1.

0 Executive Summary

This projects present on the understanding of the customer relationship management

( CRM) strategies in the aviation industry, British Airway. Firstly, through the project it
help us to understand the meaning and important of CRM for any other business. In order
to implement a good CRM system, the organization need to fully understand the customer
needs and wants in order to having a good strategies and tactics thus to uses to attract the
new and existing customer and build strong relationship with them. The project focuses
on the CRM system/ activities taken up by British Airway and analyses the impact on
those activities on customer. Furthermore, the most important customer relationship
management strategies are they using the Teradata’s solutons to improve the analysis and
implementation of creating a good relationship and create a sustain relationship with their
customer. It is a new system which had replace the existing Chordiant solution that
empower British Airways to oversee and fortify client connections dependent on a total,
coordinated and shared comprehension everything being equal. Besides that, BA also had
carry up the loyalty programme” Executive Club Member” which provide their member
different type of benefit not only specific for flights but also able to reward free fly, collect
Avios ( points), upgrade for seat and so on. Lastly, for the organization to implement the
CRM is one of the major factor that enable BA to sustain and become one of the largest
international airlines in the world. Through, CRM it help BA to understand the
expectations of customer from the airlines and in what way they want to be catered.

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Table Content

Contents Pages

1.0 Executive Summary 1

2.0 Company Background 3

3.0 Industry analysis of current CRM 4-5

4.0 Problems associated with the company

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performance assessments

5.0 Identify the best practices or strategies in

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implementing the CRM system.

6.0 principles made by the company to maintain their

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competitiveness in the global market

7.0 Recommendation for future direction

9-10

8.0 Conclusion 11

9.0 References 12

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2.0 Introduction Of Company Background

British Airways is considered as one of the largest international airlines in the world
which are established in 1974 . For the headquartered are located at London Heathrow
Airport, which it is the world's busiest international airport and has a global network of
flights through partners such as USAir in the US, Qantas in Australia and TAT Europe
in France. Currently, British Airways (BA) covers more than 550 destinations.
According to the data of the year 2008/09, we can see that the company had serves
British Airways serves 95 million passengers a year using 441 airports in 86 countries
and more than 1,000 planes. In addition, it had approximately 45,000 employees in
early 2019. British airways is the result of merger of four companies – British European
Airways, British Overseas Airways Corporation, Cambrian Airways and Northeast
Airlines, which their parent company is International United Airlines Group which
established in 2011 by the merger of British Airways and Iberia. British Airways had
changed from state-owned airlines to private airlines. The company also had a primary
slogan which is “ To Fly To Serve”, “Upgrade to British Airways”, The world Best
Airlines and “ Fly the Flag. The airline has set its own goal of becoming the world's
leading global premium airline. With the increasingly competitive aviation market,
maintaining and handling relationships with all parts is very important to British
Airways.

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3.0 Industry Analysis For Current Development CRM

British Airways is one of the oldest airlines in the world and its origins date back to
1919. It has always been regarded as the industry leader. As a founding member of the
oneworld alliance, British Airways (BA) is the fifth largest airline in the world. In order
for the airlines to sustain for long term in the competitive aviation market, it is very
important for the company to implement the SWOT analysis .Which is a management
tool that helps identify organizational strengths, weaknesses, environmental
opportunities and threats. By having a Through SWOT analysis, an organization will
be able to generate an organized list of factors potentially related to the company's
strategic situation. One of the strengths of British Airways which it had show the strong
brand identity as the as customers show trust and loyalty, they have built a strong brand
image among the leading airlines in the UK that able to Benefit the business at multiple
levels. Besides that, BA also has its own engineering department to maintain its fleet
of aircraft in order to improve airline products and service products, thereby increasing
the number of passengers and also able to compete with major competitor. Moreover,
BA also offers its customers different loyalty programs to ensure that they only travel
back and forth from their airlines such as the execute club is British Airways’ frequent
flyer programme and so on. Through membership it can assists the companies to
identify their target audiences faster and more accurately, thereby enhancing and
improving the services more accurately. Mobile module software also uses by BA as
one of the CRM tool to manage its communication with the Executive Club members.
It helps the British Airway send information and special offers to executive club
members in real time, and allows executive club members to make reservations on their
mobile phones as well. Secondly, excessive reliance on the UK market is a considerable
weakness and must be handled by British Airways management. According to BA
revenues had show that 81% of revenue are coming from US and UK, the current
situation has made the company extremely vulnerable to market slowdown and
increased competition in the UK. The airlines also has a large number of union workers
which the collective bargaining happens all the time and a breakdown in the dealing
procedure may disturb activities and unfavorably influence business execution. They

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continued efforts to manage by layoffs and wage reduction reforms thus the employee
confidence will be reduce, the pressure on service personnel, and reduce employee
productivity. The global market penetration is low for BA, they have not completely
entered the potential markets of developing market such as china and india due to stable
financial conditions, increased disposable income and increased disposable income.
Furthermore, BA had an opportunities to expansion international market. Due to BA
had complete acquisition of Iberia airlines, which owns 13% of the shares, thus it
become the world largest airline with a combined market capitalization of
approximately 5.5 billion euros. By improving the operating conditions of Heathrow
Terminal 5 airport BA will has the opportunity to expand its presence in emerging
markets such as China, India and Middle East. Besides that, the government
intervention it release the pressure on small players which has been greatly affected the
airlines operation. So many competitors have been forced to withdraw themselves from
the market due to the high competition costs and the global economic difficulties. This
give an opportunities for BA to expand and develop their airline more easily. Finally,
the threats for the BA which is the economy slowed, fuel prices rose and the pound
depreciated. It seriously affected air transport due to the global economic downturn. On
the other side, the travel and tourism are moving in the direction of more green practices
had requires all airlines to limit carbon emissions.

