Dubai based Emirates Airlines has announced it will open its seconds customer contact centre in Europe with a 300 seat facility in Budapest this year. Europe is a strategically important market for Emirates and this new facility in Budapest will play a critical role in supporting the airline’s growth plans across the continent.
“We searched extensively across Europe to find the right location for this facility and Budapest ticked all the right boxes for us. Budapest offers us a population base with the right mix of languages and skill sets, as well as strong telecommunications infrastructure”, said Karen Bell-Wright, Emirates Senior Vice President Retail and Contact Center. Buck Consultants International assisted Emirates in its location search. Karen Bell-Wrigh: “We found working with Buck Consultants International to be a very positive experience. The team is knowledgeable and professional. Their work was very thorough and they helped us to structure en prioritise our search criteria to gain the most of the review. We are very happy with the selection of Budapest and confident, that with BCI’s support, we made the right decision.”
Advantages
“It is an honour for Hungary and proves the success of our foreign economic policy of Opening towards the East, that one of the most significant companies in the United Arab Emirates, our most important trading partner in the Arabic region, has chosen Hungary as the location of their second European Service Centre”, said Péter Szijjártó, the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and External Relations about Emirates’ investment in Hungary.
When open, the facility will house reservation services as well as multilingual support for the frequent flyer program, Emirates Skywards. The new centre, capable of handling calls and emails in nine languages, will operate in addition to Emirates’ existing contact centres in Dubai, Manchester, Mumbai, New York, Melbourne and Guangzhou. “Our contact centres currently handle 11 million calls each year and as our network continues to grow, it is increasingly important for us to provide high quality and multilingual assistance for customers, as well as our trade partners” added Bell-Wright. “Europe represents a significant portion of our global revenue and this new contact centre will play a key role in maintaining and stimulating this growth.” Emirates’ six global contact centres support over 45 countries and average around 35,000 calls and emails per day. Together these contact centres have the capability of handling customer queries in 18 languages.
