Flight Centre looks to boost customer retention across corporate brands

Flight Centre said it has boosted customer retention and growth across its corporate brands by implementing new platforms under its 'voice of customer' program.

Chris Preston.

The travel agency is using the Qualtrics CustomerXM platform for its FCM and Corporate Traveller brands.

This allows it to develop an end-to-end view of the customer experience, with insights provided back to Flight Centre on feedback, allowing the team to shape and respond to matters promptly.

Flight Centre Travel Group senior vice president and head of global marketing operations, Chris Preston told iTnews prior to its new voice of customer program, the team used a “mixture of in-house and outsourced solutions” to track customer experience and sentiment.

“They were run off different platforms, and not necessarily consistent in terms of the methodology, so the ability to compare and cross-reference was a little bit challenging," Preston said.

“We also didn't have a singular global reach for our voice of customer activities.”

Preston said investing in Qualtrics positions Flight Centre well for the resumption of business travel.

“We felt that we had an opportunity to create strong competitive differentiation by continuing to deliver outstanding customer experiences for our customers," he said.

“When businesses started to come out of the impacts of the pandemic and the travelling public started to return … if we invested early in the piece, we will be able to capitalise on that and deliver amazing experiences for our customers.”

The pandemic reshaped corporate travel, and Preston said it was important to capture the impact of these changes. 

After formalising its agreement with Qualtrics in the first quarter of the year, Preston said the team moved into a “period of program design and program delivery” with the first phase going live in July.

The first “wave” of its voice of the customer program focused on FCM Travel while the second phase will see the new platform rolled out across Corporate Traveller, before the business moves “into a refinement, evolution phase of program”.

“We have the Qualtrics team working on the design and delivery over a period of a 16-week engagement," Preston said.

“But a lot of that time has been with our internal team.

"A lot of the integration work that we've done with Qualtrics into our systems has been done with our data warehouse, so those two systems work hand in hand to deliver the solution.”

Next steps will see Flight Centre working through captured customer learnings alongside prioritising insights and making them actionable.

“What we're trying to do, at the end of the day is create better experiences for our customers and the reason why we're trying to do that is we want to create stronger retention and loyalty at the end of the day,” said Preston.