Customer Journey

Mapping:
A Walk In Customers’ Shoes
The Experience Matters To Airline Customers Just As Much As The Destination

A customer journey mapping strategy enables airlines

to identify the desires and expectations of individual
travelers and provide appropriate products and services
at each touchpoint throughout their journey.

By Julie Dent I Ascend Contributor

91%
i

M
illions of customers have
boarded airplanes this year
and have embarked on a physi-
cal journey to a destination for
multitudes of reasons — busi-
ness travelers, families with
children, couples traveling on adventure
vacations, guests with special needs. Each
one of these, and myriad other travel “per-
sonas,” has a very different expectation of
the brand promise that an airline presents.
An airline’s brand exhibits its commit-
ment to customers so they know what to
expect. However, for many, the first time
customers interact with an airline’s brand
in person, when it feels real, is when a gate
agent or a flight attendant greets them as
they are boarding the aircraft.
Based on this reality, how do you know
if your customers have the same expecta-
tions of your brand at this touchpoint as

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they did when they were searching for the
best itinerary, making their reservation or
attempting to check bags? Are you willing
to take the chance that you did not meet
their needs and they are sharing their less-
than-desirable experience with others?
Social media allows customers to share
the good and the bad with the world.
Customers advocate when things are good,
and they promote your product to others
through recommendations. They also have
a story to tell when things do not go so
well.
A bad customer experience posted on
twitter, Facebook and various other social
media channels can be very detrimental to
your brand. In fact, statistics show that:
It takes 12 positive experiences to make
up for one negative one.
91 percent of unhappy customers will
not return to your airline after a bad
experience.
As an airline executive, do you know
what your customers expect from your
company from the moment they are
inspired to travel through to the end of the
journey when they are reminiscing with
their friends and family? How many oppor-
tunities has your airline had to interact
with customers before they get to the end
of their journey? How important are your
customers to your airline, and how do you
recognize the needs of each one?
Airlines today are clearly starting to
“organize” around the customer. Titles
such as vice president of guest experience
and chief customer experience officer,
which have existed in many industries
since the 1990s, are now emerging in the
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airline world. Airlines realize that “owner- Special Needs Travelers

ship” of the customer has become just as
important as operations. Family Travelers
Understanding who your customers are
and why they do business with your airline
supports your longer-term vision for the Leisure Travelers
business and the goal of keeping custom- Business Travelers
ers for life (lifetime value). However, to
solidify your customer experience strategy
and then fulfill that strategy, it is vital to
take a walk in your customers’ shoes.
How you treat each customer should be
different once you know his needs. This
is established through customer journey
mapping.

Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is the pro-
cess of tracking and describing all the
experiences customers have as they
encounter a service or set of services,
taking into account not only what happens
to them, but also their responses to these
experiences. It is about knowing what Limit Number Of Personas When creating personas to support a customer journey mapping strategy,
happens to customers when they do busi- airlines should limit the number of personas (special needs travelers, family travelers, leisure travelers,
ness with you, how they react, and how it business travelers, etc.) to between four and seven.
makes them feel — every step of the way.
Customer journey mapping can also
uncover transitions between interdepen- identify customer personas. Who are the to take a walk in the shoes of the different
dent channels that are not comfortable various types of customers? What value personas that you identify.
to customers as well as processes where does each persona bring to your company? It is possible that an airline may identify
the airline needlessly repeats an action. It Using each of the personas, we identify numerous personas. The excessive granular-
can uncover a variety of points of stress to the steps in the journey, the touchpoints ity that is encouraged by the goal of creating
customers throughout their journey. of interest to each persona in each step of relatable personas can cause airlines to miss
There are clear benefits of customer the journey, the relative importance of each types of customers who do not fit the molds
journey mapping … both for the airline step to each persona and the overall impor- represented by personas. However, in trying
and its customers. Using this approach, tance of each step weighted by importance to cover every possibility, customer experi-
airlines can identify data hand-off points of each persona. ence teams are tempted to create too many
to better understand the role that each In the airline industry, if you try to be all personas. To start with, an airline should
department plays in the overall customer- things to all people, you will rarely end up fully create between four and seven different
focused strategy. satisfying anyone. That is why it is important personas.
Used well, customer journey mapping to focus on understanding your customers by For the purpose of this article, we will
can reveal opportunities to create customer persona and serving each persona’s specific introduce four travel personas including:
delight and improve the end-to-end travel needs. So, the recommendation to “take a Business — A customer traveling on
experience, acting as a strategic tool to walk in your customers’ shoes” really means business,
ensure every interaction with the customer
is as positive as it can be. Understanding
which touchpoints are most important
to the personas that are critical to your
airline’s success provides insights into
where your company should be investing
to improve the customer experience. It
also helps determine which touchpoints Inspiration Planning Booking Purchase Pre-Trip Departure In-Flight Post-Trip
require less focus.
To really have a meaningful impact on
customer experience, personas and cus-
tomer journey maps have to be firmly
integrated into decision-making processes.
That is why customer experience profes-
sionals should build personas before or
with journey maps.
Impacting The Customer Experience There are several steps that make up a customer’s end-to-end
Developing Personas air travel journey, from the time she begins thinking about taking a trip through to the end of the trip
Before beginning the process of cus- and beyond. Taking a customer journey mapping approach, airlines can focus on the touchpoints most
tomer journey mapping, it is important to important to individual customers based on their identified persona.

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Leisure — A couple traveling on an

adventure holiday,
Family/group — A family of two adults
and two children under 10 traveling to
visit friends,
...rest of the journey
Special needs — A customer who is trav-
eling alone and requires a wheelchair.
(P) On the Tarmac
The Business Traveler
This customer is likely to have a com-
pany travel policy that dictates the airlines (Q) In-Flight
21
on which he can travel and the fares that
he can book. Therefore, he is more focused
on ease of check-in, swift transfers when Departing
13
connecting, perks that are available to him
and access to additional options, such as ...rest of the journey
in-flight Wi-Fi, so he can remain constantly 8
connected.
3
Couple’s Adventure Holiday
These leisure travelers place more 0
emphasis on the planning phase, taking
time to shop online or through a travel
agent. They typically seek advice from peo- Importance To Personas When considering the “in-flight” step of the customer journey, business
ple with similar likes and dislikes that they travelers and families traveling with children indicated that in-flight services and amenities were more
may discover on travel advisory websites. important than other aspects of their trip. However, leisure travelers and those with special needs did
not rate the in-flight portion of their trip as high when weighed against other touchpoints throughout the
Two Adults, Two Children travel journey.
Families traveling with children have the different elements within that step. For happen directly with airline employees,
similar needs to the leisure couple but example, a customer could be concerned over the phone, through mobile phones,
have more expectations of the in-flight about items that fall within the “in-flight” at self-service kiosks, on the airline’s web-
experience and also seek a stress-free step. Will the airline feed me? What type site, and through social media and various
check-in process. of entertainment will there be for the chil- other channels.
dren? Is there on-board Internet access? Identifying the most important touch-
Special Needs Within the step, consider the types of points and associated interactions to focus
Special needs customers, such as interaction your airline could have with on is derived by combining the weighted
someone traveling with a wheelchair, each of the different personas. Interactions importance of the persona to the airline
are concerned with connections and the
physical movement through the process of
checking in and getting through security. In
flight, they expect crew awareness of their
Persona Importance
special needs.

