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Competing Through Alliances in the Airline Industry. The Air France-KLM / Delta Air Lines Joint Venture
Some principles in implementing CRM
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Recommended: Competing Through Alliances in the Airline Industry. The Air France-KLM / Delta Air Lines Joint Venture
Classic Airlines Problem Solution
Problem Solution: Classic Airlines
Classic Airlines has found themselves in a difficult situation. They have been loosing customers due to a lack of understanding of the environment in which they operate. They tried to lower their fares and reduce customer service which is not what their customers wanted. They need to use the information from their CRM system to understand what they need to change to regain lost customers and grow the customer base in the future. By integrating their phone system with the internet system, the information collected will assist them in creating a marketing plan that will move the company into the future. Classic Airlines needs to use the information they have in their CRM system to understand the value of their customer and develop a plan to satisfy those needs and values.
Describe the Situation
Issue and Opportunity Identification
Classic Airlines is the fifth largest airline in the world (Scenario, 2008). They are on a downward spiral in their customer loyalty program, number of flights per loyalty customer and the company stock price. The loyalty program has seen an almost 20% decrease in the last few years. This reflects the change in attitude of customers that do not feel the program is worth staying with. The customers that are left are not flying as much or they are not flying with Classic Airlines since the number of flights for the remaining customers has dropped about 21%. The company stock price has dropped 10% in the last year. This is a reflection of the change in attitude and uncertainty in flying that has permeated the industry since late 2001.
Classic Airlines has some work to do to hold their position and gain more customers. The airline has the information it needs to turn the situation around. Their CRM system is one of the best in the industry but was not set up to maximize the information opportunities. By reworking the parameters and connecting it to the company phone system, Classic will be able to use the information they collect to boost their loyalty program and increase their customer base. Classic also has an opportunity to enter into an alliance with a European and a South American airline which they could include in the loyalty program.
Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical Dilemmas
Classic Airlines possesses a great deal of information in their CRM system but are not utilizing this information to their benefit.
Superheroes and villains are not commonly associated with airlines, but in the article “A Tale of Two Airlines” by Christopher Elliot, it is put into a different perspective. The two airlines in question are Spirit and Southwest. Although both have some similarities, they both have considerably different views on how to treat customers. Southwest practices treating customers with respect, while fares may be a little higher. Spirit’s beliefs are to treat customers “like cargo” with lower fares. With their friendly attendants and better overall customer interaction, this appoints Southwest as the hero, making Spirit our villain. Elliot makes his point by exclaiming the “heroes” should be rewarded with a higher multitude of passengers and the “villains” should not be granted this satisfaction.
Mason, K. J. (2001). "Marketing low-cost airline services to business travellers." Journal of Air Transport Management 7(2): 103-109.
The Airline Industry is a fascinating market. It has been one of the few industries to reach astounding milestones. For example, over 200 airlines have gone out of business since deregulation occurred in 1978. Currently, more than 50% of the airlines in the industry are operating under Chapter 11 regulations. Since 9/11, four of the six large carriers have filed for and are currently under bankruptcy court protection. Since 9/11 the industry has lost over $30 billion dollars, and this loss continues to increase. Despite the fact that the airline industry is in a state of despair, JetBlue has become the golden example, a glimpse of what the industry could be.
Despite its growing domestic network, the company didn’t offer international flights until July 2014, and even then, it only offered limited destinations (“Southwest Corporate Fact Sheet,” n.d.). Furthermore, the company’s reliance on a single aircraft is cause for concern. Southwest Airlines was also weak with technology utilization initially but has since turned this into an asset, as described later. Finally, the company has a limitation with providing customer perks due to its low-cost operations (Ross & Beath,
Having a low cost of operations is one of the contributing factors to Southwest Airlines’ financial success. Such low cost model of the corporation is brought about by an effective strategy. Southwest uses only one type of aircraft – the fuel-efficient Boeing 737. This tactic keeps training and maintenance costs down. Moreover, the no-frills approach to customer service contributed to the low cost of operations for Southwest.
