20,000 FAQ Sessions Per Month: Major Airline Avoids Inquiry Surge During Company-Wide Migration

Major Airline Group

Aviation / Transportation·1,001+ employees·Internal Helpdesk

20,000 FAQ Sessions Per Month: Major Airline Avoids Inquiry Surge During Company-Wide Migration

At a glance

• 20,000 FAQ sessions per month immediately following migration
• Phone inquiries contained during company-wide Google Workspace rollout affecting 35,000 employees
• General operational issues eliminated from phone queue

The Challenge

Before the Google Workspace migration, support was overwhelmed. The airline group's internal helpdesk fielded 50 phone calls a day with just 3 people. A FAQ existed, but it lived in a spreadsheet with basic search. Employees told the team directly they couldn't find information and it was too hard to read, so they just called instead.

With a company-wide migration to Google Workspace looming, affecting all 35,000 employees across the group, the team faced a difficult reality: call volume could surge far beyond an already-challenging baseline. They needed a way to genuinely build employee capacity for self-service, not just add more support channels.

Why Helpfeel

N, who came to IT from a flight attendant background, understood the instinct to "just call" when something is unclear. Helpfeel was introduced through a business partner referral and evaluated against approximately 20 criteria, including admin usability, Customer Success support structure, and reporting.

Three factors made Helpfeel stand out:

Expression variation handling: The system matched searches whether users typed in Japanese katakana (メール) or English (mail), essential in a Japanese workplace where employees switch between scripts.

Low cognitive burden: Employees could type approximate, intuitive keywords and reach the right answer without careful phrasing. Even vague queries led to the correct content.

Ease of administration: The management interface was accessible even to non-technical administrators, with low operational stress.

What They Did

• Drove awareness: Communicated to all employees to "try the FAQ first" and placed Helpfeel prominently on the internal portal site
• Embedded FAQ links in responses: When answering email inquiries, operators included links to relevant FAQ articles, shortening response time and ensuring consistency
• Built a custom dictionary: Helpfeel's Customer Success team created a dictionary for company-internal terminology so employees searching with internal jargon would find the right articles
• Kept content concise: CS guidance recommended short explanations with images and links to detailed manuals, ensuring quick answers without burdening users who needed only basics

Results

In the month immediately following the Google Workspace migration, Helpfeel recorded 20,000 sessions per month. The feared surge in telephone contacts did not materialize. Phone inquiries were contained, and contacts related to general operational issues essentially disappeared from the phone queue. The capacity freed up allowed operators to focus on genuinely complex cases requiring individualized handling.

Support desk operators noted that users had developed a genuine understanding of common operations through FAQ adoption. Beyond end-user self-service, operators actively used the FAQ themselves as a response manual, providing consistent, accurate answers and eliminating variance across staff members.

The monthly reporting from Helpfeel's Customer Success team proved continuously valuable. Coming from a non-technical background, N had initially assumed FAQ management would be complicated. The CS team's guidance on article language, content structure, and keyword tagging enabled continuous improvement that would not have been achievable independently.

"After bracing internally for a flood of inquiries, making the decision to introduce a FAQ tool and seeing inquiry volume actually come down was deeply satisfying. The tool is excellent for users, but what stood out equally was how stress-free it was for administrators."

Mr./Ms. N, IT Department

Looking Ahead

Helpfeel was deployed specifically to support the Google Workspace migration transition. Following the completion of the migration, the dedicated support desk wound down and Helpfeel operation ended in March 2024. The case demonstrates Helpfeel's applicability not only as an ongoing customer-facing FAQ, but as a time-bounded internal tool deployed to manage high-stakes system transitions.

“After bracing internally for a flood of inquiries, making the decision to introduce a FAQ tool and seeing inquiry volume actually come down was deeply satisfying. The tool is excellent for users, but what stood out equally was how stress-free it was for administrators.”

— Mr./Ms. N, IT Department