航空业：大数据有大作为

    斯科贝克表示，通过在值机时使用手持式行李扫描仪，“我们可以获取所有的追踪数据。但是两年前我们意识到一个问题，那就是旅客也可以通过这些信息获得好处。”

    因此，达美航空率先推出了一款移动应用，让旅客可以在自己的移动设备上追踪自己的行李。这款应用在iOS、安卓、黑莓、WP平台上均可下载，目前总下载量已经超过1100万次。

    寻找新的收入流

    美国西南航空公司（Southwest Airlines）也在利用大数据技术来决定应该部署哪些新的旅客服务。

    西南航空发言人丹•兰德森说：“西南航空利用汇总的匿名用户数据，通过多个渠道、多个设备以及包括公司官网Southwest.com在内的多个网站，向顾客推广产品、服务以及各种个性化服务。通过观察和研究旅客在互联网上的行为和活动，我们能更好地向旅客提供最优惠的机票和最好的旅行体验。同时我们也利用这些数据来进一步改善我们与旅客的关系。”

    比如兰德森说：“通过研究旅客在网上搜索的直飞城市，可以帮助我们决定在某一特定航线上应该推出哪种服务。”

    这样做的成效如何呢？兰德森称：“我们的旅客人数和忠诚度都在逐年增加。我们认为，这种智能化的、基于数据的定位方法对公司的增长起了很大的促进作用。”

    “每周100万美元”

    以数据为中心的经营方式听起来似乎很好理解，但执行起来就全然是另一回事了。差旅业大数据营销平台Boxever公司的营销副总裁艾莉森•佩列蒂耶指出，对于大多数航空公司来说，第一个拦路虎就是“如何把各类孤立的乘客信息整合到一起——比如交易系统中的订票信息、网络和移动行为（包括搜索、访问、退订）、电子邮件数据、客服信息等等——以建立一个统一的顾客视角。”

    佩列蒂耶说：“有了这些信息和根据这些信息得出的见解，各大航空公司就可以采取相应的行动，帮助他们将更多消费者转化成自己的顾客，获得更多收益，提高一切渠道上的顾客忠诚度。”

    佩列蒂耶解释道，以挪威的威德罗航空公司（Wideroe）为例，一个统一的顾客视角“可以让呼叫中心的销售代表了解顾客的全部活动记录，而不仅仅是客户服务历史。也就是说，销售代表还能了解顾客最近是否曾访问过公司官网，或者是否曾经打开过公司的营销邮件。因此，在解决完手头上的客户服务问题后，他们处在一个非常有利的位置来推销最适合该顾客的附加服务，这样一来就可以创造额外收入。或者他也可以根据手头上的信息向旅客提供免费升舱，这样一来也可以提高客户忠诚度。”

    佩列蒂耶指出，航空公司通过统一顾客视角获得的见解也可以转化成服务信息，通过各种通讯渠道传递给旅客，而电子邮件正是一个非常热门的出发点。

    佩列蒂耶说：“我们在欧洲有一个最大的客户，它利用Boxever平台来了解机票的退订情况，然后向退订者发送电子邮件。据这个客户反映，在发送了这些邮件之后，有很多退订的人随后又重新在他们那里订购了机票，由此每周都为它多创造了100万美元的收入。”

    Boxever公司首席执行官戴夫•奥•弗拉纳根还称：“由于了解了顾客是谁，来自哪里，他们是否已经是自己的顾客”，有些航空公司花在付费媒体上的获取顾客成本降低了21%。“通过这种方式，航空公司可以把这些顾客从昂贵的顾客获取渠道转移到成本低得多的电子邮件等顾客保留渠道上。”另外弗拉纳根还表示，各大航空公司通过附带的交叉销售（比如酒店、租车等），这方面的收益还有提高17%的潜力。

    Through the use of hand-held baggage scanners used at passenger check-in, “we’ve had all this tracking data available,” Skrbec said. But “one of the things we realized about two years ago is that customers would benefit from having that information.”

    Which is why Delta was the first major airline to launch an application allowing customers to track their bags from their mobile devices, he said. Spanning the iOS, Google Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone mobile operating systems, the free app has been downloaded more than 11 million times.

    In search of new revenue streams

    It’s a similar story at Southwest Airlines LUV 1.54% , which is using big data to determine which new customer services to implement.

    “Southwest uses aggregated, anonymous customer data to promote products, services, and featured offers to customers on multiple channels, devices, and websites including Southwest.com,” said Dan Landson, a company spokesman. “By observing and looking into customer behaviors and actions online, we are better suited to offer our travelers the best rates and experiences possible. We also use this data to support the evolving relationships with our customers.”

    For example, “we look at the city pairs that are being searched to help us determine what type of service we should have on a specific route,” Landson said.

    The payoff? “Our customer and loyalty segments grow year-over-year,” Landson said. “We believe that intelligent, data-based targeting has a lot to do with that growth.”

    ‘$1 million per week’

    The benefits of a data-focused approach may be easy to understand, but execution is another matter entirely. For most airlines, the first problem lies in “bringing together all sorts of disparate silos of passenger information—booking information from transaction systems, web and mobile behavior (including searches, visits, abandoned carts), email data, customer service info, etc.—to create a single, consolidated view of the customer,” said Allyson Pelletier, vice president of marketing with Boxever, which offers a marketing platform focused on putting big data to work for the travel industry.

    “Armed with this information, and the resulting insights, they can then take specific action that helps them convert more visitors on-site, secure more revenue, or increase loyalty across any channel,” Pelletier said.

    At Norwegian airline Wideroe, for example, a single customer view “enables agents in the call center to understand the full history of the customer—not just the customer service history, but also their recent visits to the website or promotional emails they’ve opened,” she explained. “After they solve the customer service issue at hand, they’re in a powerful position to then recommend the most appropriate ancillary service—driving add-on revenue—or offer a complimentary upgrade, thereby driving loyalty.”

    Insights garnered from a single customer view can also drive personalized messaging into various communications channels, and email is a popular starting place, Pelletier noted.

    “One of our largest clients in Europe uses Boxever to understand abandoned carts and then trigger personalized emails to the abandoners,” she said. “They reported back subsequent bookings of $1 million per week from these communications.”

    Boxever also cites a 21 percent reduction in customer-acquisition costs on paid media “by understanding who the customer was, where they came from and whether or not they were already a customer,” said Dave O’Flanagan, the company’s chief executive. “This way they could start to move those customers away from expensive acquisition channels to retention channels, like email, which is much cheaper.” There is also potential for a 17 percent uplift in conversion on ancillary cross-sells, such as adding hotel or car to a booking, he added.