Gauthier le Masne - Reinvent the Air France KLM Customer Experience

This is a complex journey, of course, because, but it starts at the beginning of when you think about your next travel at home, when you are surfing our website, looking for destination, of course you do the booking. You do. You go to the airport, you have this quite often, not so nice experience at the airport. Checking in, going through security, going through customs, going through your, through your aircraft. You have this wonderful experience inside the aircraft and then come back.

And so at all of these points, we think we have the possibility to personalize at the experience of our customers and make the difference. What also makes the difference is, is digital. So a few years ago, we didn't have so many tools.

Of course, today everybody has in his pocket is nice tool where you are in contact. Always with, with the company, you can contact us through social media. You can contact us through code centers. You can contact us directly on, on our websites with both or whatever.

So it's, it's really making a difference in the customer experience that we have the fact that they are always connected. And even if they are on the move by definition, they can still be connected with the brand. What we changed in the, in the past few months is also make sure that we give our staff to digital tools that also help us to stay in contact and get the, get access to the information that we need to give you the personalized service that, that we want data that go a bit more in details in, in a of minutes, what is also important?

It's I think the, the, the, the last one about context about us is, yeah. Personalization. If you are marketer your, and if you read a couple of targets from all the companies we try to sell, if you don't have personalization in the business plans, then it's, it's, it's not a good business plan. Let's say it's, it's getting the it's it's more and more the new normal everybody is saying, yeah, I want to get personal because, well, obviously the pure, the pure killer made their business out of it.

When you think about Netflix, when you think about examples, when you think about apple, this is really what they want to do. Being personal.

Of course, our competitors are, are also saying the same thing. S they want to get personal with the customers. And of course, this is coming while this is influencing the, the customer behavior. This is actual things that we had on our social media platforms. When people write us, they expect an answer in 3, 5, 10 minutes back. If they don't get it, they just angry. So it's a complete change of, of communication with, with the customers because of the, the, the fact that social media is shrinking the, the time experience of our customers.

So again, what, what we, what we did is at each point of, of the customer journey, we think we have some solutions or some tools to exchange with the customers and use the customer data to, to support our customers themselves, or staff, or start with our staff. Actually, what, what we did is with what we noticed that, you know, our customers had is digital device, where they had a lot of information. And from time to time, they had fresher information than, than our staff themselves. So it was becoming sort of a problem.

So we saw that it was a good idea to, to, to give all our, all our staff being on the ground, or, you know, our aircraft, a tablet, an iPad, where they could get access to the, up to date version of the data, being it on what the, the, the aircraft saw, the, the time of boarding or whatever, and also customer data. So that's when they had someone in front of them, instead of saying, Hey, what's, what's your problem?

What, why are you in front of me? They would have already information in their, in their, in their, in the tablet to better sell them. So we gave, again, all our staff on the ground east and our co as well, of course, at the moment, not all our flights have wifi. So it's disconnected during the, the, the, the, the duration of the flight. But soon this will also change. We're not that by 12, 19, all our flights will have wifi.

So again, this will change a lot, the interactions that you can have with, with the customers, for our travels. I said earlier, that's the, the, the, the journey is always a moment of stress. What we try to do is give to our customers some tools to inform them at all time about what's going on.

And, and then, and the, the, the best services that they can get to get informed. So I will give you a, a couple of example, of, of the things that you have in the air app that you all have on your mobile light.

Of course, I could reach you to download if you didn't do it, this is based on your localization. So a couple of hours before, before your flight, you will have in your, in your, in your mobile, the time to get to the airports. So it will, if you accept it, it'll use your, your position and tell you, okay, well, will take you 50 minutes to go to, to CG airports by car 20 minutes by train, it's time to live what's.

So this, this was introduced a couple of months ago, and since this month, we are trying indoor ization. So that's even when you are out at the airport, you also have live information about waiting times traveling to the, the good gates.

And so, again, giving you the, the, the, all the information so that you always know the, the, the time that you will take to go to the, to the aircraft. What we also want to do with, with the apps is moving stress due to travels. So of course, it never happens with, with Afro scan, but sometimes some, some S are last. Sometimes you have flight changes. You have flights.

What we try to do is, again, use the app as central companion and give you the information in real time of where your luggage is when it would be delivered, because we funded, or if you had a gate change, push through that's that the gate changes. So that again, you are reassured and the customer journey is, is, is. So we do that on, on, on the Fran Saudi can app.

Of course, we know that as I told you most, our travelers are not frequent travelers. We have 40% of, of frequent travelers. So we also try to be where our customers are. And we invested a lot in the different platforms to get connected with, with, with the customers. The last announcements that we, that we did is, is being integrated in the, in the Facebook me or platform.

