In any sector, customer relationship management is important. This technology, however, is even more essential in the highly competitive airline industry. Because air travel is becoming increasingly commoditized, travelers are less likely than in the past to be loyal. Nevertheless, the service a customer gets from a particular airline highly influences his/her decision of future purchases. Hence, CRM in aviation is therefore very important when it comes to making your airline stand out from the crowd. An airline that remembers the customer’s name and past purchases can offer personalized deals, and uses a range of technologies to respond to customer inquiries will stand out from the rest.

Yes, for some customers, the cost will always be the determining factor, and they will always pick the cheapest option for their desired route. Nevertheless, the airline that seems to care about them and understand what they want and need will gradually become their preferred choice for a significant proportion of passengers.

Combined with a good understanding of your customers, the marketing or sales automation modules of a CRM system can give you the tools to provide this kind of personalized service. A wide range of advantages is provided by CRM implementation in airlines. Here are just some of the ways airlines benefit when they enhance their techniques of customer relationship management.

1. Less administration, more sales

One of the most powerful advantages of using CRM software in aviation is that your sales team spends more time connecting and developing deals with customers, and less time analyzing information. There have been several instances in which airlines have opted for CRM software, leading to higher sales figures, resulting in increased efficiency and focus.

2. More accurate and effective marketing​

You can create much more efficient and personalized marketing campaigns by deploying modern airline CRM programs. Today’s platforms allow you to drill down into the data and get to know your passengers and their behavior. This then allows you to create profiles of customers and create more targeted marketing campaigns. You can create marketing campaigns that focus on specific types of customers and make them feel that your airline truly understands them by analyzing your CRM data.

Although there are many powerful and efficient CRM platforms that the airline industry can benefit from, it is not enough to simply deploy the technology. Instead, through the development of customer relationships, your airline needs a bigger strategic vision that creates value. Airlines should aim to develop a genuine customer relationship policy, to state what kind of relationship you want to build with customers, to show how close you want to be to them and what kinds of problems you hope to solve.

3. Improved customer problem resolution

An Airline CRM system is also extremely valuable for your customer issue resolution centers. Most call centers today have access to a CRM that records the client’s past interactions.

Parting thoughts:

To really up their game, however, cutting-edge airlines use chatbots, smart FAQs, and self-service customer apps that collect data and feed it into a central hub, making it much easier to get a unified view of the experience of the customer.