Air Canada is, unquestionably, one of the leading airlines in the world when it comes to delivering a first-class customer experience and an engaging loyalty program.
Because of its fierce commitment to customer engagement and an exciting “Earn Your Wings” loyalty program, Air Canada landed the Platinum Award in the Best Loyalty or Rewards Program category at Monday’s second annual 2015 Loyalty360 Awards.
The Loyalty360 Awards luncheon was part of the 8th annual Loyalty Expo presented by Loyalty360 – The Loyalty Marketers’ Association, which will be held April 27-29, 2015, at the Loews Royal Pacific Resort at Universal Orlando in Orlando, Florida.
Gamification is at the heart of Air Canada’s “Earn Your Wings” loyalty program, which is a leaderboard-focused competition that offers digital badges and points (or “Wings”) for completed tasks. Now available exclusive for Air Canada Altitude members, if a member lands in one of the coveted Top 20 spots on the leaderboard, he or she earns a share of 10 million Bonus Aeroplan Miles. Members earn wings for all flights with Air Canada. The more badges and wings a member earns, the more Bonus Aeroplan Miles they receives.
Loyalty360 caught up with Mathieu Lagacé, Manager, Customer Recognition, Air Canada for an engaging discussion about the airline’s commitment to customer engagement and customer loyalty.
What are your customer loyalty goals and how have the results matched or exceeded your expectations?
Our current customer loyalty goals span four different areas:
Creating a true lifecycle approach to loyalty – we have customers today who joined as children and now fly in excess of 100,000 miles every year on Air Canada. Looking forward, we want to ensure that we deliver benefits and privileges uniquely tailored to their needs.
Creating brand ambassadors who will literally go the extra mile in order to secure their frequent status year over year.
Building further on our award-winning service, our aim is to continue delivering a world-class frequent flyer experience through benefits unique to Air Canada, such as our global Concierge service, eUpgrades that allow frequent flyers to upgrade to Premium Economy or Business class on practically any flight, and Priority Rewards that allow our frequent flyers to redeem miles on any flight operated by the Air Canada family.
Finally, in recognition of the heavy use of digital devices by our customers, we aim to harness new technologies to create a heightened level of engagement towards the program. Earn Your Wings, our gamified platform for frequent flyers, is a perfect example of combining real-world travel with online engagement.
Can you talk about Air Canada’s customer loyalty approach, as far as what is involved, and why you think it resonates so well with your customers?
Air Canada’s customer loyalty approach involves a number of aspects, all focused on offering our customers an outstanding experience throughout the travel cycle. Since people’s preferences are highly varied, we offer the ability to tailor loyalty privileges to the customer’s specific travel needs and wants. We facilitate travel of our most loyal customers by offering benefits commensurate to our status as a 4-star airline. Constant investments in our products and services, from unique promotions and events, to major fleet-wide product enhancements, means that the end experience for our customers is always improving.
Air Canada builds on a strong brand, which evokes nothing less than home for our frequent travelers, no matter where in the world they may be. To this end, we work with our global partners, Star Alliance, to ensure a superior frequent flyer experience from origin to destination, no matter where that might be.
Finally, we create a sense of community with our most loyal customers, both online and in the real world. These frequent flyers and road warriors possess a wealth of information, and the value that is derived from connecting these travelers to one another is a powerful benefit.
How do you define Customer Loyalty at Air Canada and how does Customer Feedback impact that theme?
At the heart of Customer Loyalty at Air Canada is creating a traveling experience where loyalty is demonstrated at as many touch points as possible. It’s about creating a sense of community, where we go over and above simply delivering benefits that frequent travelers have already come to expect. It’s about walking through an airport and seeing our frequent flyers proudly displaying their Altitude luggage tags around the four corners of the world.
Customer feedback is crucial to the success and improvement of the program. There are occasions where we need to make sometimes difficult decisions to guarantee the long-term sustainability of our loyalty program while simultaneously being able to take into consideration the feedback of our most frequent travelers and creating new benefits and ways to recognize our most loyal customers.
With an abundance of technology solutions available in the marketplace, how do you know which ones best fit your customers and their expectations?
We are currently working on a number of initiatives that allow us to go above and beyond, delivering a set package of hard benefits by leveraging web technologies that will foster sense of belonging to a global community of like-minded travelers. This includes our hit Earn Your Wings promotion, which harnessed the competitive nature of our frequent flyer program to create engagement not only with the program, but also with fellow travelers. Another example is Altitude Community – an exclusive online space designed to allow our Altitude frequent flyers to share travel recommendations with each other, no matter where they might be.