How do you connect with the connected customer?

Getting hyper-personal with the customer

Customers now expect not just end-to-end traveler-centric offerings, but tailored interactions — for instance, demographic-based flight offers and feasible travel time — at every touchpoint. Airlines now need to cater to each individual in every demographic. And there are two ways to achieve this objective:

• Prioritize analytics and data-driven insights to offer bespoke services through their direct booking channels
• Leverage online travel agency (OTA) channels through the development and support of new distribution capabilities (NDC) to expand ancillary product offerings

Companies need to come up with strategies to interact with their customers before, after and during the entire travel experience. However, they must move fast. New entrants are coming up with delivery platforms to create significant disruption in several industries — particularly in hospitality and transportation. The airline industry requires a fast solution and advanced technologies could help them reach it.

Customer engagement through customization

Advanced technologies, such as robotics and automation, virtual reality (VR), blockchain and cognitive intelligence are expected to revolutionize and hyper-personalize customer engagement in the airline industry. With increased data analytical capabilities, companies could provide smart customer experiences to build deeper relationships with their passengers right from the start of their journeys.

Airlines can provide travelers with options for virtual booking from any device, where artificial intelligence would manage the customer service. Customers would also prefer applications for departure reminders, real-time flight status and traffic update en-route to the airport. Autonomous bag-drop units can enable seamless baggage handling and reduced check-in queues. At this stage, biometrics, facial recognition systems and in-wallet document scanning helps easy and accurate verification.

Mobile integration, live content streaming and VR can be used to personalize in-flight infotainment for passengers. In-flight seat-back immigration using biometrics during fly time and automated gate pass equipped with facial recognition technology during immigration are other services that could be considered.

Track-and-trace solutions, such as radio frequency identification, for real-time baggage tracking could prevent passenger baggage loss at the end of the journey. Finally, airlines could build loyalty by letting passengers redeem their cumulated points across multiple platforms and tokenization of points as virtual currency.

Finding digital success in a turbulent marketplace

Airlines need to adopt a core digital foundation providing smart experiences based on three key attributes — personalization, predictive and adaptive. This strategy would offer heightened expectations, atomized experiences, value exchange and brand promise to the customers. It would help them transform transactional associations with their passengers into a long-term relationship development and customer engagement channel, resulting in increased revenue and a long sustainable future.