Introduction
A deeper understanding of the individual an organization is trying to reach is required for personalization and segmentation. It is the breadth and scope of that knowledge, as well as how it is put to use, that makes all the difference. Also known as one-to-one or individualized marketing, personalized marketing uses digital systems and information analysis to develop customized product offerings, messaging, and outreach to current or potential consumers. In contrast to market segmentation, customer experience (CX) personalization focuses on a single customer (Krämer, Friesen, and Shelton, 2018). When it comes to personalization, it all begins with a greater understanding of the individuals organizations seek to reach with digital technologies.
Personalization in the Airline Industry: Examples
Personalization is already having a positive impact on leading carriers. Airline companies like Air France, British Airways, and Transavia are already reaping the benefits of implementing at least one of the personalization strategies. Transavia is committed to providing exceptional service to all of its passengers. Customers’ data is used to identify passenger demands before, amid, and after a flight using a unified engagement platform. Transavia can use its Pega CRM platform to communicate with clients early in their journey. Passengers will have a remarkable voyage thanks to the recommendations made based on data and context (Buyruk and Güner, 2021). Apart from customer satisfaction, personalization provides Transavia with an edge in the market.
Air France-KLM developed ICARE Customer Intimacy to ensure that over one million passengers receive outstanding service and seamless travel experiences. Both airlines are committed to making every flight a pleasant experience for passengers. Disruptions like bad weather or equipment malfunctions should be seen as opportunities to change disgruntled passengers into satisfied ones. For this, they empower personnel with an extensive client profile and provide proactive, on-the-spot service tailored to each passenger’s culture, preferences, and present interaction environment (Michalski et al., 2020). Personalization has enabled Air France-KLM to unify operations across the company, boost agent efficiency, and deliver consistent performance.
Because of British Airways’ proactive, one-on-one contact with passengers, the airline has increased customer loyalty and satisfaction. That is a significant undertaking for a company that deals with over 400 million customers each year. British Airways streamlined personalization by embracing a single customer perspective, an omnichannel approach, a central decisioning framework, and new key performance indicators that concentrate on the uplift achieved by personalization. Changes in thinking and organizational approach to prioritize customer outcomes equally as company success was made (Zhao, Cui, and Cheng, 2021). There is an improved comprehension of their clientele, an increase in conversational engagement, and an overall improvement in service quality.
As a Marketing Strategy, How Successfully Has Personalization Supported the Brands of the Examples?
The Accenture Aviation Experience Accelerator (AAEA), built on Pegasystems software, was designed in close collaboration with Transavia, starting with the company’s vision. Analytics, digitization, cloud, and mobile expertise have cut costs, increased revenue, and enhanced on-time productivity in the airline business. Data, customers, staff, and business partners are all connected on the AAEA’s single platform, which helps the airline streamline its procedures, sales, and services. By integrating real-time information from processes, customer service, promotion, and sales, Transavia enhances passenger travel experiences and improves operational efficiency (Schmalz, Ringbeck, and Spinler, 2021). Additionally, personalization has enabled Transavia to enhance the AAEA’s development for the aviation sector.
When Air France-KLM collaborated with Pega, they created a solution called ICARE, which connects the dots and helps them improve their personalized customer service. Instead of only focusing on agent demands, they required a solution that could handle all of the company’s service recovery efforts and address every issue that arose. A professional team of employees handles the in-flight and ground services of Air France. Because of this network, travelers can expect consistently high levels of service and pleasure (Hammoud, Tawfik, and Fahmy, 2018). Air France’s employees have access to various training programs to provide customer loyalty services. The organization also conducts various in-house education programs to ensure that its personnel is well-versed in dealing with difficult and unexpected scenarios. Over 84 thousand devoted workers work year-round to ensure that the company’s yearly passenger volume of 50 million is met with nothing but excellence.
Customer support from booking a ticket to the passenger’s journey to their final destination is provided by Air France. The airline provides guests with French-themed services at the airfield and aboard the plane. Seating arrangements, services, and the enthusiasm of airline staff and passenger desk assistance play a vital part in determining the airline’s perceived image (Vojtek and Smudja, 2019). Customer satisfaction is a top priority for Air France and its affiliates. Additionally, the airline has been retooling its planes so that customers can enjoy an enhanced flying experience.
