AI is coming, and that includes customer-facing."

Working together on pilots and experiments

Besides the "low-hanging fruit," Transcom and TUI are actively working on other innovations. One of these is the AI ​​agent trainer. Ooms explains: "In a kind of A/B test, some of the employees Transcom hires are being trained using the AI ​​agent trainer. This tool works based on customer personas with realistic customer issues. The results are being evaluated and assessed. Transcom recently scaled up the pilot—as the summer season is in full swing—and we are now waiting for the initial results."

Another notable innovation TUI has been working on for two years in its partnership with Transcom is the use of real-time speech translation. Ooms: "It's still in its infancy: not yet at a level where it can be fully rolled out. We're implementing it on a small scale for Dutch, and recently also for Swedish and Finnish with a team based in Egypt. It involves a total of around 500 conversations per month, and in those cases, it works."

Delima: “This technology is impressive – especially when you consider Parloa In conjunction with Transcom, it's working—and evolving step by step. We want to continue learning about what real-time speech translation means for our processes. But even more important is how our customers respond to it. While challenges like latency and the complexities of natural conversations (such as smoothly responding to a customer who adds something to their last sentence) could sometimes give the impression of a bot, these are areas for rapid improvement. The team is constantly working to address the nuances of human speech, paving the way for interactions where seamless, natural-sounding communication is the norm.

The financial side of innovation

In addition to trust and creativity, innovations and the roll-out of a PoC Or consider the financial side of the pilot as well. Who's footing the bill?

Delima: "We rarely have this conversation about these kinds of ideas. The person who comes up with the plan also puts the energy into it. If a particular innovation works, we can always discuss licensing the application later, for example. It's more important to initiate innovations than to finalize them commercially first. If you have discussions beforehand about who's footing the bill, nothing happens," says Delima.

Ooms adds: "In the past, we sometimes heard that it was difficult to get approval within our organization—think of the decision-making across four layers. That will now be easier thanks to the central management of customer service." In addition, TUI wants to work with an innovation budget in the future, which can be financed from ongoing operations. This can help to decide more quickly whether or not to launch a new pilot or Proof of Concept (PoC). This speed and agility are not only important for TUI, but also interesting for the BPOs. "This offers them opportunities to find new ways to add value to their services, so they continuously innovate for us and generate additional revenue," says Ooms.

Innovation killer: 'data in order'

The requirement that your data be "in order" is also a way to stifle innovation. That data management is precisely the problem for most companies, says Delima: "Nobody in the industry has their data perfectly organized. This also applies to, for example, all the knowledge articles and prompt engineering competencies." Instead of focusing on data and finances, Delima prefers to focus on the process side: "We believe in automating customer contact that is inevitable, after you've thoroughly examined processes. We don't want to automate bad processes."

The roadmap of TUI and Transcom

Regarding future innovation, real-time translation—at least of text—will be a key pillar of TUI's customer service, says Delima. "We want to move towards a single operation for all text-based customer contact. An employee from Finland can easily provide a customer from Belgium with an answer. We don't need Suriname for that."

In addition, TUI is working with Transcom and Parloa are conducting pilots focused on using voicebots as an alternative to the IVR. This voicebot should be able to fully handle certain transactions, according to Ooms. The initial results are promising and show that AI is gradually moving towards 'customer-facing'. But, says Delima, "at TUI we work with nine important languages. After English, Spanish, and French, things are getting a bit quiet on the AI ​​front. First, let's see if it works for challenging languages ​​like Finnish, Swedish, and Dutch. If that works, we'll be really impressed."

The secret of a good partnership

Innovation is only possible if the foundation is solid, says Ooms. But a partnership only truly takes off when the personal connections are strong, he believes. Delima adds: understanding each other and being supportive are also essential. Part of that is putting Transcom in the spotlight. "They're a European player that definitely deserves a spot on your shortlist if you're looking for innovation, speed, and creativity."

About TUI – TUI Group (Touristik Union International) operates globally in the tourism sector. The company is based in Hannover, Germany, and is publicly traded. In recent years, TUI has acquired companies and divested assets, including Arke/Holland International, Kras, and Sawadee Reizen, formerly well-known Dutch travel brands. TUI Group employs approximately 67.000 people. The operator owns 130 aircraft, 400 hotels, and 18 cruise ships.

(Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

Case, Customer Experience, Featured Transcom