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4.0 Problems associated with the company performance assessments

Customer service is at the heart of BA, and airlines pride themselves on providing
travelers with a world-class service experience. There are some challenges faced by BA
when implement the CRM when using the system where it increasing the complicated
by the incompatibility of technology for BA. The company had utilizing two separate
and heavily modified applications in US, UK and the formal system are not available
in other locations, so without an incorporated perspective on customer collaboration,
BA will has limited control over the effectiveness of its service recovery activities. Thus
will lead to inefficient case in compensation, handling duplicate claims for some event.
Furthermore, when implement the Customer Data Warehouse( CDW) based on Oracle
( codename “ Oceanwave”) also one of the challenges faced by BA due to the analysis
team took 2 years to use the information for reporting and activities. Complexity are
one of the issues facing when using CDW, where it not design for analytical purposes
and data structure is completely different from previous system which lead to time
consuming and difficult to understand.

Furthermore, it also required a lot of time and effort from contractors to train the SAS
uses on accessing and using the data. There are also query with regard the data quality
hence this had weakens the confidence of analysis team. The query respond are slow
and complex whereby the data for analysis purposes involves many joins that make its
slow and programming skills are require to create SQL queries, even the simplest list
generation. Besides that, the combination of SAS, Business Objects and local databases
is used by the Analyst team to manage more complex activities. However, the Vantage
solution was found to be expensive and inadequate. Since BA has an earlier
unsupported version of Vantage and limited internal IT support, it usually takes two to
three days to query every two weeks. Finally, BA also facing challenges for social CRM
where the BA are infamous in using twitter to connect with disgruntled customers.
Example they promise 24 hours a day to customer service , yet often fail to deliver.

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5.0 Identify the best practices or strategies in implementing the CRM system.

Teradata is a customer relationship management system that had implement by British

Airway that help to improve implementation, analysis of marketing campaigns.
Teradata is a new system which has replace the existing Chordiant solution which
enable BA to having understanding of all interaction with customer. In order to
differentiate the service and improve operations only if the CRM strategy implemented
effectively in the organization itself. Thus, there are several strategies in implementing
the CRM system by BA. First of all, Training and development for the employee.
Initially the employees may not accept the idea of trained to use new software. Due to
they think CRM will make their life become more complicated indirectly thus they
won’t received with the open heart. It is very important for the employee itself familiar
itself by knowing the main purposed for the CRM system that implemented by BA. In
order to fully utilizes the CRM system, continuous and evaluation should be done
among the employee to get the best result from CRM technology. Secondly, getting
professional assistance in implement the system. It is beneficial for the employee/
organization regardless of where the employee are in the position when working with
the professional. In order to improve the CRM, by hiring the professional acting as a
mediator to help the employee get through the deadlock with experienced managers.
Hence its able to make the process clearer. On the other hand, set targets and success
metrics. The management for BA need to quantify the payback from the CRM that
being implement. The value are obtaining from the customer and business from the
CRM program. Airlines need to determine sort of return they can reasonably expect
from the CRM initiatives and manage towards clear objectives. Lastly, make sure
everyone share the same vision. Make sure all of the employee in the organization
involved in the CRM system due to the changes no only effect on the sales team but
also changes the function of all the department. Due to the CRM system had been
implement , thus they have to change their working style or behaviour in order to get
used to the new CRM tools/ system. Before implement, they have to understand the
purpose of implement the CRM system and be trained in appropriate use.

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6.0 Principles made to maintain competitiveness in the global market

In order to maintain their competitiveness in the global market. BA partnering with

