Air France-KLM prides itself on its holistic approach toward customer loyalty.
Its efforts have not gone unnoticed.
Air France-KLM’s Flying Blue loyalty program landed the most prestigious honor at Monday’s 2015 Loyalty360 Awards: It won the Platinum Award for 360-Degree Loyalty: EMEA, APAC AND/OR LATAM.
Air France received its award during the 8th annual Loyalty Expo presented by Loyalty360 – The Loyalty Marketers’ Association.
Sébastien Reliat, Head of Loyalty Marketing and Communication at Air France-KLM, sat down with Loyalty360 to discuss his company’s winning loyalty program.
How does Air France define customer loyalty and how does that definition impact your loyalty program offerings?
Customer loyalty is when the customer promotes and/or advocates your program because s/he sincerely believes in it. As such, the loyalty program should take a holistic approach to rewarding and engaging members.
At Air France-KLM, we aim to make Flying Blue more than just a frequent travel program. Onboard and on the ground, online and off, we are present throughout the journey and beyond. To make sure our members’ needs are met, we emphasize high quality customer care (in fact, both Air France and KLM have been commended for their social media presence and response time). This past year, Flying Blue launched the first installment of a 24/7 dedicated phone line for our most Elite members.
At Flying Blue, we have introduced a number of initiatives to facilitate and enrich our members’ daily lives. Our Golf, Running and Petroleum communities offer benefits to our golfers, runners, and professionals in the oil and gas industry: free check in for golf bags on certain routes, marathon entries that can be paid in Miles, and free lounge visits, to name a few. With low cost partners such as Transavia and Hop!, customers have a greater choice of routes and prices.
With co-branded cards in France, the Netherlands and five other countries, members have more opportunities to earn Miles on day-to-day purchases. And, thanks to numerous international and local partnerships, members can earn Miles and receive discounts when at home and on holiday. We also provide ways to spend Miles: on upgrades, seats, meal options, and on our newly revamped online store. There we feature electronics, leather goods, jewelry, hotel stays, vacation packages, car rental and more on one user-friendly platform, with global delivery. Lastly, we introduce new creative campaigns each year, like Mr. Miles, Sleep For Miles and Flying View to inspire and engage our members.
Why do you think your loyalty program resonates so well with your customers?
Traditionally, Air France and KLM have been strong brands, with a national heritage and loyal following. You can imagine the challenge of combining two very distinct brands into a comprehensive program! At Flying Blue, we aim to embody the strong qualities of these two airlines while maintaining a coherent voice.
At the end of the day, though, the loyalty program is about the customer and not the brands or products. Our ambition is to make the program stand apart by truly listening to our members, and by adapting to their expectations (again not just during their travels, but on a daily basis). We reward members’ loyalty by setting up new rules, offers, partnerships and communities that show our generosity. In addition, we emphasize discussion and co-creation with our frequent flyers. This isn’t a one-way street! We are keen on receiving members’ honest opinions about the program, not just to file it away for future use, but to try and incorporate their needs best into our services. Of course we have feedback via our customer service center and social media channels, but we also launch initiatives like the Quality Observer program, set up specifically to get instant feedback. We also learn much in our interactive workshops with members; we are grateful to them for helping us improve the program, and are thrilled that they, our true brand ambassadors, wish to make their voices heard.
How do you know which technologies will fit well with your customer base?
Well, we don’t! That is why we have to test and measure customer engagement. At Flying Blue, we rely heavily on the expertise of Air France and KLM, as well as our local markets to test pilot programs and technologies. Just last year we created an Instagram account to supplement our photo contest, Flying View. This application facilitated social sharing and created quite the buzz. In fact, we had much higher participation than we had anticipated: instead of 10,000 photos submitted overall, we received 24,000 submissions on the third day alone, and that increased exponentially during the three week game.
What are you most proud of from a customer loyalty/customer engagement/customer experience perspective?
As we approach Flying Blue’s 10-year anniversary, this is a great time to reflect on how much we’ve grown this past decade. We have made lots of improvements over the years in loyalty, engagement, and experience. On average, 1.8 million customers join the program each year, and far more continue to choose us as their preferred frequent travel program (the Freddie Awards can attest to that. For two years running, members have voted us “Program of the Year”). The customer experience has also become more seamless, like with flyingblue.com, our responsive website that adapts to screens on portable devices. Only two years ago it housed our online newsletter; now it showcases a personalized homepage, the Flying Blue store, our Promo Award@ offers, our communities, and much, much more. We have come a long way, and with the continued support of our loyal members and their honest feedback, we will continue to grow.