Bittu Sikdar

With over 15 years of experience in the travel and airline industry, I bring a strong combination of operational leadership, strategic execution, and exceptional people management skills. I currently lead a large, multi‑layered team of 300+ professionals, and my experience spans Airline Contact Centers, Corporate Travel Customer Experience, and B2B/B2C Sales, with a proven ability to manage complex, high‑volume, and customer‑critical operations across global markets.

I am a results‑driven operations leader with deep expertise in process re‑engineering, business continuity planning, crisis management, and technology‑led transformation. I have consistently delivered improvements in service quality, customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and cost optimization, while ensuring resilience, regulatory compliance, and brand integrity during large‑scale operational disruptions.

A key differentiator is my people leadership capability. I have successfully built, mentored, and scaled high‑performing teams of over 300 members, fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement. My leadership approach is rooted in empathy, ownership, and performance discipline, with a strong emphasis on coaching, talent development, and succession planning. I balance data‑driven decision‑making with human‑centric leadership, enabling teams to remain motivated while consistently delivering business outcomes.

Recognized as a trusted leader and change enabler, I work closely with cross‑functional stakeholders—including Sales, Airports, Finance, Technology, and external partners—to align strategic objectives and drive impactful initiatives at scale.

My career reflects a sustained commitment to customer advocacy, operational excellence, and people leadership, delivering long‑term value to both customers and the organization.

• Recognized by the “Award of Excellence” by CCXO Mr. Rajesh Dogra for contributing to Vihan.AI changemaker.
• Achieved extraordinary results by introducing Salesforce CRM in Air India and Kapture CRM in FCM travel solutions for centralized data and SLA management.
• Provided effective solutions to customer complaints via online chat, helping to decrease the amount of customer service calls by 68%.
• Grievance resolution reopen% reduced from 48% to 12% by identifying the opportunities.
• Reduced Call Abandon by 4%, doing various changes in IVR.

• I led the overhaul of the IVR and telephony system for the entire Air India setup, including the introduction of a new Air India contact center number. For the first time in any airline, we introduced a regional language setup for India and international locations, ensuring calls were directed to the specific regional contact center based on the customer's location.
• We transitioned the telephony setup from Cisco to Genesys, along with an in-house controlled Salesforce setup, eliminating vendor dependencies for reporting. The CSAT features went live on every call, and we achieved a CSAT score increase from 52% to 87% within four months.
• My next project involved remodeling the grievance resolution and refund processes with a complete in-house team. We reduced the ongoing pendency from 14,000 grievances and 18,000 refunds to double digits in both lines of business. I identified areas of opportunity and reasons for reopening cases, categorized advisors based on the severity of cases, and empowered frontline team members to process refunds through the Automation Amadeus tool (ATC), reducing refund pendency by 78%.
• Remodeling the Customer Journey Management (Salesforce) integrated with the website for easy customer interaction and accurate data collection.
• We introduced a contact center refund automation tool that expedited refunds from 12-15 working days to just 2 days. This automation tool resolved refund queries in minutes, and we developed a refund user interface in collaboration with the in-house Digital & Technology team, utilizing APIs from Amadeus and Salesforce for log creation and guaranteed automatic refund processing.
• Agentic AI automation features on website – Auto name correction, Auto involuntary downgrade refunds, Online Pet booking, Automatic travel certificate generate from website.
• For the Air India loyalty retro claim automation process, we enabled an online functionality where customers could update booking details, and points would be credited through a backend script. Email notifications were triggered for successful or unsuccessful actions, along with the reasons.
• For Medical waiver case – To review the medical documents receiving from customers we have onboarded inhouse Doctor from Tata 1mg who is responsible to validate the medical documents which helps to take decision to approve or deny any type of refunds.
• Established a separate team who is responsible for all CEO/CCXO’s escalated cases, ensuring a 24-hour resolution TAT and a 30 mins a first response time. This team worked closely with airport operations, inflight teams, baggage handling teams, and ground staff to resolve customer concerns and identify opportunities for corrective action.
• As part of the core Air India-Vistara merger group, I worked on strategies to handle over 500,000 migrated PNRs, ensuring smooth reissuance, refunds, seat selection/transfers, and ancillary selection/transfers.
• I was assigned a project to ramp down the existing voice contact center vendor and onboard new competitive vendors such as Concentrix, Praxis, and iEnergizer. We successfully onboarded all three vendors across global locations, including Kuala Lumpur, Cairo, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Noida.
• I was responsible for the final screening of approximately 1,200 newly hired advisors and assistant managers. Additionally, I reviewed and corrected all existing SOPs related to the contact center. I also remodeled email templates with the help of an outsourced partner.