different hotels such as Radisson Hotel Group, Hilton, InterContinental Hotels Group,
Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts and swissotel hotel. In which swissotel hotels and resorts
who are also BA Executive Club Members which have new reward to look forward to.
Where the customer stay at swiss hotel are able to collecting the BA Executive Club
Avios points directly. By sign up the Executive Club Members it allowing the member
to collect and save Avios that able to enjoy discount when booking for the hotels.
Besides that, it also allow to hotel point to be convert to Avios in order to enjoying
reward flights much sooner. Apart from this, BA also partnering with American
Express that had launch the credit card “ British Airways American Express”. On
business is BA complimentary loyalty programme that help the business owner and
employees able to maximise their company spending when corporate travel and get
substantial travel benefits to help their business grow. Its also able for the business
travellers to book the a seat the day before by using the point which allow them to chnge
the date and time of the flight for free. In order to be smart in travel budget especially
flight by participating royalty programme “On business” which allow them to enjoy
exclusive rewards, discount and the ability to earn points. Furthermore, BA also having
partnering with different airlines such as japan airlines, Cathay Pacific, Malaysia
Airlines, Qatar Airlines and many other airlines, the member able to gain point through
other airlines and not just British Airway. BA, able to attract other customer from
different way and not just targeted certain aspect of the customer. Through this
programme it may able to get the customer from other partner that collaborate with.
Last but not least, BA also having long running partnership with Tesco supermarket
(UK) which allow the member to gain Avios when they spend in Tesco thus enable to
convert the vouchers to Avios with BA. Avios can be used for upgrades hotel, car
rentals, award flights that allowing customers to reduce the cost of all flights At here
we can seen that BA having another way to implement the CRM which they not only
creating relationship with their own customer but they trying to create a relationship
with other customer through their partner in order for them to having relationship with
BA.

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7.0 Recommendation for future direction

Customer value and customer needs are critical to the airline's relationship with its
customers. Many airlines are developing loyalty programs that offer different benefits
to customers. Such as, redemption for free ticket and extra baggage allowance.
Throughout the years, many customer have filed numerous complaints against BA.
Their current offline CRM practices can be improved especially in social media
(Twitter) which fail to deliver the 24 hour service as promise and IT failure which
caused 1000 passenger flight to be delay. In order to for BA to gain competitive
advantage, there are some improvement in implement the CRM. Thus, BA would need
to develop an appropriate 1 to 1 CRM plan in the form of two retention strategies.
Through loyalty marketing can be an appropriate 1 to 1 CRM solution in order to retain
their customer base and not lose any further clients. This able to help battle against the
negative exposure against the organization. Besides that, in order for BA to create a
good relationship with customer it is important for BA to lead the programme for
employee motivation. Companies should listen to employee request in order to avoid
conflicts. BA should run the satisfaction surveys, besides that the organization ought to
improve its HR department about employee satisfaction, motivation and training. In
order for the employee to giving better servicing towards the clients, by taking care of
the employee are the major factor to success in the airlines industry. Example, when
interacting with the clients the employee who are happy will often show their
enthusiasm. Moreover, besides having the royalty program “ Executive Club Members”
the BA also encourage in partner with an American Life Insurance company which
called “ Allstate”. By implement the BA Frequent Flyer program which it enable the
members to earn miles/ points by purchasing a new car or home owner insurance polivy
from Allstate. Furthermore, BA should launched the program which giving away 15000
free air ticket rewards to the US residents in order to get attract more potential customer
and also these CRM activities leverage the personal data received to expand customer
knowledge and provide high quality interaction management with the selected
customers. On the other hand, BA also encourage to launching a dedicated page on the

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website at “ba.com/helpme” which is easier for the customer to receive assistance. In a
nutshell, the recommendation for BA is to use an IVR system ( interactive voice
response). Through IVR system, it enable clients to speak with the organization host
framework by phone/ keypad to discourse acknowledgment, in the wake of finding the
idea of their brumblings following their exchange. By implemented IVR system, it able
to reduce labor costs and deal with customer complaints in a more efficient manner.It
not just give customized travel experienced which is quick, friendly and personalized
travel experiences, but also help to resolve complaints, flight information, account
details and upgrade status.

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8.0 Conclusion

In a nutshell, the particular organization must be understand its own strengths and
opportunities in order to improve or expand the business methods. Due to the customer
experience is one of the deciding factor that will make up their mind when purchasing
something or they will making comparison for the company between their competitor.
In order to run the business smoothly and sustain for long time in the industry the create
relationship between the customer and the organization are important. In order to create
and retain the good relationship among their customer, CRM are playing an important
role in assist the company ( BA), it focus on acquisition, expand and retention of
customer base. By having different type of program it able to create a continuous
relationship with the customer. By analyzing, collecting of client data, and more
focused on items and administration to keep up existing customer relationship. BA
increasing effective in internal management and training in order customer service able
to improve. Relationship marketing designed to achieve a win-win situation for both
parties, BA stills need to do more in implement good CRM to accomplish the goal.
Therefore, winning the trust of customers will be the key to gaining a competitive
advantage.

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References

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Airways-PLC.html.

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release/business-credit-cards/american-express-and-british-airways-launch-new-
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5) What are the benefits of joining British Airways Executive Club? (2019, April 16).
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6) Who are British Airways hotel partners where I can earn Avios? (2019, April 16).
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airways-hotel-partners-where-i-can-earn-avios/.

7) Davies, R. (2019, August 31). Strikes, IT failures, customer unrest: can BA pull out of
this nosedive? Retrieved from
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passenger-anger-computer-failures.

8) SWOT Analysis Of British Airways. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.ukessays.com/essays/business/swot-analysis-british-airways.php.

9) byUnknown, P. (n.d.). SWOT Analysis And PESTLE Analysis Of British Airways.

Retrieved from http://researchkorner.blogspot.com/2013/11/swot-analysis-and-
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10) Bhasin, H. (2019, April 29). SWOT analysis of British Airways - British airways SWOT.
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