A staggering 73% of travellers now expect their travel providers to understand their individual needs and preferences. In the crowded marketplace of CRM solutions, Salesforce stands out, offering hyper-personalisation and efficiency tailored for the dynamic needs of the travel and hospitality sector.
The Increasing Need for CRM in The Travel Industry
Travel customers have high expectations of the experiences within the sector, whether it’s planning the best summer getaway with a trusted tour operator, getting the best deal on flights through recommended airlines or seamless check-ins at their favourite hotel. The airline industry in particular is characterised by its fierce competitiveness and rapidly evolving customer expectations. Airlines face a critical need for innovative technological solutions to enhance customer experiences from planning, booking and managing their trip. Salesforce provides a transformative suite of tools, enabling airlines to:
- Personalise Experiences: Salesforce goes beyond basic customisation, allowing airlines to dive deep into understanding the unique needs of each passenger. Salesforce Sales Cloud Einstein aids in forecasting these needs and crafting services that resonate on a personal level.
- Boost Operational Efficiency: Through the automation of routine tasks and streamlined data management, Salesforce significantly reduces manual workloads, empowering staff to concentrate on strategic initiatives that enhance the passenger experience.
- Harness Strategic Insights: With advanced AI and analytics, Salesforce equips airlines with a profound understanding of passenger behaviours and preferences, facilitating informed decision-making that can redefine service standards.
- Support Employees: Providing employees with access to essential tools and comprehensive data with a focus in CRM adoption in the workplace ensures they can deliver superior service, directly impacting passenger satisfaction and loyalty.
8 Reasons Why Salesforce Is the Best CRM for the Travel Industry
Comprehensive Personalisation with Unified Data
In the travel and hospitality industry, every interaction matters. Salesforce’s suite of tools is meticulously designed to meet the sector’s unique challenges. By unifying customer data from various touch points into a single platform, travel companies can tailor experiences to match the individual preferences, past interactions, and future potential of every traveller, making each feel exceptionally valued.
Empowering Staff at Every Level
Salesforce’s CRM solutions are not just for front-line agents but empower employees across all levels, from ground staff to executives. This empowerment is crucial in today’s digital era, where a seamless and cohesive customer experience across all communication channels is expected. Salesforce ensures that every employee has real-time insights and a complete view of the customer journey, significantly enhancing productivity and enabling personalised service delivery.
Driving Innovation with Data and AI
The ability to not just react but to anticipate customer needs sets apart leaders in the travel industry. Salesforce’s AI and machine learning capabilities provide actionable insights for travel companies to forecast customer needs accurately. This forward-looking approach is vital for maintaining a competitive advantage, enabling companies to identify trends, optimise service offerings, and innovate with a focus on cost management and operational excellence.
Preparing for the Future with Continuous Evolution
Salesforce’s dedication to innovation ensures that its travel and hospitality clients are always equipped with the latest advancements in CRM technology. As the industry evolves and new challenges arise, Salesforce offers adaptable and scalable solutions, ensuring travel companies are prepared to meet tomorrow’s demands today.
Enhancing Every Step of the Travel Journey
From the moment a booking is made to when luggage is collected, Salesforce CRM ensures a smooth, efficient, and personalised journey for every passenger. By optimising every interaction for efficiency and satisfaction, Salesforce turns the travel experience into a seamless journey of discovery and enjoyment.
Deepening Digital Engagement
As digital preferences continue to grow, Salesforce enables robust self-service options, allowing passengers to easily manage their travel plans. For inquiries that need a human touch, customer service agents are equipped with comprehensive data to provide swift, accurate assistance, enhancing overall travel satisfaction.
Creating Comprehensive Passenger Profiles
The ability to consolidate data from multiple touchpoints allows airlines to create detailed 360-degree profiles of each passenger. This holistic understanding enables airlines to tailor their services and communications, significantly improving the travel experience and strengthening customer loyalty.
