Air France-KLM’s ‘customer intimacy’ strategy: new technologies, human interaction and innovation.
The Air France-KLM group has an enviable reputation when it comes to using technology to enhance the customer experience. Its central role in the Spencer robot and Happy Flow single biometric token trials, its investment in the development of electronic bag tags and tracking devices, and its use of artificial intelligence to create automated customer service channels provide just a handful of examples of how both Air France and KLM have embraced innovation in recent years.
Michel Pozas Lucic, Air France-KLM’s Vice President Customer Innovation and Care, has been at the centre of many of these projects, and when FTE caught up with him this month, he explained that the group has more ambitious plans afoot as it strives to become “the leading airline in customer intimacy”. In order to achieve this goal, technology has a crucial role, but, as Pozas Lucic explained: “From research and practice, we know that the way we interact with our customers has the largest impact on how they experience their journey with us.”
Air France-KLM is currently investing heavily in its CRM (customer relationship management) system and in customer care and recovery as part of this strategy. Pozas Lucic explained that the goal is to ensure that front-line staff have an accurate real-time view of their customers, and on any servicing needs or commercial opportunities.
“The challenge for airlines with so many online and offline touchpoints is to gather all relevant customer data and make them instantly available,” he explained. Work is going on behind the scenes to ensure that all areas of the business, from the cabin to the contact centres to the ground staff, as well as all other departments, have an aligned and accurate view of exactly what is happening.
Providing an example of how this connected CRM system will soon benefit the passenger experience in practice, Pozas Lucic provided the following example of a connecting passenger who is flying Delhi-Amsterdam-Chicago. If they have pre-ordered a vegetarian meal and by mistake the meal is not on board, as things stand the crew member cannot create a new vegetarian meal on board, but offers you alternatives and apologies. If the problem lies within the booking details, chances are the passenger will not have a vegetarian meal ready for them on the next leg of the journey either.
“What we will be able to do soon is that the cabin crew will put a message in their device asking the ground staff to pick you up at the gate, take you to the airline lounge and offer you a vegetarian meal,” he explained. “A message, probably an automated message, will also be sent to adjust your booking details so that it doesn’t happen on the connecting flight and the return flight.” These capabilities should become reality before the end of 2017.
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