The Predictive Airliner

The Predictive Airliner is an airline that utilizes the latest technology to deliver an exceptional personalized experience to each and every passenger it flies. Today, technology such as AI, Machine Learning, Augmented Reality, IoT, Real-time stream processing, social media, streaming analytics and wearables are altering the Customer Experience (CX) landscape and airlines need to jump aboard this fast moving technology or run the risk of being left out in the cold. The Predictive Airliner reveals how these and other technologies can help shape the customer journey. The book details how the five types of analytics-descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, prescriptive, and edge analytics-affect not only the customer journey, but also just about every operational function within an airline. An IoT-connected airline can make its operations smart. Data collected at multiple company and customer touch points can be utilized to increase customer satisfaction, as well as make the airline more profitable. The book lays out a blueprint for airlines to use to build a better overall operation. By utilizing AI, machine learning, and deep learning airlines can monitor the health of their airplanes, ensure employee satisfaction, and deliver an award-winning customer experience every time. Analytical processes like decision trees, k-means clustering, logistic regression and neural networks are explained in detail, with specific use cases detailing how they are used profitably in the aviation industry. Edge analytics, sentiment analysis, clickstream analysis, and location analysis are seen through a customer intelligence lens to ensure passengers are treated in a personalized way that will not only increase loyalty but turn passengers into apostles for the airlines they chose to fly on. Connected devices can help with inventory optimization, supply chain management, labor management, waste management, as well as keep the airline's data centers green and its energy use smart. Social media is no longer a vanity platform, but rather it is a place to both connect with current customers, as well as court new ones. It is also a powerful branding channel that can be utilized to both understand an airline's position in the market, as well as a place to benchmark its position against competitors. The Predictive Airliner reveals how airlines can utilize this channel in a multitude of ways to connect with customers, as well as help in moments of crisis. Today, technology moves at break-neck speed and it can offer the potential of anticipatory capabilities, but it also comes with a confusing variety of technological terms--Big Data, Cognitive Computing, CX, Data Lakes, Hadoop, Kafka, Personalization, Spark, etc., etc. The Predictive Airliner will help airline executives make sense of it all, so that he or she can cut through the confusing clutter of technological jargon and understand why a Spark-based real-time stream processing data stream might be preferable to a TIBCO Streambase one, or none at all. The final chapter explains how an airline can utilize the concept of the customer journey as a roadmap to increase customer satisfaction. This book will help airline executives break through the technological clutter so that they can deliver an unrivaled customer experience to each and every passenger who steps aboard their planes.