Lufthansa worldwide customer services from Berlin Tempelhof

Lufthansa Service Center’s move into the Ullsteinhaus at Tempelhofer Hafen signals Lufthansa Group’s growing commitment to Germany’s capital

A little anniversary was marked by a great relocation. Bursting at the seams, the headquarters of Lufthansa’s “InTouch Service Center”, one of Berlin’s biggest service centres, have now relocated from Adlershof to Tempelhof. Nearly five hundred employees moved into new offices with state-of-the-art communications technology at the Ullsteinhaus, a building steeped in tradition at the Tempelhofer Hafen. The official inauguration of the global service centre’s Berlin headquarters was accompanied by celebrations held to mark its fifteenth anniversary.

“After many decades, the new site of the Lufthansa InTouch head office is a sign that Germany’s flagship airline has once again returned to the Berlin Mitte district – the place where Lufthansa first saw the light of day,” said Cornelia Yzer, Berlin’s Senator for Economics, Technology and Research. Lufthansa’s predecessor first launched its flight services at the former Berlin Tempelhof airport in the spring of 1926, almost ninety years ago. Yzer added that the presence of about five hundred employees at the Lufthansa InTouch headquarters pointed to the healthy growth of a large service company and signalled the Lufthansa Group’s clear commitment to Berlin as a good place to do business.

The Berlin service centre employees serve Lufthansa customers and those of the Group airlines such as SWISS and Austrian Airlines seven days a week, right around the clock. “Our customer advisers offer passengers from all over the world an excellent, personalised service on the phone or via email, chat and social media,” explained Lufthansa InTouch General Manager Erik Mosch. The customer advisors issue tickets, handle re-bookings, provide information about baggage or Miles & More and act as points of contact for travel agencies. Lufthansa InTouch also lends a helping hand when things occasionally don’t quite go according to plan, such as cancelled flights because ofthe weather or delays caused by overloaded airports.

“We’re delighted that a key part of Lufthansa’s modern operations has now moved to Tempelhof,” commented Thomas Kropp, the authorised representative of Lufthansa’s executive board for Berlin. “The fact that Lufthansa’s global service centre network now operates out of Berlin Tempelhof underscores the strong and continually growing commitment of our Group to the capital’s metropolitan area”. Since its re-emergence in 1955, Deutsche Lufthansa has been based in Cologne and has based its biggest hub at Frankfurt am Main Airport.

Lufthansa’s Berlin Service Centre was first established under the name Lufthansa Global Tele Sales (LGTS) in Schönefeld, back in 2000. Within five years the workforce grew from fifty to some two hundred and eighty employees, so it first moved to Adlershof in 2005. Lufthansa InTouch now has almost 500 employees on its Berlin payroll. Spread over four floors, its new offices in Tempelhof can easily be extended in accordance with operational requirements. The Berlin operation also manages and monitors Lufthansa’s global network of six further service centers distributed over four continents: in Brno (Czech Republic), Dublin, Istanbul, Cape Town, Melbourne and Peterborough (Canada). The geographical spread enables Lufthansa InTouch to provide seamless round-the-clock service 365 days of the year for all airline customers all over the world.

90 markets, 35 languages, 200 services

Every year, the seven Lufthansa InTouch service centres throughout the world perform some eleven million customer transactions, 2.6 million of them in Berlin alone. Altogether, 1,600 advisers serve clients from over ninety countries in more than thirty-five languages and offer two hundred different services. And the range of services continues to grow, as Mosch was keen to point out: “We’re constantly enhancing the Lufthansa customer service portfolio. In particular, and in keeping with customer demand, we’re expanding our services which we now offer via social media channels.”

Lufthansa InTouch is one of nineteen subsidiaries and associated companies owned by the Lufthansa Group on the River Spree. Today, Europe’s largest airline – which was only permitted to resume flights to Berlin at the end of October 1990 – has based its extensive range of aviation services in Berlin/Brandenburg. Among others, Lufthansa Technik, Lufthansa Systems and Lufthansa Flight Training have their offices in Berlin. The Lufthansa Group employes over three thousand people between Tegel and Schönefeld, making Lufthansa one of the largest private-sector employers in the surrounding area of Germany’s capital.

Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Corporate Communications, 27.08.15