So today, if you are using Facebook messengers, which I think you might be more than the using the, the apps, you will get your bot fast directly in the Facebook messenger, and soon you will get the same notifications. So get changes, some, some important notifications directly in your fabric, social media platform. So this is all the digital changes that, that, that we did in the, in the, in the past years, what, what I'm gonna show you in, in next slides is what we did with speed data.

So I told you a couple of years ago, we, we, we took the, a big step in saying, well, we want to be the most customer intimate airline with our customers. And this was only possible with, with the, the addition of digital, what I told you about and, and, and big data improvements to start up.

I, I want to say that, yeah, big data is, is a bit in our DNA a few years ago, but you know, that the, one of the big thing in, in the AI industry is to do early management. So price, every single seat of our 2000 aircraft, that's the good price. So that's when the, the, the, the, the flight takeoff, we don't have empty seats.

So the, the extremely important is to be able to give the right price to the, to the right seat in the aircraft. Well, we have two, 2000 flights every day with 1, 2, 4 cabins. So economy premium business, so lots of different seats with different usage. Some people are going for vacation with limited budgets. Some are going for business for run trip with company money. So less let's focus on the price, but on the network or on the service. So we invested in, in 2011 on a new capability to better assess the, the, the, the, the prices of the seeds, including a lot of data.

And at the time there was no technology able to do what we wanted to do. So every single run of the program, which was supposed to process the daily figures were taking four days. So at that time, big data was not so mainstream, I would say, and we tried this new technology, and actually it worked. And today we, we have big data platform finding our management pricing. So based on this experience, we said, well, one other field, obviously, where we have a lot of data is customer data. And we set this submission.

So being the number one element in customer, what does it mean is, well, use inflammation better know our customers get to sell them better. So we have, yeah. Three ambitions cognize our customers. So obviously we can recognize our customers through our program playing blue. So usually people who are part of the program put their number. So we can recognize that. But more and more, we try to say, even if you are not, you can fire, try to recognize you, try to recognize the purpose of your travel, try to recognize the, the problems that you might encounter and give you the appropriate answer.

This is part of better interact with, with our customers. So, yeah, make sure that we have the information, which is necessary to give you a good service and know you better. So it's all about making sure that we connect the dots. That's the experience that you have with our post centers.

We, the social media with our crew at the airport, or with our crew in the aircraft, it's just one similar experience that you don't have to interact with the different silos of our organization. So a bit more than two years ago, we created a, a new organization or customer data.

So, which are, which I'm getting today. The purpose was to leverage the power of customer data for organization.

She, I had two different missions. One was first to be the, the owner of what it was, was developing with, with the data technology. So sure that we linked all the different experiences that you might have with our different touch points and link it into one single view of the customer, actually, that we deliver this single view of the customers to well, the customer to the customers themselves, or to our staff.

And the second pillar of the organization was to take care and, and drive the policy around data management, how we improve the, the quality of our data, how do we improve the, the way the different businesses handle data? So with metadata management tooling or with analytics, and also obviously take care of the price of our customers, implement GDPR, make sure that we deliver the good services to our customers with of course, making sure that we respect the customers saying price. Just want to give you a couple of example, of, of what we achieved in the, in the, in the best few months.

So for quick examples, one in, in the ticketing offices and call centers, where we, we have a widget to the system, giving access to customer information around well past travels, what they bought, what they, where they are traveling to. If, if they have some habits, if they lost their luggage, got obviously if they spent 15 minutes on the page of our website, or if we know that they lost their luggage, there is a good chance that they are calling for that and not for anything else. So it's actually setting a lot of time for our customers.

It's setting a lot of time for our staff, and it's a great experience for other customers when they're greeted. Well, yeah, I know what you, why you are calling me. Let me give you a, a great answer. It's a bit the same with, with the airport staff.

So it's, and they have access to customer data, again, knowing about the, the entire joining of our customers and, and being able to help them, being able to sell them an access to lounge an additional baggage or whatever they know is, is appropriate for our customers. What we try to do is also make sure that we use the data directly for the customers. If you are on the air app or Ference mobile website, we, you will get some fun facts about your, your history with us, how many cities you visited, how many hours or days, or, or kilometers you flew with us.

So create a bit of communication that we, we also share this information, share the information we have with the customers. And, and so that they also have this habits of going on our website to, to have a look at what did recommendation is, is last thing I want to, to share with you, this, this has been quite some work done with, with our data scientist, about working on algorithm to predict the, the thing that you will want to buy. So we did that on this nation.