Identifying Steps In The Journey

Having created the personas, the next
Traveling with kids 5
task is to identify the steps in the air travel
journey from the perspective of the differ-
ent passenger personas. The outcome of Leisure traveler 8
this will reveal the touchpoints within each
step that impact the customer experience
for each persona. It will identify the relative
importance to the customer experience Special needs traveler 3
for each persona of each step in the air
travel journey. Additionally, it will indicate
the relative importance of each touchpoint
within the steps each persona found to be
the most important.
Business traveler 13
Last year, customer experience lead-
ers at Sabre Airline Solutions ® conducted
research, organized workshops and validat- Importance Of Personas To determine the importance of each persona, an airline must determine
ed initial findings that have revealed how how many elements in each step of the travel journey are important to each persona. In this case, the
customer journey mapping can identify the business traveler indicated that 13 elements were important, compared to three areas of importance
most important touchpoints for customers. for the special needs traveler, five for families traveling with children and eight for leisure travelers. It is,
For each step in the journey (our research therefore determined that regarding this particular step in the journey the business traveler persona has
revealed as many as 26 steps), we identify the highest level of importance.

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at that step (determined by the amount of

elements in the step) with the weighted
importance to the persona of each step.
For example, a customer traveling on
business indicated that 13 different ele-
ments were important. Therefore, we may
conclude that the business traveler is the
most important persona to the airline at
that particular step. In terms of importance
to the persona, using the example of the
“in-flight” step, the customer traveling
on business and the family traveling with
children have rated the step higher than
the couple taking an adventure holiday and Customer Acquisition/Retention
Check-In and at the airport
the customer traveling with a wheelchair.
Once an airline recognizes what each of
its customers desire and expect, it is criti-
cal to align these needs and expectations
with the company brand. From a busi-
ness perspective, it is equally important to
assign a value to each customer.

Customer Value
Some customers drive more value to your Interacting With Customers Customer journey mapping enables an airline to identify the touchpoints
airline than others. An airline can determine for which individual customers want and expect airline interaction. This approach helps airlines verify
customer value in a number of ways, including: what is working well, what isn’t and where they need to invest.
Customers who drive additional revenue for
the airline through the purchase of ancillaries
and upgrades; needed and where to invest in solutions customers, collect and distribute customer
Existing customer value based on the data to enhance the customer experience, information for operational decisions, and
derived from information about the most increase revenue and grow brand loyalty. provide a holistic view of your customers
recent trips, the frequency of trips and the Persona creation and customer journey to aid your airline in fulfilling its customer
price paid; mapping are just two elements that can promises. a
Likelihood to recommend; help customer experience professionals
A combination of all of the above. create a sound customer-centric strategy.
To be completely successful, chief cus-
Interdependent Channel Transitions tomer experience officers need a coalition
In the ever-connected online world, cus- of top executives who take an active role
tomers want data and information that is in transforming the organization through
customized, aggregated, relevant and social. customer experience governance.
They also want to travel with an airline that While most executives support the
knows them, offers them the right information idea of customer centricity, many fail to
when they need it, and respects and helps act because they don’t understand the
them. Customers want effortless experiences business value or don’t know how to help.
that are simple, responsive, highly contextual, Shifting the entire airline to become more
proactive and personal. They also expect that customer focused and its employees to
the experience across channels is consistent. become active supporters of customer
In a previous issue of Ascend, we intro- experience, those responsible for the
duced the typical touchpoints where an airline strategy should identify top influencers,
can capture the heart of the guest. However, rate their current level of support and
with customer journey mapping, airlines can develop a customized plan to bring each
go deeper and uncover previously untapped department along.
opportunities to interact with customers, However, much more is needed than
providing that seamless experience across just a shift in mindset and processes. An
all channels. airline should find an experienced busi-
ness partner, such as Sabre Airline
Shift To Customer Journey Solutions ®, that can help develop the cus-
Mapping tomer journey mapping strategy and drive
Ultimately, the process of customer it forward. And equally important, it must Julie Dent is a customer experience
journey mapping enables an airline to hone identify the right technology to support director for Sabre Airline Solutions.
in on the touchpoints that emerge as the the strategy, such as SabreSonic ® For additional information about
most important to interact with customers Customer Sales & Service, a fully inte- customer journey mapping or
from the customer’s point of view. This grated customer-centric portfolio. This SabreSonic Customer Sales & Service
enables the airline to determine what it advanced technology provides the capabil- solutions, please send her an email
is doing well, where improvements are ity to identify and recognize your message at julie.dent@sabre.com.

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