航空業運用大數據必然會有大作爲

When a customer checks into a flight with United Airlines UAL -0.30% , there is typically an array of potential add-on offers to navigate through: flight upgrades, access to the airline’s United Club, and more.

旅客搭乘美國聯合航空公司（United Airlines，簡稱“美聯航”）的班機時，通常還會涉及一連串潛在的附加服務，比如升艙、是否有權進入貴賓室等等。

Under United’s old “collect and analyze” approach to data, the airline would use information about customers’ choices about those items, in aggregated fashion to “see what the most successful products were, and market with those [insights] in mind,” said Scott Wilson, the company’s vice president of e-commerce and merchandising.

美聯航電子商務與經營副總裁斯科特o威爾森介紹說，按照公司過去採用的“收集與分析”數據法，美聯航會把旅客選擇這些服務的信息彙總到一起，來看“什麼纔是最成功的產品，然後據此進行營銷。”

That approach has changed. As of the beginning of this year, “collect, detect, act” is United’s new data-focused mantra, and it’s changing the way the airline serves its customers.

現在，這種方法已經發生了變化。自從今年年初起，美聯航已經把“收集、探測、行動”定爲新的數據收集三步曲，同時還在革新服務旅客的方式。

“Now we look at who the customer is and his or her propensity to buy certain products,” Wilson explained. More than 150 variables about that customer—prior purchases and previous destinations among them—are now assessed in real time to determine an individual’s likely actions, rather than an aggregated group of customers.

威爾森介紹說：“現在我們會研究旅客是誰，以及他是否有購買我們某種產品的傾向。”現在美聯航爲了實時評估一名旅客的可能動向，會加入150多個影響旅客消費的變量，以及旅客之前的旅行目的地進行計算，而不再只是把大量旅客數據彙總到一起。

The result, delivered in about 200 milliseconds later, is a dynamically generated offer tailored to the individual. Its terms, on-screen layout, copy, and other elements will vary based on an individual’s collected data. For United, the refined approach led to an increase in year-over-year ancillary revenue of more than 15 percent, he said.

計算結果大概在200毫秒後就會得出，可以說它是根據一名旅客的實際情況量身打造並動態生成的服務建議。另外，它的服務條款、頁面佈局、拷貝和其它因素也會根據旅客的具體信息而有所不同。採用新的收據分析法後，聯合航空的副業收入年增率超過了15%。

‘Airlines evolved big data’

“航空業催化大數據”

Welcome to the big data era in the airline industry, which in many ways was one of its earliest participants.

歡迎來到航空業的大數據時代。從很多方面來看，航空業都是大數據最早的參與者之一。

“Airlines are awash in data, much of it unstructured,” said Bob Mann, an industry analyst with R.W. Mann & Co. But only recently have airlines been able to use big-data techniques “to solve, among other objectives, how to recognize and enhance customer value, and how to cultivate high-value customers,” he said.

R.W. Mann & Co公司的行業分析師鮑伯o曼恩指出：“航空業是一個浸泡在數據中的行業，其中有大量數據是無組織的。直到最近，各大航空公司才能依靠大數據技術來“解決如何識別和提高旅客價值以及如何培養高價值的旅客等問題。”

“Airlines have always been very good at collecting data, but they haven’t always been good at using it,” United’s Wilson said. Now that the costs of storing and processing data have dropped—even as airlines collect more and more of it—it’s becoming easier for a company to act on it. At United, roughly a terabyte of customer data is floating around at any given time within its systems. “We don’t keep it all,” Wilson said. “We have to be selective about what we grab.” For the data that is selected, a real-time decision engine does the crunching to turn it into something useful.