While flying and moving about London and the rest of the world, British Airways’ senior managers make an effort to meet and greet many of their passengers. The airline’s customer forums help it enhance its services and identify solutions that it should contemplate developing in the future. Using these platforms, British Airways encourages customers to express their views and feelings about current and emerging concerns by allowing their imagination, fury, enthusiasm, and ideas to flow. The airline management believes they have gone beyond other organizations in the field to establish new ways of listening to customers (Ettl et al., 2020). In addition, they are looking for guidance that many service organizations overlook: client complaints, ideas, and compliments as they hope to learn from these sources. The airline’s complaint department has been renamed a unit that aims to keep consumers happy. A crucial part of its value-driven consumer engagement strategy is making British Airways as approachable and responsive as possible to its customers. The company’s approachability and responsiveness highly influence customer loyalty.
What Can Be Gleaned From Both Achievements and Failures?
There is a need to be creative, goal-oriented, and swift on one’s feet when working at Transavia. Knowing when to delegate and when to bring in marketing technology is an important part of being a marketer, as it allows for greater efficiency in achieving one’s goals. Finding a strategy to make Transavia’s brand stand out in a crowded market was one of the problems to overcome. Several low-cost airlines operate in the aviation industry, making it difficult for Transavia to compete. Every year, with limited resources and constant pressure on ticket pricing in this fiercely competitive industry, its team strives for better results (than in prior years) (Al-Azab and Mohamed, 2021). As a result, they must be more innovative and successful in all aspects of business, including advertising.
Personalization is the core tech for AAEA, and Transavia has chosen the Pega Platform from Pegasystems. The Pega Platform is a single policy that combines leading artificial intelligence and decisioning, business process management, omnichannel user experience, case administration, digital and robotic automation. The current airline market necessitates CEOs to look for creative ways to win back customers’ trust and loyalty (Kelemen et al., 2019). Transavia, for example, differentiates its brand by providing exceptional customer experiences that directly correlate with company objectives thanks to its innovative solutions.
Being recognized as an individual has an emotional impact unlike anything else, regardless of age. Security and significance are the two most fundamental needs of all humans. People want to be respected for who they are, as well as safeguarded. A one-on-one relationship is the only way to achieve this outcome (Quach et al., 2020). A successful marketer’s goal should be to use the tools at their disposal to develop genuine connections. Consequently, customer experience personalization is the greatest strategy for expanding companies.
In the same way as other successful airlines, Air France-KLM has strived to give an excellent customer experience. Disruption, however, is a possibility; flights might be delayed, and bags can go missing. This is where Air France- KLM’s exceptional customer service can make a big difference and keep consumers coming back, which denotes a paradox of recovery. For Air France-KLM, personalization is essential to transforming passengers into satisfied customers and advocates. The airline’s front-line employees who interact with consumers face the challenge of providing them with rewards, tickets for their next flight, and the most excellent deals they can offer (Stone & Woodcock, 2021). With increased personalization, airlines will not have to ask passengers to fill out an application on their website for enhanced services.
The airline industry is one of the most competitive in the world. Customers should not be treated harshly simply because competition is fierce. Many airlines, particularly those in the United States, appear to have prioritized cost-cutting over service quality because they believe that pricing is the most important consideration for customers. It is still possible to find customers willing to fork out a little extra money for a fantastic experience, even if they are flying economy (Price, De Lille, and Bergema, 2019). Looking at what personalization has made British Airways, Britain’s national carrier, achieve shows that it has managed to turn a huge profit during a difficult period for the global airline business.
Although air travel appears to have a standard price, some travelers are ready to pay a premium for better service. They are the people that airlines have been working hard to win over and keep as clients. People who travel in first class, business class, or even on the Concorde are not excluded. However, many customers at the lower segment of the scale are also prepared to pay a little extra for better service but are often overlooked by service providers (Weller, 2019). It is often difficult to pin down which engagement or series of connections led to a customer’s level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction throughout a service company experience. Customers may sometimes have a terrible experience due to events out of control, such as a delayed flight associated with bad weather or issues with air traffic control. This makes it difficult to tell if a customer’s complaint stems from a single incident, like a terrible day at work, or if it is a sign of a more significant problem.
Ensuring that a company excels at attending to its clients, its most important people, helps to improve performance, identify challenges, and address any weaknesses using data while also measuring the types of services that add value for those customers. When an airline realizes that its customers are its most important asset and that its employees play an essential role in creating value, it easily helps them achieve their goals. The consumer is at the center of everything airlines do, from their advertising to their business model and the metrics that quantify their success. Supplying people with beliefs, ideals, and feelings alongside the rendered service means that establishing a company culture around the brand is critical. Because of this experience, it may be understood that the service is more than just a seat; it is an entire airline journey (Sarwar and Fraser, 2019). Tackling consumer complaints is a great way to keep customers who may otherwise go elsewhere without the airline finding out about issues that ought to be addressed. As business owners, airline managers benefit from customers who take the time to voice their dissatisfaction with its products or services.
