Personalisation is looming large in the minds of inflight industry leaders. Last month a new report, Passenger Experience & IFEC Advisory Report was released by Terrapin, organiser of the successful Aviation Festival event

Airlines and influencers were asked this question:

How good are we as an industry at personalisation and which specific touchpoints could be improved in the airline industry?
Here are their answers*:

ROSSEN DIMITROV
Chief guest experience officer, WestJet
One size doesn’t fit all. Some of the global trends are changing the airline industry. Some are a real threat to the connection between airlines and guests. We are seeing increased use of online channels for search and booking with the use of multiple devices, social media trends.
Airlines need to adeptly manage digital innovation and use these technologies without losing personal touch with guests. We as airlines must be able to adapt and cater to variety of guests requiring different personalization, points of engagements and communication.
Middle East airlines in particular spend a lot of time on training, personalization and engagement at all points of interaction with the global guests they fly. North American and European airlines tend to focus more on the digital experience rather than the personal person to person engagement.

DANIEL KERZNER
Vice president, customer experience, Virgin Atlantic
As an industry, we have a long way to go to offer customers truly personalized experiences. This goes far beyond giving the customer more choice, or even anticipating what they might be looking for and serving it up to them.
Personalisation is about moving from basic transactions to meaningful interactions – knowing who our customers are, what’s important to them, and delivering on it in a seamless, authentic way.

JON NORRIS
Senior director, corporate sales & marketing, Panasonic Avionics

As an industry we’ve barely scratched the surface of personalization. However we’re starting to see more progress and today’s solutions enable many improvements in this area. For example, the work that Panasonic has done with Singapore Airlines:
myKrisWorld embraces Panasonic’s vision for IFEC, which centers around the concept of “the Internet of Me,” taking all of the things that people care about and bringing them together to deliver personalized and contextualized experiences. Each of these features is made possible by Panasonic’s ability to deliver actionable analytics, where data is used to improve the quality of the passenger experience.
With myKrisWorld, the experience starts before passengers board their flight. Passengers can use Singapore Airlines’ app or website to preview content and set up their customized playlist. Once onboard, they can either synchronise their mobile device or log in at their seat to access their pre-selected content.
In addition, it provides: playlist, bookmark (and resume playback), language preference storage and wallpaper customization between flights, customized and personalized entertainment spotlights, popular, trending and recommended content, exclusive content based on frequent flier tier.

PAULO MIRANDA
Chief experience officer, Gol Airlines
Not very good. We as an industry have billions of data points for customer travel, but we just started scratching the surface in terms of how to manage and how to use this data to create more meaningful personalization. Many areas could be improved – booking, airport processes, seat assignments, catering, luggage, etc.

PIIA KARHU
SVP customer experience, Finnair
There is a lot to improve. The industry needs to shift from transaction focus to customer focus. This is applicable to all touchpoints.

CALUM LAMING
Chief customer officer, Vueling
We have a significant way to go to achieve the personalisation of other industries. In general, all touchpoints of the customer industry could benefit from improved personalisation.

JOE LEADER
CEO of APEX

As an airline industry, we need to be operating at the level of Google. For every passenger, we know every detail that serves as a marketing treasure trove of personalization. We have full names, address, exact birthdays, seat assignments, credit cards, and everything that should make personalization easy. When a passenger sits down at their seat, they should be greeted by name on their screen. Their preferences should be remembered. IFE selections should customize intelligently and remembered from aircraft to aircraft. Connectivity settings should leverage artificial intelligence to gather more insights to serve passengers better in a personal manner from every single flight.
*reproduced with kind permission of Terrapinn.
To register for Aviation Festival, please visit: http://www.terrapinn.com/conference/aviation-festival/