Awarded the 2012 airline of the year and 5-star airline rating by Skytrax World Airline (see Figure 1), Qatar airways is indeed one of the fastest growing airline in the world and was named best airline provider in the Middle East six times in a row. Established in 22nd of November 1993 and started its operations on 20th of January 1994. Originally owned by the royal family of Qatar then was relaunched in 1997 under a new management. Currently under CEO Akbar Al Baker, private investors own 50% of shares and the government of Qatar holds the rest. Headquarters located in Doha Qatar, operates a total of 131 aircrafts including cargo fleet to international destinations to and from North and South America, Africa, Europe and Asia (qatarairways.com, …show more content…
Relevance of CRM in Airline Industry
One of the primary goals of CRM is to differentiate a company’s services to the customer through personalization. In the airline industry, adapting CRM has become a commodity, with many services indistinguishable from airline to airline. The key to improve the fundamental operation is by focusing and putting customer as the central basis for all operational improvements to achieve long-term visibility by considering the necessary factors that helps to please the customer e.g. staffing, scheduling, operating, selling and partnering (see Figure 2).
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Using a wide variety of indirect and direct customer input and classifying the needs of the customer, they can record the feedback they receive against individual customer segments (see Figure 3). Thus, customer value segmentation is a valuable tool in defining and executing CRM programs.
Therefore, by utilizing the data’s with the help of CRM they will be able to segment their market and identify their needs that the company can used as a basis to design product and services that would be appropriate for their customers. They can also develop distinctive perceptions into the habits and wants of the each customer segment. But In order to differentiate their CRM programs more effectively, they need to understand the customer in terms of both value and needs.
Marketplace
An airline industry is a highly competitive and fact changing market environment. There are several factors that dictate the nature of competition, conducting a “SWOT” analysis can help Qatar airways to have a clearer understanding of the key issues affecting the business, customer segmentation and its competitors in the marketplace. Looking at the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of the company (see Figure 4.) they can easily identify the things that they need to improve