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How Philippine Airlines is transforming customer experience
The flag carrier of the Philippines discusses how its digital transformation journey has improved customer experience and streamlined internal processes
Philippine Airlines (PAL) is undergoing significant digital transformation, leveraging Salesforce’s technology to improve customer experience and empower its employees.
In an interview with Computer Weekly on the sidelines of Dreamforce 2024 in San Francisco, Aurea Vidal, chief information officer of PAL, said the use of Salesforce has cut customer wait times from an hour to just a few minutes, boosting customer satisfaction scores from 60% to about 95%.
The core of PAL’s transformation lies in the implementation of Salesforce Service Cloud for case management, unifying previously fragmented communication channels, such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Viber. This allows the airline’s agents to handle multiple customer queries simultaneously with access to a centralised knowledge base.
“Imagine how frustrating it was for passengers before,” said Mac Munsayac, who leads customer experience at PAL. “If you reached out to us by Messenger, then WhatsApp, we would have to ask the same questions repeatedly because we didn’t have a CRM [customer relationship management] system.”
Now, with Service Cloud, agents can switch between customer interactions while accessing relevant information, ensuring faster and more accurate resolutions. The implementation also allows for thorough tracking of cases until they are fully resolved, significantly improving resolution rates.
The deployment of the minimum viable product within 89 days, one day ahead of schedule, is also a testament to PAL’s agile approach. “We embraced agile principles and ways of working,” said Vidal, noting that the quick implementation benefitted passengers almost immediately.
PAL’s transformation goes beyond customer-facing operations. The airline is also leveraging Service Cloud to streamline internal processes, such as refund tracking that involves the finance team. This is expected to provide better visibility over the status of refunds that can be communicated to customers in a more timely manner.
Data warehouse
The integration of Salesforce with Amadeus, the global travel booking system used by airlines, has been crucial to the success of PAL’s transformation efforts. Its data warehouse, fed by Amadeus, provides a single source of truth for customer data. Further enhancements are planned with the implementation of Salesforce Data Cloud and MuleSoft, enabling data integration across various platforms.
Looking ahead, PAL is exploring new use cases for Salesforce, including enabling faster reporting of in-flight issues, such as malfunctioning equipment, directly to engineering teams via Slack integration.
Munsayac said this will help the airline to become more proactive in service recovery. For example, if a customer had a tray table broken during a flight, a case could be recorded without requiring the customer to endorse the incident via email to receive compensation. “That’s the kind of experience we want them to have,” he said.
The airline also aims to personalise its customer experience by using Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud to promote certain fares to specific customer segments, as well as Adobe’s offerings to tailor website content based on passenger preferences.
Munsayac said effective communication, training and involving employees throughout the implementation process were key in driving adoption of Salesforce at PAL. “The most important thing is that they see the results,” he added. “If they feel the positive impact, the buy-in is there.”
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Security has been a key consideration in PAL’s implementation of Salesforce. Vidal said the carrier conducted rigorous supplier evaluations, focusing not just on cost but also on security posture, disaster recovery processes and compliance with industry standards.
She pointed to Salesforce’s robust security measures, including regular audits and proactive monitoring, adding that Salesforce’s approach to security has even inspired improvements in PAL’s security practices.
“One of the things they do really well – and not every company does this – is that they sometimes swap their primary and secondary [datacentre] sites to make sure the secondary sites perform in the same way as the primary sites,” said Vidal, noting that this allows Salesforce to emulate real-world production conditions and validate the failover capabilities of their infrastructure.
PAL’s digital transformation journey is far from over. It plans to tap emerging technologies such as generative AI to further enhance customer service and operational efficiency. “But it’s not because we’re excited about those tools – it always starts with a problem statement and evaluating solutions to overcome challenges and improve processes,” said Munsayac.
