NB: This series is a guest post by Mark Tilden, co-founder of Conducive Technology and a creator of FlightStats.
Part Two - Build a strategy around proactive service
Efficiently and accurately capturing itineraries and changes is merely the first key step of an integrated mobile customer service strategy.
Some innovative agencies are going well beyond this first step and generating new revenue by combining automated itinerary monitoring with a mobile itinerary application to offer proactive re-accommodation services for a small service fee.
Proactive re-accommodation allows an agency to engage its customers at the point where they can provide the highest value to the traveler - when a trip is interrupted by delays or cancellations, which occurs in roughly 7% of the trips monitored by FlightStats's itinerary monitoring system.
Imagine a system where the traveler lands at a connecting airport having missed their connection, but when they turn on their smart phone, their itinerary viewer application opens with a message from their agency.
The message says that the agency noticed the connection problem and has already resolved it by re-booking them on a later flight.
The message includes departure gate and time information for the new flight and offers a convenient way for the traveler to respond if they have questions.
While other passengers stand in line, at the customer service counter, this traveler walks directly to the new gate!
Everyone wins in this scenario: the traveler avoids the long lines and frustrations of re-protection at the airport and immediately has an up-to-date itinerary on their mobile device.
The corporation benefits from reducing expensive out-of-policy bookings and the ability to track the location of travelers globally even through disruptions, and the agency collects additional booking revenue and builds loyalty with the customer.
Even in the more common situation where connections are not threatened, the itinerary monitoring system can deliver an agency-branded connection message just before the traveler lands that provides arrival and departure gate details with the available connection time and a link to a map of the airport terminal.
They may even have the opportunity to see what concessions and other services are available along their path from the arriving to the departing gate.
This connection message reinforces the agency's proactive monitoring service without requiring any agent involvement.
NB: This series is a guest post by Mark Tilden, co-founder of Conducive Technology and a creator of FlightStats.