So looking at your history or, or, or history of show lookalikes would say, well, you tr you already travel to China and to India, most of the people who do did that in, in, in the past, well, the next travel was Japan or south America. So we push you personalized emails or personalized offers. And actually this is working quite well. We noticed that compared to non personalized emails, personalized decision emails were open by 10%, more, 30% more sorry, and were converted 10% more. So actually had a huge effect on, on sales.

And also, well, it allows us to reduce the, the emailing pressure. We receive a lot of emails, so, and it's, it's kind of a win-win situation where we, we deliver better service and we send more, and we do that as well now with all the ACI. So if you need an extra baggage, we'll push you this information in, in your app or, or email, or if you want access to language.

So yeah, just a quick summary of, of, of what I, I, I told you about all the digital aspects of course are, are, are quite important, but this means nothing. If we don't have the staff, which we able to use this, this digital tools to give you the P and a big help from, from the, the big data technology to give us you more opportunities to, to take care of you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm I see hands I'm sorry. Hello. It was really interesting to see how you guys are using big data and personalizing the long beach set of customer journey.

I'm wondering how you guys think about personalization for people that aren't logged into the website, or don't have your app. You mentioned you have these P bot, and so maybe there's other catch points that you guys use to personalize and give them more recommendations if they got logged in yet. Yeah. So the ation of our website is, is indeed extremely important because if you are not used to it, you have quite a long pass until the time you, you buy your tickets.

So, yeah, indeed, we, we try first to get personalization of the, the logged in people, our website. So indeed giving you first your location based IP address, or, and, and, or one of your past travel recess and, and, and show you first, this origin of, of your travel for non logged in passengers, where we, we also developed a data platform. So we use cookies in order to pay targets or, or, or show you banners, which are relevant to you.

So for example, if you looked for New York two, this, and you didn't convert, then we will use either on, on any website or on social media, we show you the best available price for this destination. So, yeah, we, we, we try to follow little bit what, what our customers do and, and again, yeah.

Try to, to follow them and, and, and give them the, the, the appropriate proposition. My question is I flu with air France here from Vienna, from Austria.

I, I usually don't fly with air France and I spot actually, are you launching actually this Friday, this new airliner John Yu, I, how to pronounce June. Exactly. And I wonder if there is any specific approach you will use with data and not only collecting, but I mean, is this, are you only utilizing the infrastructure, what you built for France, or is there a complete, like a new approach and is it a certain level for you as well?

So, yeah, indeed we are. We are launching June. Yeah. By the end of this week. Exactly. So it's starting with, with a few aircraft on Europe, on some of our European destinations and it's on the long haul next spring. And the idea with ju is to give indeed another experience. So we started with the hard product, I would say. So with the meals, with the, the, the, the, with our cool and board with the invite entertainment systems. So yeah. Being able to give another experience, that's the one you can expect from your travel with Frances today.

What we want to do with data is, is, is not different with this new airline, but actually with all the different businesses work on use case spaces. So yeah. Businesses come to me and say, well, you know, I have an idea.

I, I want to better use data to sell this, or to offer a new service or give information to the customers. So we will certainly have different use cases with, but nothing really different.

Hi, there, I tried out the KLM thought in its very early days and found it not very advanced. I, I'm just wondering where you are on, on that journey. And also how much you look at messaging and targeting customers who are maybe not your social networked smartphone users as part of the overall customer engagement strategy. Yeah.

So the, the, the boats and, and artificial intelligence topics are extremely important for us because it can solve a lot of issues and help our customers getting a quick and better answer than, yeah. Getting another phone or searching our websites.

So we are, we are train and, and we are not launching some experiments on, on both. Actually we announced yesterday, the launch of luggage boat on, on air front side, which is called Louis. And you can ask Louis about what can I bring in my suitcase?

I, what can I come with my cats? Can I go with my windsurf board? A lot of very, very precise questions, which well generated a lot of calls to our call centers, or a lot of searches on our websites and which can be answered quite easy, but of course, like everybody else. And I think anybody's serious about both will tell you, well, it's indeed the early stages and you cannot get fantastic exchange exchanges with the post. But yeah, our approach is, well, we try it. We know that it will anyway solve quite a essential amount of, of problems for our customers.

So it's, it's, it's always good. The, the, the, the thing we want to make sure is we always have this human manufacturer beside the boat. So if the boat is not entering correctly, or if you want, you can always get a human touch and human contact.

So yeah, it will help us. It will help our staff because yeah, artificial agents will help us get better access to information, get a better answer, but it's always, yeah. Enhancing an experience. And that's a total experience because today we know that we are not that there yet.