Behind the Seams
In SkyTeam’s mission to create a more digitally connected, customer-centric alliance, getting the basics right is the key to our success.We are now accelerating closing the gaps in the inter-airline customer experience. This is what we call seam closure.
To help us do this, we’ve identified five priority areas, which include seats, bag tracking, check-in, loyalty, and service recovery. These five areas are all considered as basic, high-priority seams.
Along with increasing customer Net Promoter Score (NPS) and loyalty through a more seamless customer experience, closing seams enables our members to benefit from increased ancillary revenues and cost-effective connectivity with other member airlines.
We’ve created dedicated seam teams that are working with members and subject matter experts, we will be sharing updates from them as key work progresses.
Seats
As we are nearing the implementation date in mid-October, Korean Air and SAAM are working closely together to connect Korean Air to the Digital Spine as a Marketing Carrier (MC) to consume content from the spine, with Aeromexico as an Operating Carrier (OC) providing content to the spine. In the last week of September, the teams met in Amsterdam to perform co-located User Acceptance Testing.
China Eastern will be connecting both as a Marketing Carrier and Operating Carrier with Delta by Q4.
Three kick-off sessions were organized last month to prepare for connecting in 2020, with China Airlines and Vietnam Airlines (who will both connect in Q3 2020), and Czech Airlines, who are expected to connect in Q1 2020. At the same time, SAAM is engaging with Amadeus to discuss how we can connect the SkyTeam Amadeus carriers to the Digital Spine, with the first step likely to be connecting them as an Operating Carrier providing content to the spine.
Service Recovery – SkyTeam Rebooking
Member airlines are continuing to collaborate to implement SkyTeam Rebooking at more and more airports around the globe. Airport staff and managers responsible for adopting SkyTeam Rebooking recently gathered to take part in training in order to put into operation this new service at SVO and 15 additional European airports including ATH, CPH, DUS, GVA, MUC, VIE, WAW, and ZRH. Station managers along with further airport staff were happy to take this information back with them to share with others at their stations. They have told us that they appreciate having access to more automation and tools to support them in providing service recovery for all SkyTeam customers. SkyTeam Rebooking is now available at over 90 airports throughout the SkyTeam network.