Interview: World Aviation Group: striving to reach new heights
by Francesca Vella
World Aviation Group (WAG), which started off as a representative of several international airlines 20 years ago, has established itself as a prime player in the Maltese aviation industry, and with its high levels of efficiency, it is continuously seeking to expand its services, as Dominic R. Attard, the company’s chief executive officer, told Francesca Vella in an interview.
Mr Attard pointed out that the group – which is owned jointly by national carrier Air Malta plc and Cassar Aviation Services Pty Ltd of Australia – is committed to giving clients the best in service quality with focus, efficiency, integrity and professionalism. The group currently employs 160 people in its three lines of business.
The man behind Cassar Aviation Services is Leslie Cassar, who emigrated to Australia in 1955. He is a recognised leader in the aviation industry and currently the chairman of Tourism New South Wales. Although based in Australia, Mr Cassar travels to Malta every seven weeks.
Mr Attard explained that the company started off as General Sales Agency (GSA) World Aviation Systems (WAS), representing several international airlines.
When British Airways came to Malta in 1989, Air Malta and then Concorde International of Australia jointly set up a GSA to represent British Airways.
Mr Attard – who has 41 years of experience in the airline industry, having held senior positions with Air Malta, both locally and abroad – explained that it was four years ago, when Air Malta started undergoing a restructuring process, that WAG started expanding.
Since then, the group has grown, adding a customer contact and support centre to its portfolio, Centrecom Ltd. Set up in 2006, the company is an integrated customer contact operation staffed by a multilingual team (which deals with Luxair, Afriqiyah and Air Italy customers, among others).
By means of this contact centre, Air Malta, which is both a shareholder and a client, reduced costs by about €5 million annually; it no longer needed to have people stationed in various areas such as London and Frankfurt for instance, to run their reservations and ticketing services, said Mr Attard.
In late 2007, the group set up BPO Services Limited, which is a business process outsourcing and back office operation, supporting among others key airline industry processes including revenue accounting services.
Its back office operations include data management, credit card billing, debt recovery and other related services.
A newcomer to the group’s portfolio is Aviation Online, whose interests lie in representing airlines in new markets or geographic regions that would not be viable for them to serve alone.
It is a leading general sales agency network, supporting Air Malta in various countries through a chain of franchised partners, including Malta, Sicily, Libya, Cyprus, Hungary, Israel, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
Aviation Online’s operations function as a one-stop service promoting the products of its principal airlines and selling their services. The company provides a specialist airline representation function, offering commercial and operation services for both online and offline airlines. Apart from Air Malta, Aviation Online also represents Etihad Airways, Brussels Airlines, Qantas and Cathay Pacific.
Only a few months ago, WAG won an international tender, having been appointed by Etihad Airways to assist with the Abu Dhabi-based airline’s Customer Contact Integration Programme.
The project aims to review and consolidate Etihad’s customer interactions into a new service and sales model.
Speaking about this project, Mr Attard said WAG has helped Etihad conduct an audit throughout their network, and they are now helping them put out a blueprint to set up and manage their contact centres.
WAG’s chief executive officer went on to say that the group is now also offering other support services to the aviation industry, such as assistance with aircraft registration.
WAG’s vision runs parallel to the government’s vision for the country, he explained. Banks, insurance companies, financial intermediaries, IT firms, call centres, gaming companies and a whole host of other companies have discovered Malta and made it their preferred base for operations.
Malta now wants to emulate its huge success in ship registration by offering players in the aviation and aerospace industries a wide spectrum of advantages.
A number of executive airlines and aircraft owners have already relocated to Malta. The single biggest investment in the aviation sector is currently Lufthansa Technik, which has been operating in Malta for five years and is rapidly expanding. Others like SRT are following.
Mr Attard said that while WAG is mainly focused on air travel and tourism, it is also in a position to offer its services to operators in other industries (such as banking and telecommunications), both in Malta and overseas.
“By means of our BPO and Centrecom operations, we have a complete service centre. We specialise in customer services. We recently took over Air Malta’s customer care and complaint management services, and we’re now proposing to carry out other similar services.”
He pointed out that WAG is a contact centre, not simply a call centre, because its staff deal with phone calls, emails, white mail and even online chat. About 70 per cent of the group’s employees are Maltese, while the rest are from various EU countries.
“We offer a service in seven languages – Maltese, English, Italian, French, German, Flemish/Dutch and Russian. Arabic and Spanish are on the drawing board. Our people are native (or almost native) speakers of these languages.
“It is naturally sometimes quite challenging to find native speakers, but we try targeting university students as well as graduates, such as language teachers.
“We also target people returning to the labour market, such as mothers in their late 30s or early 40s. We find that these people are mature and know how to deal with customers very well. That said, however, we still have a very young workforce.”
Mr Attard went on to say that WAG employees are multi-skilled and highly trained. He said WAG is obsessed with training and quality; the group ensures that their people work in a pleasing environment.
“We adopt an open-book environment with our staff, identifying gaps in knowledge, helping them improve their performance, and generally keeping them motivated. Their salary is topped up with incentives related to performance, and their basic pay is designed around their skills.”
Speaking about the recent air crisis caused by the eruption of the Icelandic volcano, Mr Attard said that normally, Centrecom receives 1,500 to 2,000 calls per day. During that week however, the contact centre received 7,000 calls per day, apart from a few other thousands that the system couldn’t deal with.
Moreover, while Centrecom normally operates 13 hours a day, Monday to Sunday, during that week it operated 21 hours a day. Resources were stretched to the limit, said Mr Attard, adding that the people who called were all distressed, because they were stranded. About 3,500 to 4,000 calls a day were handled during this particular week.
Asked how he rates that performance, Mr Attard said: “We did very well. We received very positive feedback. Of course our technical system could be expanded and we would have been able to deal with more calls, but you have to ask whether that investment is worthwhile, considering this was a one-off situation.”
In normal situations, Centrecom manages to take more than 95 per cent of calls, and 80 to 90 per cent of them are taken within 30 seconds. Moreover, employees are trained to provide customers with solutions there and then. Before Centrecom took over Air Malta’s contact centre operations, said Mr Attard, it used to lose about 28 per cent of calls in Malta, and 40 per cent in the UK. Now, it only loses about two to three per cent of calls.
Centrecom is more than a multi-lingual contact centre. According to the company’s capability statement, they “…are experts in all aspects of the customer integration cycle”.
Currently, WAG is bidding for a number of substantial international contracts, said Mr Attard, adding that if they happen, the group will undergo a rapid expansion programme. WAG will know whether or not it won two particular contracts in five to six months’ time.