Improving the Customer Experience
Delta Airlines has been investing heavily in technology (we're talking billions of dollars) over
the last five years. According to Delta CEO Ed Bastian, his major objective is to shift employees
away from repetitive and routine tasks and focus on improving the customer's flying
experience. "Our people should not be spending their time taking tickets and scanning
boarding passes. They're way too talented for that," said Bastian. He noted that the airline's
goal was to get employees from out behind the counter so they could assist and interact with
customers to solve their problems in real time and effectively increase customer engagement
when it is needed most.
One of Delta's initiatives was to start pushing critical data points to its front-line personnel.
The airline is giving flight attendants a prioritized list of customers to recognize on each
domestic flight based on details like Medallion status, achieved milestones, recent flight
interruptions and standing as a corporate traveler. This enables flight attendants to quickly
identify the customer and personalize the engagement. In effect, the company analytics to
segment its customer base and increase customer satisfaction levels.
And the results of Delta's innovative approach?
A Delta customer put it very succinctly: "I was most surprised on my return flight… when the
flight attendant offered me a personal apology for the inconvenience… I must admit, I was
pretty impressed with the customer database progress you guys have made… to deliver the
right information to a flight attendant to offer a personal apology to an impacted customer 4
days after a service failure. Nice job."
Driving New Products & Solutions
American Express (AMEX), the number one small business card issuer in the United States, is
using the power of data science and analytics to dramatically transform some of its business
initiatives. With a base of over 100 million credit cards globally (that accounts for over $1
trillion in charge volume every year), the company leverages real-time data from both its
customers and merchants to identify and develop new payment service products and
solution offerings.
AMEX benefits from a "closed loop" system since it issues its own cards through its banking
subsidiaries. Competitively that means it can view all transactions -- in real time -- on both the
customer and the merchant side. Currently, neither Visa nor Mastercard can obtain this data.
To leverage this wealth of information, AMEX decided to build first-class analytic capabilities
that could effectively analyze trends, capture cardholder spending patterns, and identify
opportunities to generate targeted offers to segmented customers.
THE NEED FOR SPEED | 6
