Editorial
The Gist
- Customer dissatisfaction. A significant portion of customers feel that experiences have worsened over the past year, with travel inconveniences like cramped seats and delays exacerbating the issue.
- Revenue-focused segmentation. Airlines often prioritize high-revenue customers, potentially alienating loyal, lower-revenue passengers who could contribute to long-term success.
- Personalization and analytics. Airlines are leveraging personalization and predictive analytics for elevating customer experiences, with a focus on creating memorable and tailored interactions.
In 2023, Contact Week found that 57% of customers feel that experiences have gotten worse in the past year. And I’m going to bet most of them were in an airport when they answered that survey. This highlights the urgent need for companies to focus on elevating customer experience.
Let's take a look at some lessons we can learn from the airline industry for elevating customer experience.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) expects overall traveler numbers to reach 4 billion in 2024 — exceeding pre-COVID levels at 103% of the 2019 total. This is based on pretty good data: More than 240 million people in the U.S. flew somewhere between June and Labor Day 2023, according to the Transportation Security Administration — about 7 million more than in summer 2019. Last year, the American Automobile Association (AAA) projected 115.2 million people would be traveling during the 10-day year-end holiday period from Dec. 23 through Jan. 1 — a 2.2% increase over last year and the second highest year-end travel forecast since 2000, when AAA began tracking holiday travel.
We may have progressed past post-COVID revenge travel, but we’re still traveling — and we’re not enjoying any of it, underscoring the importance of elevating customer experience in the travel industry. Take it from me — three hours into my five-and-a-half-hour flight to Hawaii for the holidays, a fight almost broke out between two grown men over Family A’s son swapping seats with Family B’s wife, sending him three rows back.
Did I wish for an air marshal on my flight? Absolutely. Was there one? Absolutely not, just an overworked and understandably annoyed flight attendant trying to make ostensibly grown men stop acting like teenagers feeling their first hit of testosterone.
(By the way, if you’re wondering if I started writing this article to avoid getting pulled into the near fistfight taking place in the row behind me … well, you’re not wrong.)
Related Article: 8 Ways AI Can Elevate Your Customer Experience
Travel Today Just 'Plane' Stinks
Anyone who flies regularly has experienced the endless indignities of modern air travel — the security theater, the cramped seats, the delays, the missed flights, the mediocre food (or lack thereof) and all the rest. Travelers are overcharged, overtired and just plain over it. It doesn’t matter if you pay for CLEAR, have TSA PreCheck, or fly enough on one airline to have status, it’s only a slightly less awful experience. But why? And what lessons can CX professionals learn from it?
First, it depends where you’re flying — business or economy. While airlines invest in making the business class experience even better, those of us whose business or personal budgets leave us back in economy aren’t seeing the same investments. And it makes sense — American and United Airlines have both said in the past that roughly half of its annual revenue come from just 13% to 15% of customers who travel on a repeated basis, tend to travel in business class and pay full price.
It's Intentional?
“I have spoken with airline managers and executives who have said that part of the reason that the standard coach product is so bad is intentional,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst and president of Atmosphere Research Group, according to a Vox report. “They want to get more people paying extra and trading up to a better product.”
Segmenting customers by revenue — while a common practice — has some inherent risks. Relying solely on revenue often oversimplifies the complexity of customer behavior and preferences, and runs the risk of alienating potentially loyal, lower-revenue customers who might contribute successfully over the long term.
Missed Opportunities
The takeaway? Focusing exclusively on revenue may lead to missing opportunities to build genuine connections with customers. Don’t forget to integrate additional factors such as engagement, advocacy, feedback and potential lifetime value to ensure a more nuanced approach to segmentation.
Related Article: 4 Ways to Boost CX With an Outstanding Digital Content Strategy
Turning Customer Experience Into Love at First Flight
Airfares have fallen about 50% since 1978, and, even if you include new fees, the per-mile cost of flying has also been cut in half. Yet according to Forrester Research, each U.S. airline is leaving, on average, as much as $1.4 billion in annual revenue on the table by not making improvements to their customer experience.
Few industries provide such a huge amount of customer data as airlines. From booking tickets and check-in to boarding and in-flight services, airlines have mastered intricate customer journeys to learn all about you. And airlines have long been at the forefront of customer service innovation, constantly striving to enhance the passenger experience. But airlines face the same problem as all CX professionals — where do you place your bets? Is it on omnichannel? Predictive analytics? Maybe digital twins of customers?
There are customer experience trends on the horizon that will dramatically impact how airlines engage with their customers, from further integration of AI to personalization driven by data analytics:
Applying the Power of Personalization
No one understands the power of personalization to create a memorable customer experience better than an airline — just ask anyone who was recognized the moment they became a million miler. Hyper-personalization driven by advanced AI and machine learning will enable customer experience professionals to meet individual preferences and tailor product offers effortlessly — without sacrificing moments of surprise and delight.
Using Predictive Analytics
If you frequently fly to Dallas, where are you likely to fly next? If your company won’t pay for business, what price will make you kick in your own money to upgrade to business for a trans-continental flight? When it comes to analytics, airlines know more about what will make you click “buy” than you do. You likely have plenty of data on your customers, but if you’re not using it, you’re losing out on opportunities to anticipate customer needs and put the right offer in front of them at the right time.
Embracing Omnichannel
Further embracing omnichannel strategies will help airlines ensure a seamless and cohesive experience from booking to boarding. You may not be running CX for a global airline, but as customers continue shifting across digital and physical channels, embracing omnichannel will help you drive customer loyalty and gain a competitive edge. Consider meeting customers where they are with features like chatbots, social media listening powered by AI, while focusing human-centric approaches on emotional intelligence and empathy.
From seamless booking processes to inflight services, airlines prioritize personalization, analytics and adaptability — all key to helping you elevate your customer experience to new heights.
Related Article: 5 Ways to Improve Customer Experience as Online Competition Heats Up
3 Simple Tips to Keep Customers Feeling 'Air-Mazing'
When you’re a customer, small things matter — as anyone who has tried to survive a five-hour flight on a bag of pretzels and a free soda can tell you. Yet there’s a difference between providing an overall stellar customer experience and providing the “right” customer experience in the moment.
While we all know airlines are doing quite a few things wrong, what can we learn from what they are doing right?
Know Your Customer, Not Your 'Customer'
From tailored offers based on travel history to personalized in-flight services, airlines understand the power of personalization in elevating customer experiences. With personalized recommendations and targeted promotions, as well as personalized interactions, you can make each customer feel like you know them as individuals — building loyalty and shoring up goodwill against inevitable missteps.
Consistency Is Better Than Perfection
Airlines prioritize consistency in service, so whether you’re booking a ticket or picking up your bag, you get exactly what you expect. (We can argue about if those expectations are good or bad later.) You can bring consistency to your customer interactions by evaluating all your customer touchpoints, both online and in person. Don’t forget to evaluate both pre- and post-sales interactions, too.
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Harness the Power of Emotional Connection
It’s like we all learned from the prime minister in the movie "Love Actually" — “Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere.” Travel is an emotional experience, and from email reminders to inflight announcements, airline professionals recognize that. Try infusing a more human voice into your communications to build emotional connections with customers.
Final Thoughts on Elevating Customer Experience
There’s no telling what the future of travel will bring — although — fingers crossed — it will involve fewer fistfights. Regardless, the lessons learned from airlines’ good and bad customer experience initiatives can help all of us create exceptional and unforgettable interactions of our own.
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