How Air France Is Leveraging Customer Data With Relay42

I'm Jad Naciri, I'm the cross-channel data manager at the acquisition team, so within the cross-channel team I'm basically data lead on everything linked to audiences and following what our customers want and giving it to our channels.

What challenges do you face in your role?

Particularly at Air France is — we are an airline — so the customer journey is long, it's complex, and the customer behaviors and needs are going to change a lot depending on the moment of the journey with Air France. So the real aspect we have in the airline industry is that we have to break down silos to perfectly understand what the customer needs, and also enable him to feel that we know what he expects to happen. 

How are you tackling these challenges?

The first thing that was done as part of the customer data management program we have was we needed to have a 360-degree view of the customer. We need to be able when the customer contacts an agent — calls the call center — to say yes, we know what happened, you have a problem with your credit card, etc. So we need to know the context of the customer. What is he experiencing with us?

Because we are not there to do marketing — we are there to provide a service to the customer; we are there to provide what he needs to have, and not just push what we can offer him at all times. 

How does technology fit into your strategy?

You need to have technology to help you empower your agents and your digital marketing actions so that you can actually have this privileged one-to-one link with your customer. So I would say technology in this is: we need to be able to leverage a lot of data that we have from the customer, and in the end be able to do as if there was one person behind each customer, with the help of technology.

What role does the Relay42 platform play in your marketing strategy?

We were looking for a powerful solution to be able to interconnect these digital channels we have where we communicate with customers to our CRM. And Relay42 fits perfectly in this, because what we wanted to achieve was to break down silos — and in terms of channels, we wanted to achieve an omnichannel strategy, so we could actually tell our story to the customer on the right channel at the right time, based on what we know about him. We want to know what you want and to only send you a message when you need it. 

Do you have any tips for other marketers facing similar challenges? 

Keep it simple, and also try to address the basics before you go toward sophistication. The customer is expecting a better level now; he doesn't want to be spammed, he wants to feel the ad is useful — otherwise, he's just going to block it. So we want to be there, and to do so you already know what you have to do: just be basic. I need to know what my customer is experiencing at this moment.