Optus partners with Flight Centre for $75 million communications overhaul with Cisco

Optus has been awarded a five-year, $75 million contract with Flight Centre that will see the telco overhaul collaboration and communications services, as the international travel agent continues its transformation strategy toward 2021.

The contract will deliver unified communications and collaboration services to more than 1150 stores and 9000 staff across Australia, as well as supporting Flight Centre’s wider business objectives such as the provision of global security, mobility and the expansion of data connectivity. 

In the first 12 months of the contract, Optus will take Flight Centre to its own contact centre-as-a-service platform, a virtualised contact centre intended to ease the travel agent’s resource load, freeing up staff to focus on core service strategies, including staff management and customer experience.

The telco will work with Cisco to deliver both the unified communications and the contact centre solutions, enabling Flight Centre to migrate from on-premises to cloud-based services. Optus Business managing director John Paitaridis said the partnership would foster Flight Centre’s growth trajectory.

“As Australian organisations address the challenges of disruption, our ongoing strategic relationship between Optus and Flight Centre highlights the importance of partnership and collaboration in tackling evolving customer expectations in an ever-changing technology landscape,” he said.

“Optus Business is committed to our strategic partnership with Flight Centre and we are excited about supporting Flight Centre during this period of transformational change.”

Flight Centre chief executive Melanie Waters-Ryan said the company's work with Optus was essential to maintaining customer satisfaction.

“With the rapid pace of change both within our industry and in technology, Flight Centre has had to consistently change and keep raising the bar and value to our customers. Key to our successful transformation is the shared desire with Optus to deliver superior experiences for our customers,” she said.

“Building on our successful partnership with Optus, we are delighted to be investing in our critical technology platforms and capability to deliver a great service for our customers in Australia, in the retail stores, online and contact centres.”