Right Data at the Right Time to the Right People

Today I was travelling from Bangalore to Mumbai on an airline. I had a upgrade voucher that I used and got upgraded to Business Class.

As soon as the flight took off, I realized that 6 of the 16 business class seats were un-occupied.

That is such a waste of opportunity. The airline could have used this opportunity to delight at least 6 of their loyal customers.

All the airline had to do was the following:

1. Include the Frequent flier status/miles of the passengers in their manifesto.
2. Once the boarding is completed and if there are vacant seats in the business cabin, look at the manifesto and invite the passenger with the most miles to move to the business class seats. It is such a waste to let business class seats go un-used.

This is just one small thing that the crew could do based on the information that the passenger manifesto could have.

There is so much more that the airline could do:

• They could have meaningful conversation with the customers on-board as they would know if the passenger is home bound or out bound.
• They could give gifts to passengers who were flying on their birthdays or anniversaries. Maybe they could even throw an impromptu party for these passengers in the sky.

These small things can go a long way in not only delighting their customers but also making them keep coming back.

What I am driving at is that the possibilities are limitless once you are able to get the right data made available to the right people at the right time and empowering your employees to make decisions that are right in that moment.

And this is something that can be done right away, without any additional information, just by tweaking the existing information and making it available.

What this also hints at is that before organizations like this airline start looking at big data and data mining, they should start with the small data that they already have and use it well.

So, the question is what in your business is like the un-utilized business class seats? And what are you going to do about it?