This is an article from China Travel News.This article appears as part of the tnooz sponsored content initiative.

Today every click, every piece of data counts. These insights are being offered up by travellers, and airlines need to make the most of every touchpoint, beginning with those that they have some control over.

Gone are the days when “deterministic” methods of identifying a passenger was enough, such as identifying travellers who log on to the airline.com or a loyalty program. Consider a couple of examples that only certain savvy travel ecommerce companies seem to be targeting:

A passenger uses the airline mobile app regularly, but often this passenger’s decision-making journey also includes accessing the airline’s web site via a desktop. Airlines need to recognized and connect app and desktop activities. Many ad tech providers can do this using a mix of cookies, IDs and locations to track consumers around websites and across devices.

Consider also the passenger who complains on Twitter (or one of China’s own social media platforms). This passenger is issued with a voucher worth $150 as a goodwill gesture, but when he or she travels again with the same airline within a month, there is no move from the airline to identify the same traveller and the goodwill is lost.

Most airlines seem to be struggling with identifying infrequent or anonymous travellers.

Answer to Fourth Industrial Revolution – digital transformation

As an established B2B leader in travel, Amadeus is focused on helping its industry customers spot real-time influences, from the device being used to the weather at the time of interaction, aggregating the data, and then acting on it for a positive outcome. Personalization isn’t just about serving a frequent flyer with a relevant deal, but say, coming up with an attractive deal after fifth click of airline.com from an anonymous traveller.

Jonathan Tong, head of its Airline IT Solutions business in Asia Pacific, Russia, Turkey and CIS, said:

“The data is here, and so is the technology. Amadeus is focused on enabling personalization across customer interactions, and leveraging the latest technologies such as machine learning to do this.”

Tong believes that digital transformation isn’t a trend, rather it is “a journey, and airlines’ answer to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIR), an era of datafication, constant connectivity and digital workforces.”

The travel industry is starting to count on computing power, data storage, and open-source frameworks. This means interactions between computers and human is improving, and patterns in data can be identified.

This can then be operationalised, be it for customer service or even predicting what a traveller is likely to buy. Amadeus underlines that the industry is moving towards fully interconnected systems – both customer-facing and back-end – that enable ‘feedback loops’ between brands and consumers.

He says:

“One example would be how farming and agriculture – a largely traditional (in its way of operating), labour-intensive industry – has evolved considerably via connected systems.

“The airlines, too, need to make the most of technology trends around connectivity, mobility, APIs, artificial intelligence, machine learning etc. and especially when their customers themselves are entrenched in such environment (and they expect a lot from their shopping and flying experience).

“Digital transformation is an airline’s answer to all these trends and drivers put together, so airlines can reinvent themselves, connect their systems and engage the passenger in a way they have never done before.”

Preparing for digital transformation

Before looking at IT architecture, airline-specific IT systems and machine learning, Tong makes it clear that airlines need to be aware of their objectives from digital transformation.

“Before contemplating what systems to buy as part of the digital transformation, airlines need to evaluate what are they trying to achieve. What’s their goal? Is it about offering personalised services, offering ancillaries that are relevant, contextual etc.? Accordingly, an internal assessment of what capabilities are required would then follow – and airlines may choose to do a technology audit or review about what’s already in place in-house.”

Some of the considerations that would pave way for customer-centricity:

Consider the value being offered by the backbone IT system – PSS.

It has a vital role to play –  inventory, running check-ins, managing customer services/operational touchpoints –  so it has to remain solid while being able to support plans for the future.

Combat organisation silos

This is essential to enable different airline functions to come together and be able to share and act on data in real time.

“So, if the goal is to focus on personalisation, then go after the technology that can facilitate that.

“It would be important to know where data about customers is being garnered (CRM, loyalty, PSS etc.), bringing it all together to build a single view of the traveller and then translating that into actionable information.  The PSS does feature lot of rich data about customers,” shared Tong.

This data is then transferred into a customer experience management (CEM) platform, which offers advanced personalisation logic for all business operations. Post extraction of data, focus on actionable info and insight (including past travel behaviour, inferred preferences etc.) about customers, and ensure that this can be operationalised across all the touchpoints.

Tong shared:

“We are already working on aggregating, computing and dispersing data-driven insights to mission-critical applications in real-time. This includes purchase, service and disruption management.”

Consider what technology is required to enable this.

For example, if the plan is to focus on merchandising and target a bigger share of the consumer’s wallet, then gear up for tools and systems that help in sending offers/ ancillaries in a targeted manner.

This targeting needs to be contextualised or even personalised based on what we know about the customer, rather than pushing all products to all customers.

All of this driven by the customer experience management tool or platform, which can help the airline understand what a customer intends to buy or would be willing to buy. But when airlines  implement new touchpoints, such as chatbots, they need to assess how it links back to data-centric capabilities already in place. This will ensure the profile of the customer is updated with the addition of a new interface/touchpoint).

Ensure the platform is compatible to connect with any data source or 3rd party.

This is where the efficacy of the CEM platform comes in – it should allow connection to any 3rd party system or a data source.

“Our platform is system-agnostic, so it could be a loyalty system from Amadeus or any other 3rd party.”

Leveraging data and algorithms

Tong added that machine learning algorithms are coming into play in order to identify travellers within data sources, and helping in customer profiling in a robust way.

For instance, machine learning is being counted for a scenario where a member from one airline’s FFP decides to search via a metasearch engine, is driven to the airline site and books a ticket. In this case, the visitor isn’t really “anonymous” and has had an association with the airline.

So this is where the apt blend of data and technology comes in – the matching of one profile that is already with the airline with the indications (name, search pattern etc.) that are being provided by the search request from the metasearch engine.

“There is an opportunity to create profiles of non-frequent flyers as well,” said Tong.

He acknowledged there could be high-yield passengers, who wouldn’t be a part of a frequent flyer program.

The process of serving anonymous passengers starts with some level of contextualisation – once a prospective traveller accesses a website or a mobile app, enters city-pair, dates, type of travel (family, with kids etc.), then algorithms can match them against pre-set customer segments and serve offers accordingly.

Tong also recommended in a mobile-centric market like China, mobile plays a central in customer engagement. Digital transformation is about leveraging connections and enabling interactions and mobile is a critical element at the heart of it.

“So Chinese carriers must evaluate the information that is coming through the mobile touchpoint,  analysing it to personalise and tailor their offers and services, and assessing how best to deliver those offers. Mobile is a core piece of this (digital) transformation, and considering the state of mobile commerce and penetration in China, airlines need to focus on this aspect, and incorporate areas like personalisation and merchandising.”

This is an article from China Travel News.This article appears as part of the tnooz sponsored content initiative.

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