Empowering Employees for Exceptional Service
The true essence of an airline’s service lies in its people. Salesforce ensures that every team member, from pilots to cabin crew and customer service agents, has the tools and information needed to deliver outstanding service. This comprehensive support system allows employees to make informed decisions and provide personalised service, transforming travel challenges into opportunities for delight.
Southwest Airlines® Leverages Salesforce
In the airline industry, where customer satisfaction can be as volatile as air currents, Southwest Airlines® has charted a steady course for over fifty years. The secret? A profound commitment to putting employees first, by ensuring they have the tools and environment to deliver exceptional customer experiences. This philosophy has not only gained Southwest a competitive advantage in the airline industry but also serves as a blueprint for any service-oriented business aiming to elevate customer satisfaction.
- Improving Employee Experience to Save Millions
At Southwest, the realisation that happy employees lead to happy customers spurred a digital transformation focused on enhancing the employee experience, especially within human resources. By leveraging the Salesforce Platform, Southwest reimagined its HR services, allowing employees to swiftly access information and submit requests through a user-friendly portal. This initiative saved the company $2.8 million in HR-related costs and significantly reduced the time employees spent waiting for HR responses, especially critical during the pandemic’s remote work shift.
- Consolidating Systems for Efficient Customer Service
Recognising the direct link between employee efficiency and customer satisfaction, Southwest consolidated 15 disparate systems into one using Service Cloud. This unification provided agents with a single view of each customer, enabling faster, more personalised service across all communication channels. The implementation of Service Cloud’s in-app chat feature redirected 30% of customer service calls to chat, allowing agents to assist more customers in less time, demonstrating that operational efficiency directly translates to improved customer experiences.
- Creating an Inclusive Work Environment
Inclusivity is central to Southwest’s ethos. By standardising accessible tools across all departments with Salesforce, Southwest ensures employees of all abilities are equipped to deliver top-notch customer service. This commitment to accessibility not only fosters a more inclusive company culture but also enhances the service provided to a diverse customer base, embodying Southwest’s belief that the world includes people with disabilities.
- Enhancing National Operations and Culture
As Southwest expanded, maintaining a cohesive operational and cultural identity across the nation became a challenge. Salesforce Platform’s low-code applications enabled centralised teams to manage workflows and maintain visibility over operations, ensuring that local teams could efficiently fulfil their roles while staying aligned with corporate standards and culture. This nationwide operational coherence has been instrumental in preserving the “Southwest Heart” ethos, irrespective of geographic location.
- Leveraging Insights for Competitive Advantage
To remain competitive and fulfil its mission of making air travel accessible to the middle class, Southwest utilised Salesforce for its corporate and cargo sales divisions. This provided invaluable market insights and streamlined sales processes, enabling Southwest to offer more cost-effective, customer-friendly services. Additionally, the introduction of Southwest Business Assist™ through Experience Cloud offered a digital portal for business customers, simplifying travel management and contributing to sustainable travel goals.
Southwest Airlines® exemplifies how empowerment through technological innovation like Salesforce services, not only sets airlines apart from competition but also as a model for service excellence in any industry.
Securing Passenger Loyalty and Encouraging Repeat Business
In the competitive airline industry, fostering passenger loyalty is crucial. Salesforce has proven itself to be the best CRM for the Travel Industry by designing and managing effective loyalty programs. Through utilising detailed passenger data, airlines can offer targeted rewards and incentives, recognising passenger preferences and milestones, and converting satisfied passengers into loyal advocates.
See the best CRM for the travel industry in action
Nobody knows your organisation better than you do and investing in new systems takes a lot of consideration. Booking a live Salesforce demo with one of our accredited experts gives you the chance to see first-hand how the world-leading CRM could benefit your business.
We’re Unify, a global Salesforce Agency, that works closely with ambitious, customer-centric organisations worldwide to achieve great results through strategic implementations and with cutting-edge solutions like Salesforce Travel Management. We offer expert advice to drive digital transformation, optimise customer experiences, and achieve operational excellence.
Are you ready to bridge the gap in customer service and lead the way in airline innovation? Contact Unify Data & Analytics today to discover how our expertise can transform your CRM strategy and position your organisation as a leader in the industry.
