For a travel agent, exchanging unused airplane tickets is like rescuing a mermaid. It's something satisfying to do once in a while, but not something you would want to do twenty times a week.
Today Amadeus unveiled a solution that uses technology and its own employees to streamline ticket exchanges and reduce airline debit memos (ADMs) for U.S. travel agencies.
The three options
The new tool, Amadeus Exchange Relief, is available to any agency using Amadeus Selling Platform. There are a few options for processing exchanges, which agents can toggle among.
The company expects most agents will default to “Do It Automatically”, where the agent supplies the key details and the tool does the rest. Amadeus promises that the agent pays no debit memo, if one is generated after having used this process.
The “Do It For Me” option is full service. Amadeus's employees do the work on behalf of the agent, like accountants preparing someone's taxes. Amadeus also swallows the debit memos arising from exchanges processed through this option via its global claims policy.
A third option is manual. The “Do It Myself” route helps traditionalists do file on their own in a methodical way that reduces errors.
Service enhancement
Exchange Relief is based on some of Amadeus's current products that have already headed in this direction. But this North American iteration stands out from past debit memo solutions in two ways.
The first is on service.
Amadeus trained more than a dozen employees to become experts in processing exchanges on behalf of agents. These ninjas, as Amadeus informally calls them, were trained for more than 100 hours each in what needs to inputted into the computer fields for an exchange to go smoothly.
No other company, GDS or otherwise, is offering a "we do it for you" exchange-fulfillment service, says Amadeus.
This team is different from the help desk, a separate hand-holding function that continues to exist. An agent can talk to an Amadeus staffer, who will help walk him or her through the forms but not what the agent should type into any field.
Technical innovation
Amadeus Exchange Relief also stands out technologically. Its workflow interacts with the passenger name record (PNR) -- something that differs from most scripts or macros that agents have been using.
The tool reads all of the elements an agent needs to process an exchange, reads that from his or her PNR, and inputs those details into the agent's workflow. The agent confirms the details, such as that it is the right passenger, ticket, and stored fare.
The tool then pre-populates the fields, sparing agents from accidentally getting a debit memo because of inputting mistakes. If the agent says yes, the tool writes back to the PNR all of the commands to set you up for exchanging the ticket.
Amadeus describes the interaction with the PNR in both directions in an automated way is an industry first. The goal is faster and more accurate processing while "virtually" eliminating debit memos.
Because the tool recognizes the PNR of any of the three global distribution systems (GDSs) -- Amadeus, Sabre, or Travelport -- multi-GDS agents can take advantage of it.
Say you have both Sabre and Amadeus in your call center. You issue a ticket on Sabre that you're now exchanging. You book your new ticket in Amadeus, where you could use Exchange Relief for processing.
A year in the making
Vic Pynn, chief operating officer for Amadeus North America, told Tnooz:
"When I became COO, I did a tour of travel agencies, and asked them what their top problems were. The feedback was all around exchanges.
So I prioritized making a solution that offers not just another product but an end-to-end solution that can reduce the pain of exchanges as well as the cost of debit memos. We feel we've done that....
We can reduce 80% of the exchanges down to between 1 and 5 minutes each for processing, depending on which one of our solutions an agent opts for. Traditionally it takes agents between 5 and 30 minutes, on average.
That significant time savings can free an agent to make more sales... It also doesn't take into account the work around debit memos than can be avoided by filing things correctly the first time....
We plan to expand Amadeus Exchange Relief to Canada next. We're thinking about how to apply it in Latin American markets."
The solution addresses a significant problem. At the end of last year, more than 14 million refunds and exchanges were processed by Airlines Reporting Corporation, which handles ticketing settlement for more than 200 airlines.
Where Amadeus typically sees debit memos appear in automated systems is where the airline files a fare with a GDS, but, when entering the data, puts in some wrong information. When Amadeus tries to process the ticket exchange, it gets kicked out of airline side.
Alternatively, the agents may input information mistakenly, causing a similar problem.
To help agencies estimate the potential cost savings, Amadeus will publish an return-on-investment calculator online later today.
EARLIER:
Understanding airline Agent Debit Memos
Unravelling (some of) the complexities of airline pricing