January 03, 2008- With fierce competition among airlines to enrol and retain profitable passengers, Trident Loyalty Systems (www.tridentloyaltysystems.com) created an award winning and innovative solution for Qatar Airways using Zebra's technology. The innovative kiosk enables passengers flying Qatar Airways First Class and Business Class to enrol into Privilege Club, the airline's frequent flyer programme (FFP) and receive a personalised membership card in less than 180 seconds. This compares to the FFP industry average of between 3 to 8 weeks to receive a card in the post.
Background
Qatar Airways research confirmed that despite extensive acquisition activity, which includes website, cabin-crew in-flight, and in-airport take-one paper application forms; a significant proportion of the airline's First Class and Business Class passengers were still not members of its FFP. However, industry research shows that up to 80 percent of a full-service airline's profit is generated by premium-cabin passengers.
Qatar Airways recognised the need to break the mould with respect to premium-cabin member acquisition and retention, to differentiate Privilege Club as a truly innovative loyalty programme compared to more than 175 existing programmes in the market. To achieve this Qatar Airways became the launch customer for Trident Loyalty Systems' unique FFP Kiosk with the goal to radically accelerate and improve recruitment, activation, and fulfilment processes for the airline's premium-cabin passengers.
Solution
The most innovative aspect of the Trident FFP Kiosk is its Zebra card printing technology chosen by TLS after a year-long worldwide assessment of card printing solutions.
"It was critical that we find a card printer that was both ultra-reliable and had a very small footprint. Zebra has a great reputation in the market and their P330i dye-sublimation card printer was the ideal solution. Not only is it the right size, but it has a high capacity hopper and has proven to be highly reliable in producing personalised membership cards," said Philip Charlton, Managing Director of Trident Loyalty Services.
Located in Qatar Airways' First Class, Business Class, Gold and Silver lounges at Doha International Airport, the kiosk enables passengers to sign up for Privilege Club membership by inputting their personal details directly into the system using a touch screen with a virtual keyboard.
First Class and Business Class passengers are now able to enrol into Privilege Club within 3 minutes and receive their membership card on the spot, fully personalised, magnetically encoded and ready to use. This is a great improvement on the FFP industry's average of 3 - 8 weeks to receive a card in the post.
"The Trident FFP Kiosk has worked so well because it provides passenger access to Privilege Club at the right time - when the enrolment message is most relevant (up to a few minutes before flight boarding). In the right place - when the passenger has time to interact with a kiosk (relaxing in a lounge), and with the right offer - a 500 Qmiles bonus award upon sign up", concludes Charlton.
The kiosk is exceeding Privilege Club's enrolment target thereby increasing FFP penetration within Qatar Airways' most profitable customer segment - premium-cabin passengers. It is also achieving activation rates far in excess of the industry benchmark of 50 percent.
Iain Webster, Senior Manager Customer Loyalty at Qatar Airways stated:
"Trident Loyalty Systems and its unique FFP kiosk solution have exceeded our expectations in both quality and performance. The kiosk enhances our service offering to our most valued passengers and accelerates our drive to enrol premium-cabin travellers. We are now working with Trident Loyalty Systems to explore further ways to deliver added-value retention functionality to the kiosk. In all our dealings with Trident Loyalty Systems, we have been impressed with the calibre of project management and their committed proactive professionalism."
Benefits
As well as being ultra reliable and delivering a small footprint, utilising Zebra's technology means that all kiosks have the upgrade capability to enable existing Privilege Club members to print promotional coupons and personalised mileage statements, using two different Zebra thermal printers. A fully configured Trident FFP Kiosk can operate 3 different Zebra printers simultaneously.
With 60 percent of business travellers belonging to three or more FFPs, the solution provides an important point of differentiation for Privilege Club. Moreover, as 85 percent of enrolees provide an e-mail address, relationship building is accelerated and the cost of sending out welcome packs by post is dramatically reduced, as e-mail is used instead.
