0:08 Introduction to SkyTeam's loyalty proposition • 02:09 On collecting feedback and data within the Alliance • 03:02 On Sky Priority app • 04:28 On intermodal partnerships • 06:36 On personalisation • 09:27 Magic wand question • 10:20 Advice to younger self
GLO- 0:08 Introduction to SkyTeam’s loyalty proposition
- 02:09 On collecting feedback and data within the Alliance
- 03:02 On Sky Priority app
- 04:28 On intermodal partnerships
- 06:36 On personalisation
- 09:27 Magic wand question
- 10:20 Advice to younger self
00:08
GLO: Dear SungJoon, it’s a pleasure to welcome you to Athe World aviation Festival this year, and thank you for sparing time to talk about the SkyTeam and its latest developments.
SungJoon Park, SkyTeam: Thank you for the invitation
00:43
GLO: Congratulations on your recent appointment as the Head of Loyalty for SkyTeam. You joined the second-largest alliance in the world. I think you are now close to over a billion passengers carried. Can you tell us what the vision for the loyalty proposition is? What is the latest thinking behind supporting the airlines?
SungJoon Park, SkyTeam: The first focus for me is that we do the basics. So, as you know, there are three pillars of loyalty. One is accrual, one is redemption, and the other is customer recognition. COVID, some seams have been created among the member airlines, and I’m working to close those seams to make sure that we deliver the benefits that we promised to our customers. The second project that I’m working on is evolving the accrual and redemption system that we’ve been using. Those were developed in the early 2000s, and it’s been 20 years. One example would be the real-time accrual. We are living in a world where you see things in real-time, but unfortunately, the mileage accruals are not happening in real-time or close to real-time, so we are still depending on file exchanges. That’s why the customers don’t see their miles posted. Sometimes, it takes a week to see them, but we are trying to close that timeline into a couple of days, so the customers are observing their miles posted, getting rewards and getting their Elite status qualification picture in a more right manner.
02:09
GLO: It must be quite a difficult task because you effectively are an umbrella of the 20 underlying airlines, and each of them has its own strategy and loyalty program. Quite a few of them rolled out a separate loyalty app. How do you collect the feedback on what the customer wants and have visibility on how to improve the synergies between the airlines?
SungJoon Park, SkyTeam: From that perspective, we are dependent on the airlines to tell us. At the same time, I also travel a lot by myself. I try to be a passenger to understand the biggest pain points. And, of course, there is a lot of media out there, such as travel vloggers and Instagram. I use those to collect feedback, and they are often helpful in terms of understanding the customers’ pain points and what we need to improve.
03:02
GLO: SkyTeam rolled out the Sky Priority app, which is not meant to replace the airlines’ apps but to connect the passengers travelling on the Alliance airlines. How do you use it? What is the strategy for this app?
SungJoon Park, SkyTeam : The Sky Priority app needs some improvements. Right now, it plays a passive role in terms of collecting feedback from customers. It’s one of the channels where we get customer feedback directly about the pain points in their last journey. But as I said, it’s passive, and you don’t get much traffic. People don’t download the apps just to give feedback to SkyTeam. So, it needs to evolve. We are thinking in many different directions about how to add value to the app so that the customers download it, get the value out of it and provide us feedback. However, I have to be very cautious because we cannot interfere with the communication between the airlines and the customers, so we need to tread a fine line.
04:28
GLO: One of the main trends we’ve heard from customers this year at Global Loyalty Organisation is the urge, or desire, to offer a variety of channels for earn and burn, which leads to a rise of partnerships, not just within the airlines, but also outside of the airlines be it multimodal transportation or retail partners. What is SkyTeam doing in the area? Are you planning to help airlines to increase the ecosystem of earn and burn?
SungJoon Park, SkyTeam: If there’s enough interest coming from the member lines, we’re willing to look at it. I mean, we have reviewed global hotel chains, rental cars, and credit cards, and the portfolios are now expanding into local restaurants and entertainment. So, if there’s any request coming from an airline that SkyTeam needs to find new partners, of course, we are here to help, but unfortunately, that’s not what the airlines want so far. The 20 airlines have different needs when it comes to non-air partnerships, so the focus has been more on the airline side, working individually with those airlines. But again, I’m happy to work at the Alliance level if there’s a sufficient need from the member airlines. But you just raised a really good point on intermodality. Intermodality is indeed a type of non-air partnership. We just announced a partnership with Eurostar and Trenitalia. There’s a lot to work on, but one thing I can tell is that the intermodality will not be a copy and paste of the air-to-air partnership that we have had. This is a completely different industry, and therefore, we have to do a lot of outside-the-box thinking.
6:36
GLO: That’s quite interesting because we recently published an article on Uber trying to sell train tickets. So I guess there is a lot of dynamics in the sector, and it’s encouraging to see that you are also looking to expand the partnerships. One of the main themes for 2024 that we saw was personalisation, and to be honest, it was the catchword on many sessions at the World Aviation Festival this year. How do you approach personalisation? A lot of people talk about dynamic pricing, push notifications, geo-location and real-time updates. What are you seeing across your airlines? What are they implementing? What they’re working on?
SungJoon Park, SkyTeam: I know a lot of personalisation is happening at the air alliance level. To name a few among SkyTeam: Delta is leading a personalisation project. Air France-KLM and Korean Air are also into it. A lot of activity is happening at the airline level. But unfortunately, not so much is happening at the Alliance level at this point. But I can envision that, once the airlines feel comfortable within the Alliance, once the airlines think that they have reached their ambition at their airline level, I’m sure it will escalate into the Alliance level, and that’s when SkyTeam will dive into to find out what the possibilities would be. But at this point, we haven’t found any powerful use cases yet.
8:15
GLO: The one thing that we heard on this forum is that airlines almost collect too much data from the customers. Airlines are in a privileged position because they know the name, date of birth, beginning and end of travel. You are in an even more privileged position because you are effectively overseeing 20 airlines. Do you see the big data? Does AI or some data analytics tool allow you to foresee some of the trends and help airlines personalise experiences even more?
SungJoon Park, SkyTeam: There is some data going through SkyTeam, but we do have very limited personal data. We have to be compliant with GDPR and all those regulations and laws. So the short answer to your question is “no” at this point. We will have to think differently if we need to do personalisation at the Alliance level because no data is being exchanged at the Alliance level at this point.
9:27
GLO: That’s a difficult task, of course. If you had a magic wand, and if you could add any solution or loyalty feature to your proposition without any cost, what would that be?
SungJoon Park, SkyTeam: I know fraud is a big pain point for the airlines nowadays. It has been there for some time. We do have some fraud prevention measurements, but they are relatively basic. They are not so super advanced. So, I would want some kind of technology that can help us protect those fragile activities, to protect our customers’ needs and the airlines’ interests.
10:20
GLO: You’ve been in your career for some time now. If you had to give one piece of advice to your younger self and to some of our younger members at Global Loyalty Organisation, what would that be?
SungJoon Park, SkyTeam: That’s a difficult question. Experience as much as you can. I mean, there are boundless opportunities in the airline world and the loyalty world. Go as far as you can; learn as much as you can. Experience and learn. I think they go together, so I think that’s what I would recommend.
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