What if an airline thought about customer experience management?

I’m flying today. It’s the end of the Thanksgiving holiday and I’m frankly stressed about the prospect of crowds, hassles and delays.

But I’m fortunate. I fly on an airline that is focused on outside-in business process management. They live for the kind of customer-centricity that Janne Ohtonen talks about in Chapter 1 of his new book. This morning my airline offered not just a boarding pass, but also suggested discount airport parking and also offered a car service to the airport, both integrated with my flight schedule and easily accepted with a push of a digital button. I was delighted.

I was also invited to the club lounge nearest my departure gate, given a free glass of wine just as a welcome, and invited to bring a guest along. When I arrived at the lounge, they offered me the weather at my destination and my flight update the moment I come through the door. They even offered to book a car service on the other end if I didn’t have one and to deliver my bags to my hotel. Things were getting even easier.

Everything is integrated

Because I had the airline’s app turned on, it began a countdown to boarding and told me if meals would be offered on the flight, and what the meal would be. The same app suggested places near the gate where I could eat or get something to carry on the flight. I was informed I would have wi-fi on the flight and that my seat would have power plugs. It told me which movie would be played.

Once on the flight, the app started a countdown to doors closed and updated my arrival time based on the weather en route, and offered to notify someone of my arrival time when I landed by text or email.

Upon landing, the app told me where my car service was waiting, which carousel to find my luggage, and would have warned me if my bags didn’t arrive and offered choices for how to be reunited with them. Before leaving the airport, I was thanked for my business and told how many miles were deposited in my account. It offered me an immediate opportunity to rate the flight crew (by first name and photo) and the service I received.

Vestiges of the industrial revolution

By now you’ve figured out that this airline doesn’t exist, but all of the data discussed is already available to the airline in their current systems or easily accessed through a partner. What stands in the way of realizing this? A century and a half of looking at products and services from an industrial point of view that focuses on division of labor and inside-out efficiency. Division of labor means every decision funnels funnels upward to higher levels. Employees are very limited in creativity toward customers. Inside-out means airlines are focused far more on cost containment than on the customer’s perception of value. It’s an analogue approach in a digital world.

Digitization of our world offers a chance to do things radically differently. Some will adopt quickly and prosper and others will be slow to adopt and suffer. Retail is busy trying to solve this problem already and airlines are yet to embrace it.

The digital customer

We’re moving into an age of customer-centricity where the consumer interacts with products and services as a digital being as much as a physical person. Each interaction and choice leaves a digital signature giving us a choice of using data poorly or wisely. Rather than thinking about data as a way to offer discounts and cyber stalk, brands need to think of data as a way to wrap the customer in a digital world of convenience and value-add interaction.

This is the next frontier for customer experience management. More than a technology shift, it is a shift in how we design business processes around the customer.