Three easy ways for low-cost carriers to track loyal customers

Note: This is Part 2 of a three-part series on LCCs and loyalty. The first part offered five compelling reasons to start thinking about loyalty. This article will provide three easy ways to track loyal customers. The final part will offer five no-cost (nearly!) solutions to driving loyalty.

Last week, when I presented to you five reasons why low cost airlines need to take loyalty seriously, a couple of thoughts must have crossed your mind. First, you must have thought about how, most importantly, LCCs (low-cost carriers) can track loyal customers before rewarding them. Understandably, you must have thought that effectively “tracking” loyal customers via  a dedicated CRM system would incur an IT headache and additional costs that might defeat the business model of an LCC. Second, you might have thought that taking loyalty seriously is no good if one can’t track loyal customers effectively and easily (read: within one’s means). In this article, I will offer three easy ways for socially savvy airlines to track their loyal customers.

Incidental Loyalty

Before I move on to the three solutions, allow me to introduce a particular kind of customer you might not have thought much about. Suppose (and there can be any number of scenarios) a person flies the same LCC twice in 10 days. This could be due to a number of reasons, none of them related to loyalty: the flight timings for that particular LCC were most suitable, prices were lowest, pure coincidence, it’s the secretary’s favourite airline etc. In plain words, let’s simplify to the utmost and say that the person flew twice in that time period due to sheer chance. Now here’s where is gets interesting: To an observer ignorant of the reason why he flew the LCC twice, he would appear to be a (somewhat) loyal customer. In this case, the LCC would be the observer.

Now, even though the actor might not harbour great feelings of loyalty towards the airline, the airline has a brilliant opportunity to turn this Incidental Loyalist into a truly loyal customer. The first way obviously is to offer a consistently good product and service experience. However, in a keenly competitive world that might not be enough. So how can you convert incidental loyalty to loyalty per se? Simple: offer such customers a small, but significant time-bound incentive to fly the airline again. And let the cycle be repeated. Watch the magic unfurl!

Tracking loyal customers

Yes, you really don’t need to fear an IT headache at all. All you need to do (at least for the first two options) is empower your social media team to listen, engage and respond to customers.

1. Check-ins – The idea is simple: create specific check-in points for your airline (say, at an airport, for starters) and encourage your customers to check in to them. Social media, quite evidently, is the rage these days and check-in services such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt are all the rage. It shouldn’t be too hard to get customers on board. Just make sure you set a clear reward (ie, something that a customer finds value in) as well as a reward-point (eg. mayor of check-in point) upfront.
2. Brand Advocates – If you’re an LCC, empower your social media team to empower customers to speak about your brand. Monitor the strongest brand advocates; ie, those who speak favourably about you a lot. Hold simple weekly contests or initiatives – eg. get the most number of RTs on Twitter, most likes on Facebook, sharing experiences and asking for votes etc. If you want to go to minimal trouble, use and popularise a hashtag (eg. #<LCC name>rocks) on Twitter and track it earnestly to find your most vociferous supporters.
3. Boarding passes – This is the simplest of all. Set specific time-bound criteria. Ask customers to present their boarding passes at their check-in counters to redeem their reward once they’ve fulfilled the criteria (eg. 5 flights flown in the last month). The major advantage of such an initiative is that it can get customers who aren’t social media savvy (but fly a lot anyway) on board as well.

Let us know what you thought about this article in the comments or tweet us @simpliflying. Meanwhile, do watch out for the final part in this series that will offer five low-cost ways LCCs can reward loyal customers.