Lessons from the conference floor: Aviation Festival London round-up
Dave O’Flanagan
It has been a great few days here in London at the Aviation Festival – and utterly non-stop. Keynotes. Seminars. Catch-ups over coffee. Chats over beers. The mother of all aviation parties at the Emirates Stadium. This event doesn’t disappoint.
It has has been a packed week. We also hosted some close friends and contacts from the likes of Aer Lingus, Sky Airlines, Spirit Airlines and GOL airlines for dinner and some lively debate about CX and the holy grail of 1:1 interactions. I joined a panel discussion the next day on personalisation and loyalty alongside speakers from Finnair, United Airlines, Malaysia Airlines.
Great discussion with airlines leading from the front on loyalty – Finnair, United Airlines, and Malaysia Airlines
Elsewhere our very own David Hoar led a session about the role of the marketer in the next generation of airlines and how they can succeed in an ever-changing business environment.
Great insights shared to a captive audience by David Hoar, Director of Enterprise Sales & Consultancy at Boxever
Three stand-out themes
We must have heard hundreds of different issues, themes, problems and challenges talked about over the last few days (there were over 300 speakers, after all). But it seems to me that three critical areas emerged this year that are set to shape the future of personalised customer experience in travel.
1) Agility powers progress
Time and again speakers from airlines of all shapes and sizes emphasised how critical it is to embrace a “test and evolve” mantra rather than big digital transformations. Traditional approaches need to be replaced with something more iterative to enable progress. As Robin Hayes, JetBlue CEO said: “there used to be big CRM projects that took five years. Now it’s all about experimenting with smaller use cases, quickly”.
2) Taming data is critical
It’s no surprise that everyone here is united on the power of data as a business enabler for reducing costs, driving revenues and improving customer experience. Perhaps it’s why the Festival is right up our street – using data to solve problems and drive smarter interactions is what gets us out of bed in the morning.
But airlines need to blend the right data with commercial creativity to see results. I loved hearing Skúli Mogensen, WOW Air CEO, talk through what they’re doing in this space. They worked out that carrying one can of coke on one plane for a year costs them $150, so built an algorithm that automatically sets stock levels based on customer data. Just three days’ worth of work reduced take-off weight across their fleet and saved money. Elsewhere they’re applying the learnings of online gaming companies to their own data to experiment with so-called “micro transactions”.
3) AI isn’t delivering at scale…yet
AI has been the subject of huge hype for years and no doubt, there are pockets of innovation happening that is showing AI is starting to add real value. But the truth is this: the reality isn’t yet matching the newspaper headlines. Airlines that are leveraging AI well are doing so because they’re taking a practical approach, focusing first on tightly defining starting projects and use cases (like making sense of website browsing patterns, setting fares according to passenger demand or enabling chatbot functionality) before scaling upwards. This topic – AI’s reality versus the hype – comes up time and time again and is something I’m hugely passionate about. There’s too much potential going to waste.
Watch this space
There’s far more to these three themes than could possibly be explored in one blog post (especially when it’s time I went and found myself a taxi to the airport).
We’ll be looking at them in more detail in the coming weeks. If you’re interested in any of these topics and would like us to keep you posted, let us know here.
About Boxever
Boxever™ is the Customer Intelligence Cloud for marketers. It connects all of your customer, product and operational data, putting your customer at the center of your business and enabling true 1:1 personalization. This results in lower acquisition costs, accelerated conversion rates, improved customer engagement and higher lifetime value. Using artificial intelligence, it acts as the “brain” within your customer-tech ecosystem, taking in all data about the customer, deciding what should happen next and executing that action through the most appropriate channels – in real time, as it happens.
Today, leading brands from all across the globe – including Emirates, Air New Zealand, eDreams ODIGEO, Cebu Pacific, Viva Aerobus and Brussels Airlines – rely on Boxever to help acquire, convert and retain customers. The company is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Learn more at www.boxever.com or follow us on Twitter @Boxever.
