“Airlines of the future” to embrace digitalization and data
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Airlines need to embrace digitalization and data sharing to ensure they deliver quality customer service, delegates at the ACTE-CAPA Global Summit have heard.
Addressing the Amsterdam conference, Pieter Elbers, president & CEO of KLM, said that airlines that use data to individually recognise their customers will be the “airlines of the future”.
He warned however, that the industry approach to data sharing needs a “change in mind-set”, whereby different companies and organisations need to stop concealing their own data and be more open to sharing it with their partners.
Elbers revealed that the trigger to KLM’s whole-scale adoption of social media as a communications tool was brought about by the ash cloud crisis in Europe, when the airline needed to disseminate information to thousands of passengers quickly and efficiently.
This has since led to the rapid expansion of the airline’s social media programme – KLM now receives approximately 100,000 social media messages every week. This, he stated, will be the “way forward”.
Thirty-three percent of KLM’s tickets are now sold via online channels and 70% of passengers check-ins are done online. In future however, Elbers predicted that customers will not visit websites; he used the example of WeChat, the social media site popular in China, as an example of how customers are now increasingly transacting within social media sites.
But there is also scope for new, as-yet-unknown technologies to further disrupt the marketplace. Citing the examples of Uber, Airbnb and Netflix, Elbers asked whether a similar innovation would be introduced into the airline industry.
Whatever new technology is introduced however, Elbers stated that his vision for KLM is to give passengers “a memorable experience, while fully embracing digital”.
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