Lufthansa CRM

2014 MDI Gurgaon Areeb Shaarique 13P128

[CRM STRATEGIES AT LUFTHANSA] LUFTHANSA] A course assignment on Customer Relationship Management

Customer Retention Strategy:

Customer satisfaction is utmost important to Lufthansa. Time bound, highly focused passenger surveys are undertaken to find out inputs and gather comments from the thousands of air travellers who travel by Lufthansa carriers daily. This highlights Lufthansa’s commitment to customer satisfaction in great detail. An example can be quoted for illustration here: In one survey, it was highlighted of a need of the passengers for a change in Lufthansa Aircrafts; they wanted more legroom specifically the business passengers asked for more leg-room and elbow-room, and also lounges, and an isolated passport control and check in. Lufthansa responded to this need by redesigning the business class seats and making them wider. Sometimes a huge demand for business class space has an e ffect on the economy class. The redesign allowed any overspill into economy class to be met by telescoping seats on one side of the aisle and extending them on the other to make the seats wider. This is an example of how Lufthansa values customer satisfaction. This customer satisfaction is at the core of Customer retention at Lufthansa All processes at Lufthansa, from design of customer centric seats to delivery of the planes are carefully thought of. For example, when rede signing or improving seats, the airline seat manufacturer commissioned to do the redesign is typically brought in to work with Lufthansa’s marketing and technical staff. Miles and More customer loyalty program: The customer loyalty program: Miles and more is a frequent flyer program for Lufthansa’s frequent

flyers. It gives them lots of benefit s of being a special frequent flyer and has a customer base of around 20 million.

Customer acquisition: Real time updates and Flight status:

Conduit, which is a leading IT solutions provider, has deployed its c ommunity toolbar to provide users with real time Flight status and updates. Lufthansa is one of many buyers for Conduit solution and it has experienced impressive sales and increase in customer tr affic.

In three week after the launch of the tool, there were more than 1000 downloads, this was a welcome sign and a signal of a successful customer ac quisition strategy at Lufthansa

The user benefits of the IT strategy are: Flight status enquiry Travel enquiry Bookings for flight, car rental, hotel, tour reservations etc. Also Destination weather updates Sales, discounts and much more Customers who do not check mails ofte n, the information is easily available on the Lufthansa community toolbar Multi Hub strategy:

The multiple hubs: Vienna, Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich and Brussels, offers passengers dependable choices to plan their entire journey and ensure a proper travel. It offers them multiple choices as to which location to choose to fly from and w hich location to fly to given the multiple hubs that Lufthansa offers. High Quality service: Lufthansa’s service is revered for the quality of service it provides to its customers.  The quality metrics

are clearly defined and communicated. Lufthansa values customer feedback and suggestions, so much so that it is even willing to mo dify certain arrangements offered by the Aircraft manufacturer to suit the customer demands. Safety:

Lufthansa has had an impeccable record of Flight safety. The maintenance schedule, on ground checks and flight safety checklists are specially made to ensure safe skies. It is one of the first Airlines to adopt any and every modern safety feature discovered and developed in the aviation space. Reliability:

Customer Development at Lufthansa:

Lufthansa considers customers to be an integral part of their growth plan. Their strategy defines customers as an integral part of the organization growth and development. Lufthansa has implemented CRM as a part of its strategy back in 2001. During the imp lementation, the entire customer relationship management was integrated under o ne umbrella. The availability and response times that were bad due to heterogeneous systems re integrated and the response times improved. Lufthansa chose people soft as a CRM tool. To let customers adapt to this tool, a training

programme in the form of customer awareness is done. Call centers, mobile solutions, we optimizations were all made familiar to the old users and all of these solutions were implemented step by step in order for the users to get used to the solutions slowly. To retain valuable customers, Lufthansa had also trained all valuable customer touch points With more and more automated systems the need for customer development has arisen.

Shortcomings in CRM strategy

The major shortcomings of the CRM strategy have been the loss of per sonalized connect with the customers at Lufthansa. The touch points have drastically reduced to mer e technology like mobile phones, websites and laptops. This has made the services to appear more standardized and low in personalization, although it has been possible with the help of CRM tools. CRM tools also depend on the business tools and the process rules. Data protection and safeguard has been an issue with the implementation of CRM software. With the introduction of the CRM software, the relationship does run the risk of becoming more transactional and similar has been the case with Lufthansa although to a lesser degree.

Improvements in the CRM strategy for Lufthansa:

After the successful implementation of CRM at Lufthansa, even better services can be provided by t he following actions: Improving navigation: It can also help to improve the navigation features at the CRM tool. As the pre vious product was manufactured by sapient and Lufthansa together, it did not have the functionality of saving the user’s data. The user can save data at the first entry so that the user does not need to enter data again and again. Swipe functionality

The new I-phones and Android phones demand new features and to integrate CRM on those systems would require special integrated features and those features if incorporated in the current C RM tool would further improve the CRM functionality with Lufthansa. Also Lufthansa can take a more personalized approach to CRM practices in the sense that the CRM tool only acts as a facilitator and the best CRM practices would still tend more towards “Relation” rather

than standardized IT tool.

References: 1. http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/content/14757.html 2. http://www.expressandstar.com/business/midlands-business/2012/10/02/lufthansa-enjoysgrowth-in-business-customers-going-from-birmingham/ 3. http://www.computerwoche.de/a/lufthansa-passage-startet-crm-system,1059040 4. http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/technology/customer-relationship-management-basedenterprise-wide-data-warehouseat-german-airl 5. www.Wikipedia.com 6. http://www.airlinequality.com/Forum/lufth.htm 7. http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/content/14757.html