SNCF Connect & Tech, a privately-owned subsidiary of SNCF Voyageurs, is France’s leading digital and e-commerce player in the mobility sector. Its two key activities are: Designing and publishing technology (over 200 applications designed and managed) and being an e-merchant and distributor of sustainable mobility, notably via SNCF Connect, the all-in-one sustainable mobility service. Thanks to its two activities, SNCF Connect & Tech brings together digital skills to serve its customers, drawing on the expertise of over 1 000 employees based in Lille, Nantes and Paris.
Being a long-standing customer of Alcméon, our teams have been working hand in hand for years with those of SNCF Connect & Tech for their activity as e-merchant and distributor of sustainable mobility, so as to always be at the forefront of conversational service.
With more than 1 billion visits and 190 million tickets sold in 2022 on the website and app, SNCF Connect (formerly OUI.sncf and Voyages-sncf.com) aims to support its customers at every stage of their travel (before, during, after), and thus brings to life its commitment to facilitate all journeys. As a reminder, SNCF Connect enables travelers to manage their journeys from start to finish, to search for their itineraries, to find their tickets (train, bus, public transport) as well as to give information about the traffic on trains and various transport lines.
True to its tradition of innovation, the retailer has renamed, rethought and completely redesigned its website and app in 2022, to adapt the customer experience to new mobility behaviors and uses, starting with the greater use of smartphones.
Among the particular challenges the SNCF Connect teams had to face were the incredible complexity of the existing mobility offer (several types of carriers and modes of transport, millions of possible journeys, combinations and prices), the huge daily volume of visitors (3 million), and of course the imperative need to be able to provide timely information to customers who are by nature mobile, often in a hurry and sometimes stressed.
With the launch of the new “mobile first” website and the new SNCF Connect app, it was necessary to review the choice of customer service channels and the paths to access them, particularly reducing the share of live chat and email, less and less adapted to this context of hypermobility. It quickly became obvious that the share of asynchronous messaging, naturally perfectly suited to mobile, needed to be strengthened, allowing not only for quick responses by advisors but also for efficiently automating part of the interactions.
of customer service responses via hybrid messaging
of these responses made via In-App Messaging
SNCF Connect users connected to Alcméon
“We have been working hand in hand with the Alcméon teams for several years to be able to stay at the forefront of conversational, offer our customers the choice of the channel that suits them best, and a seamless experience between bots and human responses.”
Romain Kara — Director of Customer Relations SNCF Connect
OUI.sncf was already advanced in conversational terms. With SNCF Connect, we are taking it to another level with an app where each screen offers to start a conversation if needed.
The first part of the conversation is managed by a chatbot that provides an initial level of automated response to the customers. If they do not find the information they seek or wish to contact an advisor, a choice of channels is then offered to continue the conversation. Phone (only during business hours) and a selection of asynchronous messaging channels. For greater efficiency and customer satisfaction, it is essential to let the customer choose its preferred channel !
A carousel then offers the customer either to stay on the site or in the app by going through instant messaging operated by Alcméon in white label for SNCF Connect (code name MIA, for Messaging In-App) or to continue in their favorite messaging app: WhatsApp, Messenger, or Apple Messages.
SNCF Connect’s customer service fully utilizes Alcméon’s potential and modular architecture. With a wide choice of channels left to the end customer, a mix of automation and human responses (scripted bots, AI, and more than 1000 active users of the platform, advisors, project managers, supervisors, or managers!).
Asynchronous messaging (social networks, apps like WhatsApp, and messaging integrated into the SNCF Connect site and app) managed via Alcméon now represents 35% of incoming contacts handled, far ahead of email at 13%, and live chat, which was simply eliminated. The phone remains the number one channel with 52% of contacts.
A major innovation in this model, messaging on the site and in the app accounts for 56% of interactions handled outside of the phone and email, more than WhatsApp, Messenger, Twitter X, Instagram, and Apple Messages combined!
Human teams manage to respond in less than an hour to 50% of private messages arriving during business hours (1st semester 2023) thanks in particular to a good complementarity and a smooth handover between chatbots and advisors.
In the new system, the SNCF Connect customer service team continues to make the most of Alcméon’s modular architecture to offer conversational journeys combining seamlessly chatbots and rhuman intervention.
The SNCF Connect bot, which allows finding a route in natural language, getting information on one’s train, or finding an answer to a frequent question in the conversation, is now integrated into the in-app messaging and the SNCF Connect WhatsApp and Messenger accounts.
When the conversation is transferred to an advisor, a simple chatbot encourages the customer to provide the information needed to process the request more quickly. When the advisor receives the request and starts to process it, he or she then has access in Alcméon to the entire context (e.g., the part of the conversation in public and with the bot that preceded the handover to the customer service). Context is essential to provide a relevant answer !
📈 35% customer service responses made via hybrid messaging powered by Alcmeon
📈 56% made via In-App Messaging within these responses
⏱ 50% of human responses in less than an hour
🤖 25% automation rate in Alcméon (September 2023 all messaging channels), a figure that rises to 44% on WhatsApp (Sept 2023) thanks to the new SNCF Connect bot.
🛎 1000+ SNCF Connect users connected to Alcméon
Always at the forefront of conversational automation since the famous OUI bot launched in 2016, SNCF Connect is undoubtedly a model of integration and innovation in asynchronous messaging, and the Alcméon teams are proud to work with the SNCF Connect & Tech teams in this field on a daily basis!
Facebook Messenger
Apple Messages
Instagram Direct
inMessage
X (Twitter)