Ai Editorial: Way to being passenger-centric - making the most of old and new
First published on 26th October, 2016
Ai Editorial: Airlines need to drift away from their image of being technology or processes-centric. But it doesn’t mean old can be completely replaced, writes Ai’s Ritesh Gupta, who is attending #MegaEvent16 conference in Toronto, Canada
Airlines need to break the shackles in order to gain better control of what they offer, and move on from being technology-centric entities to a passenger-centric one. But while certain areas, especially the issue of legacy technology can be tough to deal with, there are few that demand a certain level of swiftness to move in the right direction.
As it turned out from some of the key discussions that took place during #MegaEvent16 conference in Toronto, Canada, airlines need to blend traditional with modern means, be it for infrastructure, payments or targeted marketing:
IT infrastructure: While the role of the PSS can’t be undermined, airlines need to work around specific areas like fully calculating their own availability, and gaining grasp over schedule building. Yes, as much as carriers would like to embrace retailing platforms that are meant for today’s era, but one needs to be pragmatic when it comes to dealing with 3rd party companies that continue to have a significant say in IT and distribution.
Experienced airline executive Dean Dacko acknowledges that airlines across the world are keenly looking at a passenger-centric evolutionary process but are having difficulties in moving in that direction and implementing that kind of capability. “The main challenges lie in leveraging the legacy environment, that database environment through the PSS, that has for most part handcuffed majority of airlines for many years. It is being envisioned that customers need to be at the forefront when it comes to all the way they engage, they communicate and market them relevant offers/ services.” But legacy technology that dates back to 60’s hinders such aspirations, involves processes and ways that you file fares, package and deliver, and qualify how you can sell and distribute those airlines tickets worldwide, that is not allowing airlines to put customers first. “Airlines need to take the quantum leap into the future, to recognize that time has come to continue to work on capabilities, build on technology that doesn’t necessary build on an existing PSS. One needs to gear up for digital first, customer first business environment,” said Dacko. “Lots of time and resources have gone into this, but in 2016 and moving onto 2017, we are now reaching a stage where lot more tangible steps are being taken to build the requisite technology, requisite capability to shape the desired customer engagement, customer communication and ultimately the kind of customer relationship that will demonstrate all of this in a much more meaningful way.”
So airlines need to continuously refine their merchandising, e-commerce and API capabilities, plus find a mechanism that would result in faster speed to market. Airlines require platforms that offer business model control (rules based) and should feature modular open architecture.
Targeted marketing: Airlines need to look at every possible way of improving digital interaction. Ganesh Iyer, Senior Manager E- commerce, Qatar Airways, referred to personalization and behavioral data during the conference. “Behavorial data rather than static data is key, how do they (customers) react to a certain situation,” he said. Another executive referred to the significance of emerging XML analytics platform. For any carrier that is sending back an offer as per the request from an intermediary or a GDS (essentially this is what NDC is all about), there is also need to work with partners to understand how one can recognize a customer. So, for example, if a meta-search engine gathers information about a user, then what if membership number of a carrier is also collected for a user to benefit, then this piece of information can be read in the XML messaging flow. This way search data can be capitalized upon.
On another note, one also needs to assess how the so-called traditional touchpoints can be strengthened. Do consider competitive intelligence through email content - emails reveal consumer interest and behaviour. “Email is a unique identifier in the travel marketing ecosystem. There is a whole lot you can do with simple email, first name and last name to personalize the travel experience, to create unique micro-moments for your consumers,” said Dwight Sholes, Senior Consultant, Travel and Hospitality, Return Path. You really don’t need to let your customers fill long forms or extensive data analytics to start personalisation. Rather email in itself is a strong weapon. For instance, it is used as a login avenue for many websites. You can go into overlays, plugging in additional information from 3rd party databases for psychographic and demographic information. Email can be a strong foundation for working on targeting marketing.
Payments: Payment specialists also acknowledge that when it comes to rewriting or migrating legacy infrastructure, this isn’t a workable scenario. The best plan is to adopt technology that is modular in nature and can work as a stand-alone solution with scale and scope. It’s imperative for airlines to have a thin but feature-rich and agile payments layer within the enterprise. With that flexible framework in place, airlines can enable easy on-boarding, omni-channel payments, multiple PSP/acquirer connectivity, improved acceptance rates etc. For instance, airlines need to look at Apple Pay and Android Pay. Both are now making it possible to use OS-Pay through a web browser. There is a need to assess whether Apple and Android can improve upon the shopping experience, without really escalating processing fees. It also needs to be highlighted that fraud risk is being combatted when transactions are processed with ‘OS-Pay’ mobile wallets, as they avail biometric fingerprint technology to authorize a transaction.
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