Is fintech the future of airlines?

Photo credit: Elena Hruleva

Have you ever noticed that booking airfare is like a miniaturized version of taking out mortgage? They’re not identical, per se, but in both cases, a great life experience—travel in one case, home buying in the other—is befouled by a process-laden customer experience.

As someone who works for a digital experience design agency, I spend a lot of time thinking about customer experience (CX). And as someone who works directly with banking and fintech brands, I’ve found that CX analogies between finance and airfare are more than skin deep.

Airlines have a lot to gain by taking stock of how different players in the finance industry have both stumbled and prevailed in the face of their customer experience challenges. So what does the future hold? Here are some areas to consider.

Our moment

If you don’t fix your CX problem, someone else will fix it for you. Just ask big banks. While large global banks struggle with silos and legacy platforms, financial service disruptors are rebalancing power in favor of customers, and the industry as a whole is ripe for upheaval.

Airlines should watch this with a sense of existential urgency. Google Flights is just the beginning, and while brands like Airbnb may not be direct competitors, they’re raising the CX bar to untold heights. So even if fintech-for-airlines has yet to take hold, the disruptors are cleared for landing.

Deliver on the promise

Banks and airlines have both become adept at marketing an experiential narrative to their customers. Travelers, like finance customers, want something authentic—a promise of how a brand will make their life or travel experience better, more fulfilling, and something they can control to a high degree.

But if an organization is fragmented and siloed, even the world’s most resonant brand campaign will start to feel dissonant when a customer starts interacting.

For instance, it’s too often the case that loyal banking customers get treated as just another application by a bank’s mortgage department—opacity, inefficiency, errors, and headaches ensue. Customers start thinking that fintech alternatives look really good, especially younger customers.

This pitfall is not unlike airlines’ black hole of fares, seat selection, re-booking, and even the quality of in-flight entertainment. The traveler journey will fall apart when the customer experience breaks down, and customers will demand newer, nimbler competition. Don’t prepare the way for future rivals.

The ‘lower funnel’

The lower funnel is where fintech reigns supreme—the biggest pain point for customers. Fintech brands give customers transaction-related experiences that are simple and easy to use. They do this by keeping complexity out of sight: smarter data, advances in AI, and cloud computing work hard behind the scenes.

This focus on function is a lesson airline brands should take to heart. It’s paramount for them to do the functional pieces really well (e.g. booking, re-booking, and seat selection), and it’s always important to surprise customers with service where they least expect it.

At present, entering most airline sites is a mundane booking process, which is fraught with airline-centric priorities and painful complexity.

Great interaction design exists

The advice to innovate and deliver a better experience is easier said than done. However, despite steep challenges and cost competition, inaction isn’t a viable strategy.

Tomorrow’s tech exists today—seize it