Air Miles UK to pay closer attention to consumers
A new 'warm lead alert' system has produced a 20% sales conversion rate for Air Miles in the UK, following the introduction of Confirmit's enterprise feedback management system to the coalition programme's 8 million members.
Air Miles recently implemented the Confirmit system for an online customer research survey as part of a new strategy to increase the value derived from its customer feedback programme.
Insight sought According to Britt Ashton, research manager for Air Miles in the UK, "The aim was to get a better understanding of customers' attitudes and behaviours, and about how they collect and spend their Air Miles. We decided to take a more personal and immediate approach to our survey techniques to determine why some of our customers choose to book some or all elements of their travel and entertainment with us, or why they don't."
The programme's research agency, Aurora Market Research, devised an online survey including the Confirmit tools to measure members' attitudes and behaviours immediately after each interaction with Air Miles, whether via the telephone or web site.
Favouring the consumer Confirmit was integrated with Air Miles' existing CRM platform (Epiphany), enabling the addition of personal and demographic details about each customer into the survey for greater personalisation.
From the consumer's point of view, this approach shortened the survey by reducing the number of questions that needed to be asked, allowing Air Miles to add questions to build more detailed insights into why each customer visited the web site, made a call, or even failed to complete a transaction. Justin Alderson, managing director for Aurora Market Research, told The Wise Marketer that the higher level of personalisation improved the survey response rate to 35%.
Win-back built in According to Alderson, Confirmit's ability to escalate individual customer's issues via an alert system is invaluable, as it allows Air Miles to aggregate data to see wider trends and problems that affect the programme's business overall.
Moreover, as individuals consented to further contact following the survey, Air Miles was able to directly address the problems of dissatisfied customers by having the sales team contact them to find a solution.
As Dan Martin, head of analysis and research for Air Miles, explained: "The system's reporting system made it easier for us to understand the competitiveness of our market, and it has also enabled us to analyse the reasons why our customers didn't book the product they came to us to book."
For additional information: · Visit Air Miles UK at http://www.airmiles.co.uk · Visit Confirmit at http://www.confirmit.com