TCS develops solution to enhance airline customer experience

Chennai: In the fierce competition to attract customers among airlines, information technology (IT) will become one of the key differentiators in passenger experience..

"Airlines are migrating from transactional mode to relationship marketing. The communication channel has changed now," said S Ramadorai, chief executive officer and managing director, Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS).

TCS has started work on developing new solutions for airline and hospitality industries at its travel and hospitality lab in Chennai called Innovation 2.0 solutions, these offerings will enable global travel and hospitality organisations to differentiate themselves as well increase their relevancy to an individual customer.

According to N Chandrasekaran, chief operating officer and executive director, the company has so far spent around $3 million on the travel lab.

During the first half of the current fiscal, the travel and transportation vertical fetched TCS 4.4 per cent of its total revenue of $2.7 billion. The vertical has 3000 employees and boasts of clients like British Airways, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Worldspan, SITA, and Hawaiian Airlines amongst others.

Recently British Airways signed up with TCS for a cabin crew management solution.

Speaking about the Innovation 2.0 solutions G Raghavan, head, travel and hospitality said, the old solution was focused on customer touch points. The new solution would help in converting the touch point to a customer.

The new solution would enable airlines to cross-sell its services and help achieve value based segmentation, create real time loyalty programmes.

The integrated system provides relevant customer information including bookings, customer profiles and behaviour to automated customer response systems.