Or, then again perhaps, VTB can use the CRM structure to discover about better customer advantage, deliberately pitching, and market designs. According to Bang (2005) CRM is viewed as an educated business philosophy to make and keep up whole deal customer associations. For example, CRM system would be an enabling specialist of business comes about like future repeat purchases. VTB's should use the CRM as a focus business methodology to robotize customer advantage. All things considered, customers tend to put orchestrate at long last and expect the package passed on time. Henceforth, on the operational side, data must be gotten, fused, arranged and fulfilled, to satisfy its targets (Bang 2005). The operational viability of the CRM structure is to accumulate the data from customer to be deciphered later on to
Since 1987, when the Department of Transportation began tracking Customer Satisfaction statistics, Southwest has consistently led the entire airline industry with the lowest ratio of complaints per passengers boarded. Many airlines have tried to copy Southwest’s business model, and the Culture of Southwest is admired and emulated by corporations and organizations in all walks of life. Always the innovator, Southwest pioneered Senior Fares, a same-day air freight delivery service, and Ticketless Travel. Southwest led the way with the first airline web page—southwest.com, DING, the first-ever direct link to Customer’s computer desktops that delivers live updates on the hottest deals, and the first airline corporate blog, Nuts About Southwest. Our Share the Spirit community programs make Southwest the hometown airline of every city we serve.
RBC Financial Group uses a customer relationship management (CRM) strategy that provides a variety of services for a variety of clients. The strategy allows for individual customers to trust RBC and develop a personal relationship with each and every client. One major factor that allows CRM to operate effectively is the use of technologies and analytics to help classify each client’s financial situation. These customer profitability-based techniques allowed RBC to categorize their clients into A, B, and C groups so that the sales teams could optimize their efforts in catering to these different clients. This strategy holds the following strengths: optimizing sales efforts to different customers, easily accessible electronic sales leads, centralized and standardized financial decisions, and building personalized and sustainable customer relationships. There are a few weaknesses to the system though including the complexity in predicting future positions of companies despite the use of analytics as well as the complexity in creating consistency when using these
Before to select the proper alternative, three alternatives were analysed and evaluated under four decisions criteria: customer experience, cost, growth rate / market penetration and ease to implementation (See Exhibit 2: Factor Analysis). Between all the alternatives, it was suggested that Southwest Airlines enters to New York City by bidding the slots and gates at the LGA (See Exhibit 3: Alternatives Analysis). This alternative sustains the challenge of changing the customer experience which means adding more flights from and to the East; furthermore, entering to new markets will reinforce “the power of the network” through LGA. At the same time, this decision will allow signing more code-sharing agreements with other airlines flying to international destinations and offer new products and services to LUV customers as loyalty rewards, in-flight internet, onboard duty-free purchases, etc.; as a result of this, it will increase passenger’s insights and experiences by flying with Southwest Airlines. Nevertheless, there is potential risk by selecting this alternative, in the recent years the energy prices has had a huge increase affecting costs, fares and even capacity needed, however Southwest Airlines has been able to hedge fuel for decad...
It has stayed relevant to the market through its propelled philosophy of relationships to generate profits in the business. Since its establishment in Monroe, Louisiana the once tiny airline has stretched to greater heights serving in 6 continents. It has also established a distinguishable name among its competitors with a reputation of leading customer services. However, even as an established venture, the company needs to maximize its profits in order to stay in business and expand in to new territories beyond its conquered boundaries. A strategic analysis was carried out by our team to establish the company’s current situation. A SWOT analysis was performed to come up with three referenced, strategic alternatives. This alternatives are meant to act as a strategic guidance to the company in order to enhance growth. The strategic recommendation provided will improve and enable the business to cope with the competitors while the implementation of the strategy section will outline the way to go about achieving these alternatives in the business setting. Lastly, we put up a discussion on the evaluation procedures and necessary controls for the
Gittell, J. H. (2003). The Southwest Airlines Way: Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance. New York: McGraw-Hill.
In a dysfunctional time for the airline industry, most airlines, especially major carriers, are adapting the concept of "doing less with more." One low-cost carrier, JetBlue, is changing the domestic aviation landscape in this regard and is defying the odds. Here is a company that has examined each marketing mix elements carefully, has adapted them to its customer’s needs, and is succeeding because of this approach.
Companies are beginning to move their CRM application out of data centers and onto the cloud making CRM less expensive and easier to expand. (Shein, 2009) Technology advances are also allowing companies to begin to take better advantage of big data, combing internal data with social media and mobile to deliver more business value. (Goodwin, 2013) In the future, more devices will be connected to the Internet. Cars, buildings, bodies and many other things will be connected through sensors and it is expected that this increase in information will continue to drive the changes in CRM and how it is used to support sales, marketing and customer service. (Sartain,
The airline industry is an unprofitable business even with increased traffic every year (HUTCHINSON, 2011). By identifying the marco-environment factors that may have an impact on the airline will enable airlines to make better decisions and to exploit or reduce the impact of those macro forces.
Today’s CRM systems are vast multi-functional systems that allow firms to manage multiple elements of relationships with their customers. Xu et al. (2002) offer the four characteristics of CRM as: