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Lufthansa has been stepping up its focus on working with airports, and other partners, to improve the customer experience.
Speaking at the Digital Travel Summit in a session called “Next generation customer experience – how to meet the needs of your customers in 2020”, David Doyle, director, personalised customer experience, Lufthansa, said the airline had teamed up with the likes of Apple and IBM to boost its technology offering, and in particular for airline and airport staff.
“We found that before, the passenger had better access to real-time information than our staff,” said Doyle. “Our staff were then demotivated as the passenger showed them the flight was one hour late, but the airport signage said five minutes late.
“Airports were digitised a long time ago, but it’s difficult to update them. Now we work with IBM and Apple [on enterprise software] on user experience. Now with one click our staff can call the captain of a plane.”
He added that Lufthansa was also working more with airports on digital suitcase technology, to allow passengers to track the exact location of their luggage, and beacons to improve real-time information updates. “We can continue to polish our own stone, but we need to work with airports,” Doyle added.
Meanwhile, he said Lufthansa’s “Smile” programme was progressing well, as it looks to provide a more holistic passenger experience with more personalised products, services and communications. Talking about transformation, he said: “We found we had 80 different platforms [that customers could access]. Now we stay away from the full-stack technology platform - we now have artificial intelligence, and predictive analytics, at the core. For example, when someone lands in the booking flow, it’s important to know how they got there. Are they after a sailing holiday, or is it a business trip?”
When asked whether the upgrades were to boost conversion or loyalty, he replied: “My key goal is relevance. Context plays a massive role. Our benchmarks are no longer the likes of Air France or British Airways, it’s Uber and Amazon. By 2020, we want artificial intelligence for customer service channels, whether that’s via voice or chatbots.”
However, when quizzed by TTG about the role NDC (New Distribution Capability) will play in Lufthansa’s digital strategy, he said: “NDC is slow. I think it will be driven a lot by the global distribution systems.”
In April, Lufthansa Group unveiled its first NDC-enabled direct-connect solutions with Click Travel and Portman Clarity.
