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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

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i
illions of customers have
boarded airplanes this year
and have embarked on a physical journey to a destination for
multitudes of reasons business travelers, families with
children, couples traveling on adventure
vacations, guests with special needs. Each
one of these, and myriad other travel personas, has a very different expectation of
the brand promise that an airline presents.
An airlines brand exhibits its commitment to customers so they know what to
expect. However, for many, the first time
customers interact with an airlines 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 expectations of your brand at this touchpoint as
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 lessthan-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 opportunities 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 ownership of the customer has become just as
important as operations.
Understanding who your customers are
and why they do business with your airline
supports your longer-term vision for the
business and the goal of keeping customers 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.

Special Needs Travelers


Family Travelers
Leisure Travelers
Business Travelers

Customer Journey Mapping


Customer journey mapping is the process 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
happens to customers when they do business with you, how they react, and how it
makes them feel every step of the way.
Customer journey mapping can also
uncover transitions between interdependent channels that are not comfortable
to customers as well as processes where
the airline needlessly repeats an action. It
can uncover a variety of points of stress to
customers throughout their journey.
There are clear benefits of customer
journey mapping both for the airline
and its customers. Using this approach,
airlines can identify data hand-off points
to better understand the role that each
department plays in the overall customerfocused strategy.
Used well, customer journey mapping
can reveal opportunities to create customer
delight and improve the end-to-end travel
experience, acting as a strategic tool to
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
airlines success provides insights into
where your company should be investing
to improve the customer experience. It
also helps determine which touchpoints
require less focus.
To really have a meaningful impact on
customer experience, personas and customer journey maps have to be firmly
integrated into decision-making processes.
That is why customer experience professionals should build personas before or
with journey maps.

Developing Personas
Before beginning the process of customer journey mapping, it is important to

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Limit Number Of Personas When creating personas to support a customer journey mapping strategy,
airlines should limit the number of personas (special needs travelers, family travelers, leisure travelers,
business travelers, etc.) to between four and seven.

identify customer personas. Who are the


various types of customers? What value
does each persona bring to your company?
Using each of the personas, we identify
the steps in the journey, the touchpoints
of interest to each persona in each step of
the journey, the relative importance of each
step to each persona and the overall importance of each step weighted by importance
of each persona.
In the airline industry, if you try to be all
things to all people, you will rarely end up fully
satisfying anyone. That is why it is important
to focus on understanding your customers by
persona and serving each personas specific
needs. So, the recommendation to take a
walk in your customers shoes really means

Inspiration

Planning

Booking

Purchase

to take a walk in the shoes of the different


personas that you identify.
It is possible that an airline may identify
numerous personas. The excessive granularity that is encouraged by the goal of creating
relatable personas can cause airlines to miss
types of customers who do not fit the molds
represented by personas. However, in trying
to cover every possibility, customer experience teams are tempted to create too many
personas. To start with, an airline should
create between four and seven different
personas.
For the purpose of this article, we will
introduce four travel personas including:
Business A customer traveling on
business,

Pre-Trip

Departure

In-Flight

Post-Trip

Impacting The Customer Experience There are several steps that make up a customers end-to-end
air travel journey, from the time she begins thinking about taking a trip through to the end of the trip
and beyond. Taking a customer journey mapping approach, airlines can focus on the touchpoints most
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,
Special needs A customer who is traveling alone and requires a wheelchair.

...rest of the journey


(P) On the Tarmac

The Business Traveler


This customer is likely to have a company travel policy that dictates the airlines
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
connecting, perks that are available to him
and access to additional options, such as
in-flight Wi-Fi, so he can remain constantly
connected.

(Q) In-Flight

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Departing

13

...rest of the journey

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3

Couples Adventure Holiday


These leisure travelers place more
emphasis on the planning phase, taking
time to shop online or through a travel
agent. They typically seek advice from people with similar likes and dislikes that they
may discover on travel advisory websites.

Two Adults, Two Children


Families traveling with children have
similar needs to the leisure couple but
have more expectations of the in-flight
experience and also seek a stress-free
check-in process.

Special Needs
Special needs customers, such as
someone traveling with a wheelchair,
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
special needs.

