Talking tech with AWS – part two: digital transformation reinventing the customer experience
The recent CAPA Airline Leader Summit - 'Airlines in Transition 2022' brought together industry leaders to discuss strategic topics and key megatrends, including decarbonisation, point-to-point travel, business travel, low cost aviation, new entrants, and digital transformation.
The overall mood was positive, with the expectation that the industry will reach 2019 pre-pandemic traffic levels by late 2023 to mid-2024. Nevertheless, there is no lack of challenges ahead, with increased costs due to jet fuel prices, war at the doors of Europe causing traveller uncertainty, and sustainability concerns that are rapidly becoming an existential threat to the industry.
Among the various topics, digital transformation and what it all means to travellers was front and centre, and during the summit Amazon Web Services (AWS) worldwide head, travel & hospitality solutions Massimo Morin sat down with CAPA for a deep conversation on the status of industry transformation, the role of the cloud, and how AWS is supporting airlines in optimising operations and improving customer engagement.
- The recent CAPA Airline Leader Summit - 'Airlines in Transition 2022' discussed key megatrends in the aviation industry, including decarbonisation, point-to-point travel, business travel, low-cost aviation, new entrants, and digital transformation.
- Industry leaders are optimistic about reaching pre-pandemic traffic levels by late 2023 to mid-2024, but challenges such as rising jet fuel prices, geopolitical uncertainties, and sustainability concerns remain.
- Digital transformation was a central theme at the summit, with a focus on how cloud technology, like AWS, is helping airlines optimize operations and enhance customer engagement.
- Airlines are leveraging cloud technology to improve customer service, streamline operations, and increase revenue through enhanced digital tools and apps.
- AWS is enabling airlines to enhance customer service through contact center modernization solutions, self-service options, and personalized marketing strategies, ultimately driving increased customer satisfaction and profitability.
- AWS is collaborating with industry partners to develop industry-specific solutions, promote standards, and facilitate applications' interoperability, aiming to support airlines, travel, and hospitality companies of all sizes in their digital transformation journey.
In the second of a two-part report we explore how airlines are also using cloud technology to enhance the customer experience and improve revenue.
How are airlines using the cloud to improve the customer experience?
Airlines are improving customer service in many ways.
Over the past two years several airlines have updated their digital tools and apps to make travel more seamless.
United Airlines created the 'Travel-Ready Center' that pulls in COVID-19 test forms and documents, resulting in the validation of over four million customer documents to date, directly in the mobile app.
Travellers check in online, access boarding passes on their mobile app before arriving to the airport, and go straight to the gate without going to the check-in desk or getting the documents checked by an assistant. This is key for facilitating international travel.
United also refactored and moved more than 100 internal and external apps to AWS, innovating and modernising them to provide a more intuitive experience and better security.
United's teams love these improvements because it makes assisting customers easier. As a result, Net Promoter Scores (NPS) have increased more than 30 points since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Similarly, Ryanair launched a 'Day of Travel' app in Nov-2021 to provide travellers with live updates and notifications, access to travel documents, and chat functionality. Customers can also change flights, add bags, and purchase other services within the app.
The mobile app includes an embedded digital wallet to hold travel documents, such as COVID-19 test and vaccination forms, in different formats linked to the passenger boarding pass, making it a one-stop shop for the passenger to be cleared to the destination.
Usually this would have taken several weeks to implement, but Ryanair got it done in three days. Today, 30 million unique passengers are using the app to travel through Europe.
What are other ways AWS is enhancing customer service?
Using contact centre modernisation solutions on AWS, customer service teams can view and analyse customer data to improve engagement and increase the effectiveness of call centre support.
Travel companies can also implement self-service options for travellers and guests - for example, chatbot and conversational AI - reducing agent workloads and improving their overall efficiency. With these modern solutions, travel companies can benefit from reduced operational costs, increased productivity, and increased customer satisfaction.
Delta Air Lines has deployed Amazon Connect, an easy-to-use omnichannel cloud contact centre, at scale.
Specifically, it has deployed Amazon Lex, powered bots to capture intent and provide initial self-service. The company facilitated smarter routing and prioritisation logic based on loyalty status and travel needs to make the customer experience more seamless. Delta also centralised controls for call-back and chat levers to reduce waiting time and increase customer satisfaction (CSAT).
Finally, it increased agent efficiency by cutting the number of operational dashboards and reporting sources by 50%, as Danielle McPherson, director of global reservation technology, explained last year at AWS re:Invent.
How has this focus on the customer translated into increased revenue?
As noted in the examples above, helping travellers confidently navigate the changing environment has helped stimulate demand.
COVID-19 restrictions continue to change as more countries prepare for summer travel. Providing customers with the right information is essential so that they are well informed and can understand where they can go, what COVID-19 restrictions are in place, how much a trip costs, and so forth.
For example, Skyscanner, an AWS all-in customer, presents COVID-19 restrictions on its homepage through the Live COVID-19 Travel Map. Using data from TravelPerk, an AWS Partner, Skyscanner has increased customer confidence in resuming international travel by double digits.
