Ai Editorial: Can personalisation be about knowing “me” in 2017?

First published on 28th December, 2016

Ai Editorial: Can airlines make a traveller spend based on the sum of “clicks” or “tap”, or customer experience (CX) based on sum of all interactions with the brand, probes Ritesh Gupta

 

How would you define personalisation?

This question isn’t new, but then have we found a way to excel? Not really.

For me, personalisation in travel e-commerce is about helping me in booking a flight or during the course of the journey. I believe we have a long way to go:

·          The sum of my “click”, “swipes” and “taps” on devices: It isn’t uncommon for a user to use multiple devices. One might look for destination-related content, local tours, air tickets or best hotel deals session after session, say on airline.com or an OTA app. There are stages where users give strong signals of the destination they intend to book, the kind of flight itinerary they are looking for, the sort of hotels they want to book etc. But in today’s era in which one could log on to TripAdvisor, Facebook, Google Maps, airline- or OTA –owned digital platforms, meta-search engines  etc., there aren’t sufficient ways to come to grips with what the user is looking for. For example:

I searched for New Delhi-Zurich-Geneva-New Delhi flight at least 10 times on Swiss, Lufthansa sites, Google, Skyscanner, Kayak etc. over a period two weeks. Did any airline, Google or any flight search engine at any stage offer me a piece of content that made me click and book? No. Eventually I did book, there was a comfort level with certain itineraries depending upon the price, the connecting flight, meals etc. No organization managed to sprang a surprise. Retargeting, too, today to me is just a soft extension of the session where I left. No real value is being added when I am being shown an ad. A way for brand to just hover around the screen I am on. Of course, I left the website or app for a reason. Can the reason be identified and inspire me, lure me into a deal that matches my intent, preferences, price I am willing to way. So rather than just displaying an ad for 14 days that says book a car rental in Zurich, one could show the spots that I am most likely to visit. Show visuals of say Old Town or Lake Zurich and how could I move around from the place I am trying to book. The ad tech fraternity is making moves with initiatives such as programmatic native marketing. It is being highlighted that native ads blend content/ creative with the page a user is on, don’t hamper the user experience or aren’t intrusive, and are data-driven.  

·          Selling more via seamlessness: I did use my smartphone extensively right from the planning to booking to in-destination phase. I visited 5 places in Switzerland with my wife and 10-year old daughter. I searched for “things to do”, rail passes, tickets etc on the official tourism site of Switzerland. Me and my wife paid around $US 800 or so for two rail passes for unlimited travel, and only relied on SBB Mobile rail and transportation app during the course of the stay. We bought the pass from the Zurich main train station. Wasn’t there is any opportunity to offer me this option – didn’t the airline, the hotel, the OTA etc. miss out? Timing, content etc could be the key. May be at the of time of online check-in or cross-selling when an email is being sent for the check-in? I have apps of Booking.com or Gmail. How creative can these apps get, say via a push notification, to lure a user into such transactions. One area to watch out for seamlessness is Internet of Things (IoT). It assumes that information and data will flow seamlessly and securely from one device or one party to another, where it can be accessed and used immediately. If the IoT keeps tracks of the items you intend to purchase, it can automatically tally the payment and process the payment as soon as it connects to the nearest payment terminal or app and verifies the customer's information and data. The IoT will remove even more layers and more steps that are now involved in shopping and paying for goods and services.  

·          CX based on sum of all interactions: Be it for interactions during the course of one booking funnel or one journey or counting on all this as historic data for the next trip, airlines need to improve in this arena. Again a couple of examples:

I was unable to change seats at the Geneva and Munich airports for my Munich-Delhi during the same trip to Switzerland with my family. I tweeted from both the airports. I accessed a self-service kiosk and couldn’t change it. Even Lufthansa’s personnel accessed the self-service kiosk, but in vain.  It only increased anxiety as I had to wait till I reached the boarding gate. And the staff at the boarding gate had no clue. So there is lack of integration, no real-time alignment and employees tend to go through numerous systems or data sets to find the information they need. As Sabre states, silos at the technology level (i.e. multiple disparate systems) and silos at the business level (i.e. disjointed workflows and processes) often result in siloed decision making. Post this journey, I did search for a flight again on Lufthansa.com, and there was no awareness of what I was looking for during my previous flight. Airlines need to look at cognitive computing and artificial intelligence to make the most of structured and non-structured data – could be about offering my favourite seat. It’s time to count on loyalty data, trip data, previous purchase data and with apt permissions in place for social data for a personalised experience.

 

How is personalisation expected to shape up in 2017? Gain an insight into intriguing issues at Ai’s 11th edition of Ancillary Merchandising Conference in Spain next year.

Date: 25 Apr 2017 - 27 Apr 2017; Location: Mallorca, Spain 

For more info, click here

 

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