Employee training, nurturing, and leadership is critical to delivering lasting and constant personalized value in a service-based business model. When hiring new personnel, successful airlines follow a strict procedure. In addition to evaluating resumes, they conduct psychological evaluations, group activities, and one-on-one discussions to elicit information about potential candidates. Leadership is just as vital, and thriving managers are regularly taught management and service strategies to ensure that their customers are always satisfied (Jagtap and Larsson, 2019). When the performance criterion for each team has been determined, airlines outline their key performance indicators. Such indicators are based on the personalized performance levels airlines need to maintain to attract repeat business and keep customers coming back. They ensure that facts are given precedence over personal biases. Nonetheless, some airlines fail because they do not take personalized procedures as seriously as Air France, British Airways, and Transavia.
Customer satisfaction can soar to new heights when airlines respond favorably and immediately to their individual needs. Because an organization like Air France, British Airways, or Transavia cannot avoid service interruptions, it is crucial to focus on disaster recovery and provide excellent and personalized customer service. Airlines should expect all of their employees who contact consumers to be empathetic and quick to respond to any problems that may emerge (Jain, Paul, and Shrivastava, 2021). What matters most is what airlines do when errors occur, even if it is inevitable that some services may go awry from time to time.
The Future of Personalization and Ramifications for the Airline Industry and Passengers
Big data and perfect decisioning systems will continually be used by airlines that want to keep generating customer loyalty and value to interact with each consumer on a tailored, one-to-one basis. They will do this in three ways in the future, the first of which will be to make every passenger’s journey unique. Personalized offers, communications, and recommendations will be provided by airlines based on an understanding of each customer’s travel tastes and needs (Weller, 2019). An airline’s customer service staff will offer specialized in-flight recreation or know if an individual traveler frequently checks their bag or gets a special meal to understand their habits better and build long-term customer connections.
Second, service interruptions will be turned into opportunities to serve customers better by focusing on the individual. Increasingly, airlines will go out of their way to assist passengers in resolving their issues and reducing the effects of travel delays; they will not merely handle new flight information (Al-Azab and Mohamed, 2021). Machine learning insights will be combined with customer and logistics data to assist personnel takes preemptive actions that are best for each passenger. Even if a lengthy delay due to bad weather may be inevitable, future airlines will resort to such practices as giving a coupon for a free meal to an anxious customer waiting at the gate. Such forms of personalization are the ones that will encourage customers to stick with airlines.
Thirdly, customized offers will increase revenue and satisfy clients if they are used consistently. Customers seldom respond to non-personalized offers or campaigns if their messaging does not resonate with them in a meaningful way (Stone & Woodcock, 2021). Intelligence and smart decisioning will help airlines identify clients with a high propensity to buy so they can give the right offer to them at the most opportune time, appropriate place, and when they will be listening attentively and ready to spend. For example, airlines might distinguish vacation packages suggested based on previous purchases or seat-specific deals on the screen. Revenue per customer rather than per seat will be the new norm. Selling, maintaining, and nurturing relationships will be the primary goals, as will increasing the number of miles covered year over year based on the individual needs of the people who use the service.
Fourth, airlines will become brands that provide personalized experiences instead of just transportation services. Successful airlines will do this through the implementation of personalization. When it comes to gaining customer loyalty and market share, those who treat each traveler as a distinct individual will be the ones who succeed (Jain, Paul, and Shrivastava, 2021). In addition, as technology advances, so will this customer service strategy centered on people.
Conclusion
Personalization and segmentation are only possible with a thorough understanding of the target audience. The depth and breadth of that knowledge, as well as the application to which it is put, are what matter most. Digital systems and information analysis are used to develop customized product offerings, messaging, and outreach to current and potential customers, as well as one-to-one or individualized marketing. Having a better grasp of who airlines are trying to reach with digital technology is essential to personalization. Leading carriers have already felt a positive impact of personalization. Airlines like Air France, British Airways, and Transavia have already implemented one or more of the personalization strategies.
Air France’s employees can provide personalized customer loyalty services thanks to a variety of training programs. For this reason, the company offers a variety of in-house training courses to its employees, who are expected to be ready for any situation that may arise. Senior officials in British Airways management make an effort to meet and greet as many of their passengers as possible while flying and traveling around London and the rest of the world. British Airways encourage customer imagination, rage, fervor, enthusiasm, and ideas to flow through existing channels to enable the airline to address current and emerging issues effectively. When airlines respond quickly and favorably to their clients’ individual needs, customer satisfaction will soar to new heights.
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