Amadeus case study on QF cross-selling

[el_rooto]

Hi all,

I stumbled upon this on Amadeus's website and thought it might be of interest:

http://www.amadeus.com/airlineit/docs/amadeus_qantas_cross-sell_case_study.pdf

 

[samh004]

I didn’t read it all but the graphs looked good!

 

[serfty]

I have never purchased any of those products nor do I expect to going forward - in fact I am less likely to consider them as I actually resent them as they have the opposite effect of 'promoting' them to me.

This is because the seat select, checkin and other icons that I am really after do not become active/sensitive until this cross-sell stuff loads - I must wait. Not only that, I can't even switch to a new tab or other function while waiting as they only load when the window is actually on display.

I must stare at them while they load while waiting for the seat select icon to become active. As I stare, my resolve is re-enforced NEVER to have anything to do with the offered products.

 

[Stoopidsteve]

Like serfty said.

 

[Joshua]

Bugged me enough that I spent 5 minutes configuring adblock to specifically remove all those elements from the QF site. Brings back memories

 

[here2go]

El_rooto - I just have to say I love your avatar. I've been calling JQ Deathstar for years!

 

[day-heg]

I'm with Serfty.... just annoying.
Having read the article, I reckon DJ could learn a thing or two about their hopelessly inadequate sales/FF websites...

“A huge number of the bookings come from frequent flyers. The important thing is to develop a total travel site and provide agreat online experience.....”

I hope/assume it will be addressed properly with the forthcoming back of house software changes...

 

[Paddy55]

I'm with Serfty.... just annoying.
Having read the article, I reckon DJ could learn a thing or two about their hopelessly inadequate sales/FF websites...

“A huge number of the bookings come from frequent flyers. The important thing is to develop a total travel site and provide agreat online experience.....”

I hope/assume it will be addressed properly with the forthcoming back of house software changes...

Agree 100%.
Amazing how much junk (obnoxious ads, etc) the human brain can filter out on a web site!

 

[eastwest101]

I think QF has the natural advantage here with their large range of partner rental cars/insurance/hotels. I have found the products expensive but the web site is pretty good as far as things like sorting hotels by price or geographic location. The ability to book the flights first then come back in later and add hotels/car hire/etc later is important to me, obviously the biggest drawcard is earning extra points with partners. Their websites are stable and intuitive.

By comparison the VA and Virgin Blue holidays have a lot of catching up to do. The VA Velocity/booking/holidays web sites are an amateurish clunky schermozzle and don't talk to each-other (as many others have complained) - as an example when I select an F1 Abu Dubai holiday and pick a hotel it then prompts me to do velocity login and accepts that but then forgets which holiday and acomodation I wanted to be on.... so having a bad website makes it irrelevant how good/bad your products are for some people.

 

[simongr]

I have never purchased any of those products nor do I expect to going forward - in fact I am less likely to consider them as I actually resent them as they have the opposite effect of 'promoting' them to me.

This is because the seat select, checkin and other icons that I am really after do not become active/sensitive until this cross-sell stuff loads - I must wait. Not only that, I can't even switch to a new tab or other function while waiting as they only load when the window is actually on display.

I must stare at them while they load while waiting for the seat select icon to become active. As I stare, my resolve is re-enforced NEVER to have anything to do with the offered products.

I use mobile firefox with flashblock so this is what my bookings looks like:



Not seeing a problem

 

[serfty]

I use flashblock via Firefox and if I have it enabled for the site, yes I get the f logo's as well.

But, guess what - none of the things I want, such as [Select Seats] will work until all those logos fail to load - which still make about the same delay.

(At least I have less specific products to target my ire at.)

 

[simongr]

I guess the F logos delaying loading of the page remind me of my disdain for flash...

 

[oz_mark]

I use flashblock via Firefox and if I have it enabled for the site, yes I get the f logo's as well.

But, guess what - none of the things I want, such as [Select Seats] will work until all those logos fail to load - which still make about the same delay.

(At least I have less specific products to target my ire at.)

You could disable flash!

