EXL’s Rahul Arora assesses how travel companies can stay ahead of the competition in challenging economic conditions
Recent figures from Abta show that 77% of people are still willing to spend the same, or more, on holidays next year. However, with prices for energy, household goods and their weekly food bill increasing in line with inflation, a holiday is likely to represent a greater share of any traveller’s overall spending.
With that in mind, their trust and loyalty will be potentially harder to win, and their expectations for a great experience will begin the moment they land on a travel provider’s website.
Winning new customers
Customer retention will be a big priority for travel companies in the year ahead, but they cannot afford to be complacent about attracting new customers. Doing so requires a commitment to data capture across multiple channels including social media, website, search engine data, plus appropriate third-party data.
Analysis of data from across these sources will help travel providers understand the scale of the opportunity in terms of their potential target audience and the best ways to reach them.
A personalised experience
Harnessing data can tell travel providers so much about what their customers are searching for online; what pages they’re visiting, and what their overall journey looks like. Investing in analytics technology can allow this data to be combined and contextualised alongside data from multiple other sources, for example data from the call centre team around types of enquiries, nature of complaints or any pain points identified with the digital journey.
Looking at the data holistically unlocks far more powerful, actionable insights about individual customers, whilst also supporting customer profiling, segmentation and modelling to better inform a marketing strategy.
Upselling for competitive advantage
Armed with rich customer insights, travel providers have greater opportunity to promote tailored offers and incentivise. For example, if they have identified a growing segment of customers looking for family holidays with child friendly excursions, then discounts or offers promoted at relevant points during the customer journey can reap rewards and increase loyalty.
Predicting the future
Any organisation cannot predict the behaviour of its customers unless it continually learns about them. This is simply not possible without data analytics. An ongoing commitment to data capture, contextualisation and an investment in AI technologies allows travel providers to leverage predictive analytics.
This will help them with everything from identifying customers likely to abandon a purchase to those who will be most responsive to a marketing campaign. It can even identify optimal timings to send them marketing emails or messages to increase conversion.
The human touch
While investment in technology to optimise customer experience (CX) is vital, the role of human interaction should not be underestimated.
Conversational AI has come a long way in recent years and can be a powerful tool not just for customer service enquiries, but also to promote and upsell at optimal points in the journey. But there will still be customers who want to speak to someone, and there are a number of scenarios where a phone call to a customer service team will be the best channel for both the customer and the business.
The best CX strategies will effectively harness the human touch alongside technology, delivering on business objectives while best supporting customers. Travel providers seeking to capitalise on customer prioritisation of holiday spending next year will need to consider this as they look ahead to 2023.