Stephanie Boyles, head of corporate and industry communications at Skyscanner, said, "We want to help travellers understand where they can go and how they can get there by providing relevant information and practical tools. Our map was designed to do exactly that. It is a live, interactive, simple-to-use map that helps travellers understand current restrictions, including testing and quarantine requirements."
Ms Boyles continued, "...alongside the map and our frequently updated travel advice pages, we also developed a number of other features to support travellers and rebuild consumer confidence to travel. We launched flexible ticket filters, allowing travellers to search for flights that had flexible booking options; we introduced airline confidence ratings, which score airlines on their COVID-19 safety measures; and launched a market-first COVID-19 insurance offering in multiple countries."
Another key to stimulating demand is understanding customers' price sensitivity.
AWS has been working with a large tour operator to optimise its pricing algorithm to adapt to market conditions using machine learning, artificial intelligence, and reinforced learning to improve package margins. The company built prices in parallel for bookings based on date ranges and dynamically calculated the individual package prices based on factors such as date, duration, and the number of people. Then, they displayed sorted comparable products in sub-second response times and adjusted the prices based on current market conditions to achieve a better match to the customer's willingness to pay for the given product.
AWS tested this for about three months in selected markets, and this new scalable model improved margins by 6-10%. AWS is currently looking at expanding the system to be deployed across all the tour operator's networks and packages.
Are there other ways airlines can improve marketing effectiveness, to current and prospective customers, and increase profitability?
One of the best ways to improve marketing and advertising is to have a single, unified view of the customer, also known as customer 360.
With a single view of the customer running on AWS, organisations can acquire data from every customer interaction, augment it with third-party data, and store it in a single repository that is constantly augmented and enriched.
By storing data on AWS, it is made accessible across the organisation, facilitating more effective marketing campaigns and targeted communications through powerful analytics tools that help personalise the customer experience and identify retail trends. AWS has been working closely with AWS Travel and Hospitality Competency Partners that are leaders in this space, like Amperity, mParticle, Reltio, and Tealium, to address these needs.
In a recent video Lauren Woods, vice president of infrastructure at Southwest, pointed out the company's low fare marketing automation (LFMA).
A team of developers working remotely with no cloud knowledge was able to create this application at Southwest scale in a few months, allowing the company to send customers the lowest available fares, make marketing more effective, and to propose the right product for the right customer by still meeting the Department of Transportation (DOT) regulatory requirements.
Ms Woods said, "It has exceeded business expectations and will help weather the challenges that we face."
Can you tell us any other ways AWS is helping airlines, travel, and hospitality companies?
It is exciting to see what is happening in the travel space these days, but AWS understands that not everybody is the size of Delta, United, Ryanair, Qantas, or Southwest, or has the resources to build the solutions that they need. AWS also has smaller customers that have a buy-and-adapt mentality.
With this objective, AWS not only presents best-in-class reference architectures - like the travel and hospitality data mesh, streamline airline ticket shopping insights, and serverless strategy for dynamic pricing - but is also focusing on using its Travel and Hospitality Competency Partners to create, upgrade, or scale their solutions on AWS. These partners are known players like 3Victors, Boxever, Datalex, Openjaw, and global system integrators like Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, Mphasis, and more.
AWS is going a step further: where there are gaps in the market, it is developing industry-specific solutions, promoting standards, and facilitating applications' interoperability. You can find more about the solution areas and the specific use cases AWS is investing in on its website and solution library. AWS is just at the beginning of this journey: there is more to come on this space, so stay tuned!
You can also view a CAPA TV interview with Massimo Morin from the sidelines of the CAPA Airline Leader Summit - 'Airlines in Transition 2022' where he speaks about latest industry trends and the growing digital transformation of airlines, airports and travel. The executive also spoke about how airlines have adopted advanced digital transformation strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic as businesses adjusted and as customer behaviours changed.
About Massimo Morin...
Massimo Morin brings 20+ years of experience in the airline and hospitality industry as a developer, analyst, product designer, and business development.
His core expertise is in airline pricing, distribution, revenue management, and ecommerce.
Based in Boston, MA, he is now responsible for AWS engagements globally in the travel/airlines space for AWS. He graduated in Software Engineering from the University of Venice and acquired a MS of Transportation / Airline Business and Management from MIT. He is Italian by birth, with a passion for cooking, and has travelled the world extensively.
About AWS Travel and Hospitality…
AWS Travel and Hospitality is the global industry practice for Amazon Web Services (AWS), with a charter to support customers as they accelerate cloud adoption.
Companies around the world, across every segment of the travel and hospitality industry - and of every size - run on AWS.
This includes industry leaders like Airbnb, Avis Budget Group, Best Western, Booking.com, Choice Hotels, DoorDash, Dunkin' Brands, Expedia Group, Korean Air, McDonald's, Ryanair, SiteMinder, Sysco, Toast, United Airlines and Wyndham Hotels. These companies and many others are transforming their businesses by leveraging technology to enhance customer experiences and increase operational efficiency.
For more information visit: AWS Travel and Hospitality