It's pretty hard to figure out why those things are Flash to begin with! There's better ways of doing it.

 

[trippin_the_rift]

“A huge number of the bookings come from frequent flyers. The important thing is to develop a total travel site and provide agreat online experience.....”

The definition of a 'frequent flyer' in this doc is anyone with an Qantas FF account.

I bet my first born that anyone Gold or higher would rather NOT book extra services through the airline website.
Assuming this is the case - a better option for amadeus would be a 'theme' that customers see. For example I select the 'holiday' theme in my FF profile and all the upsells are targeted towards discounts on suncream or discounted money exchange rates. Select the 'business' profile and it's about driver services or upgrades. Heck, link it in to the customers princple place of buiness and charge the company a license fee to upsell within their own organisation. Keep it relivant to the customer in a way that doesn't treat them like someone they're not.

I do this kind of thing for a living (dream up better processes/proceedures/ideas and sell them), but it took a whole of 3 seconds to come up with this. Surely Amadeus can help airlines make even more money by implementing tweaks that encourage customer engagement rather than turning them away. The doc must be very old?

 

[serfty]

You could disable flash!

It's pretty hard to figure out why those things are Flash to begin with! There's better ways of doing it.

Not all are flash - see the car rental thing on Simon's image - I get the same thing too ... I see the f 's, but the stuff I am after will not be available until that loads.

 

[oz_mark]

Not all are flash - see the car rental thing on Simon's image - I get the same thing too ... I see the f 's, but the stuff I am after will not be available until that loads.

But if you are in Firefox and disable the Shockwave Flash add-in, it loads as normal HTML and looks pretty much the same!

 

[serfty]

But if you are in Firefox and disable the Shockwave Flash add-in, it loads as normal HTML and looks pretty much the same!

Not really relevant - the problem is the loading of these critters cost me time.

If I want to select seats/check-in/change/cancel [for/] a booking I have to await the completion of the loading of those up-sell's. It generally takes more than a few seconds, see post #3

I don't want to see these at all - especially with my disdain for bandwidth hogging stuff I am not interested in.

 

[oz_mark]

Not really relevant - the problem is the loading of these critters cost me time.

If I want to select seats/check-in/change/cancel [for/] a booking I have to await the completion of the loading of those up-sell's. It generally takes more than a few seconds, see post #3

I don't want to see these at all - especially with my disdain for bandwidth hogging stuff I am not interested in.

BUt if you have Flash actually disabled (rather than blocked), there is no time waiting for these things, they are just there. (Still have to wait for the Flight Extras bit further up, but that's not Flash.)

The thing is, that if you disable flash (in the Add-in manager), rather than have a blocker. the whole site does work, and there is slightly different content in a few areas.

 

[harvyk]

I have to admit, most of those ad's I simply ignored much like I would any other ad. I didn't even realise it was meant to be targeted in any way shape or form. The exception was travel insurance, I have used it once and that was because I was booking on line and was feeling too lazy to go down to the TA and arrange it my normal way.

From memory it was a pretty simply click the check box and go through the steps. That said, the people who QF are targeting with the QBE link up (aka their frequent flyers) are also probably the least likely to use such things as FFer's often have arranged insurance via multi-trip policies or CC's.

On the bright side, QF have not yet started charging for checked bags, meals and most of the other free be's which airlines used to provide for free, but don't any more (or in some cases full stop)

 

[serfty]

BUt if you have Flash actually disabled (rather than blocked), there is no time waiting for these things, they are just there. (Still have to wait for the Flight Extras bit further up, but that's not Flash.)

The thing is, that if you disable flash (in the Add-in manager), rather than have a blocker. the whole site does work, and there is slightly different content in a few areas.

I have had QF.com on my flash block white list for several years as back in the day, the site would not properly work without it.

I'll give that a go, but still note - this is not about Flash, it's about having to wait for these up sell processes to each end before being able to proceed. (As I mentioned, the car rental in simon's screen shot is not flash, but I can't continue until whatever generates it requests, obtains and processes its feed from the servers.)