Identifying Steps In The Journey


Having created the personas, the next
task is to identify the steps in the air travel
journey from the perspective of the different passenger personas. The outcome of
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
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.
Last year, customer experience leaders at Sabre Airline Solutions conducted
research, organized workshops and validated initial findings that have revealed how
customer journey mapping can identify the
most important touchpoints for customers.
For each step in the journey (our research
revealed as many as 26 steps), we identify

0
Importance To Personas When considering the in-flight step of the customer journey, business
travelers and families traveling with children indicated that in-flight services and amenities were more
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
travel journey.

the different elements within that step. For


example, a customer could be concerned
about items that fall within the in-flight
step. Will the airline feed me? What type
of entertainment will there be for the children? Is there on-board Internet access?
Within the step, consider the types of
interaction your airline could have with
each of the different personas. Interactions

happen directly with airline employees,


over the phone, through mobile phones,
at self-service kiosks, on the airlines website, and through social media and various
other channels.
Identifying the most important touchpoints and associated interactions to focus
on is derived by combining the weighted
importance of the persona to the airline

Persona

Importance

Traveling with kids

Leisure traveler

Special needs traveler

Business traveler

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Importance Of Personas To determine the importance of each persona, an airline must determine
how many elements in each step of the travel journey are important to each persona. In this case, the
business traveler indicated that 13 elements were important, compared to three areas of importance
for the special needs traveler, five for families traveling with children and eight for leisure travelers. It is,
therefore determined that regarding this particular step in the journey the business traveler persona has
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 elements 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
the customer traveling with a wheelchair.
Once an airline recognizes what each of
its customers desire and expect, it is critical to align these needs and expectations
with the company brand. From a business perspective, it is equally important to
assign a value to each customer.

Customer Acquisition/Retention

Check-In and at the airport

Customer Value
Some customers drive more value to your
airline than others. An airline can determine
customer value in a number of ways, including:
Customers who drive additional revenue for
the airline through the purchase of ancillaries
and upgrades;
Existing customer value based on the data
derived from information about the most
recent trips, the frequency of trips and the
price paid;
Likelihood to recommend;
A combination of all of the above.

Interdependent Channel Transitions


In the ever-connected online world, customers want data and information that is
customized, aggregated, relevant and social.
They also want to travel with an airline that
knows them, offers them the right information
when they need it, and respects and helps
them. Customers want effortless experiences
that are simple, responsive, highly contextual,
proactive and personal. They also expect that
the experience across channels is consistent.
In a previous issue of Ascend, we introduced the typical touchpoints where an airline
can capture the heart of the guest. However,
with customer journey mapping, airlines can
go deeper and uncover previously untapped
opportunities to interact with customers,
providing that seamless experience across
all channels.

Shift To Customer Journey


Mapping
Ultimately, the process of customer
journey mapping enables an airline to hone
in on the touchpoints that emerge as the
most important to interact with customers
from the customers point of view. This
enables the airline to determine what it
is doing well, where improvements are

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Interacting With Customers Customer journey mapping enables an airline to identify the touchpoints
for which individual customers want and expect airline interaction. This approach helps airlines verify
what is working well, what isnt and where they need to invest.

needed and where to invest in solutions


to enhance the customer experience,
increase revenue and grow brand loyalty.
Persona creation and customer journey
mapping are just two elements that can
help customer experience professionals
create a sound customer-centric strategy.
To be completely successful, chief customer experience officers need a coalition
of top executives who take an active role
in transforming the organization through
customer experience governance.
While most executives support the
idea of customer centricity, many fail to
act because they dont understand the
business value or dont know how to help.
Shifting the entire airline to become more
customer focused and its employees to
become active supporters of customer
experience, those responsible for the
strategy should identify top influencers,
rate their current level of support and
develop a customized plan to bring each
department along.
However, much more is needed than
just a shift in mindset and processes. An
airline should find an experienced business partner, such as Sabre Airline
Solutions , that can help develop the customer journey mapping strategy and drive
it forward. And equally important, it must
identify the right technology to support
the strategy, such as SabreSonic
Customer Sales & Service, a fully integrated customer-centric portfolio. This
advanced technology provides the capability to identify and recognize your

customers, collect and distribute customer


information for operational decisions, and
provide a holistic view of your customers
to aid your airline in fulfilling its customer
promises. a

Julie Dent is a customer experience


director for Sabre Airline Solutions.
For additional information about
customer journey mapping or
SabreSonic Customer Sales & Service
solutions, please send her an email
message at julie.dent@sabre.com.

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