美聯航的威爾森指出：“航空業一直在收集數據上做得很好，但他們在利用數據上卻並不是一直都很擅長。”現在儘管各大航空公司收集的數據越來越多，但存儲和處理數據的成本卻已經顯著下降，因此也降低了航空公司運用數據的難度。聯合航空公司的系統中無論任何時候都在處理着1兆兆字節左右的數據。威爾森說：“我們不會保存所有數據，我們必須有選擇性地攫取有用的數據。”對於被選中的數據來說，會有一個實時決策引擎負責相關的處理工作，將它們變成有用的信息。

It starts at the baggage carousel

從行李傳送帶開始

One area in which the effects of big data technology are visible is in the handling of customers’ luggage. “We have over a number of years invested millions of dollars in baggage tracking,” said Paul Skrbec, a spokesman with Delta Air Lines. “That was one of those core, behind-the-scenes services for our customers.”

大家可以在處理旅客行李方面清楚地看到大數據技術的效用。達美航空（Delta Air Lines）發言人保羅o斯科貝克說：“我們花費了好幾年的努力，在行李跟蹤上投入了數百萬美元的資金。它是我們爲旅客提供的核心幕後服務之一。”

Millions of bags are checked each year with Delta DAL -0.33% —a total of 130 million are projected for 2014, Skrbec said—and “every customer has had the experience of boarding a plane after checking their bag and wondering if it was there.”

達美航空每年都要處理成百上千萬件行李。斯科貝克表示，2014年，達美航空預計總共將處理1.3億件行李，而且，“每名旅客都有託運完行李上了飛機之後，擔心行李是否會丟失的經歷。”

Through the use of hand-held baggage scanners used at passenger check-in, “we’ve had all this tracking data available,” Skrbec said. But “one of the things we realized about two years ago is that customers would benefit from having that information.”

斯科貝克表示，通過在值機時使用手持式行李掃描儀，“我們可以獲取所有的追蹤數據。但是兩年前我們意識到一個問題，那就是旅客也可以通過這些信息獲得好處。”

Which is why Delta was the first major airline to launch an application allowing customers to track their bags from their mobile devices, he said. Spanning the iOS, Google Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone mobile operating systems, the free app has been downloaded more than 11 million times.

因此，達美航空率先推出了一款移動應用，讓旅客可以在自己的移動設備上追蹤自己的行李。這款應用在iOS、安卓、黑莓、WP平臺上均可下載，目前總下載量已經超過1100萬次。

In search of new revenue streams

尋找新的收入流

It’s a similar story at Southwest Airlines LUV 1.54% , which is using big data to determine which new customer services to implement.

美國西南航空公司（Southwest Airlines）也在利用大數據技術來決定應該部署哪些新的旅客服務。

“Southwest uses aggregated, anonymous customer data to promote products, services, and featured offers to customers on multiple channels, devices, and websites including ,” said Dan Landson, a company spokesman. “By observing and looking into customer behaviors and actions online, we are better suited to offer our travelers the best rates and experiences possible. We also use this data to support the evolving relationships with our customers.”

西南航空發言人丹o蘭德森說：“西南航空利用匯總的匿名用戶數據，通過多個渠道、多個設備以及包括公司官網在內的多個網站，向顧客推廣產品、服務以及各種個性化服務。通過觀察和研究旅客在互聯網上的行爲和活動，我們能更好地向旅客提供最優惠的機票和最好的旅行體驗。同時我們也利用這些數據來進一步改善我們與旅客的關係。”

For example, “we look at the city pairs that are being searched to help us determine what type of service we should have on a specific route,” Landson said.

比如蘭德森說：“通過研究旅客在網上搜索的直飛城市，可以幫助我們決定在某一特定航線上應該推出哪種服務。”

The payoff? “Our customer and loyalty segments grow year-over-year,” Landson said. “We believe that intelligent, data-based targeting has a lot to do with that growth.”

這樣做的成效如何呢？蘭德森稱：“我們的旅客人數和忠誠度都在逐年增加。我們認爲，這種智能化的、基於數據的定位方法對公司的增長起了很大的促進作用。”

‘$1 million per week’

“每週100萬美元”

The benefits of a data-focused approach may be easy to understand, but execution is another matter entirely. For most airlines, the first problem lies in “bringing together all sorts of disparate silos of passenger information—booking information from transaction systems, web and mobile behavior (including searches, visits, abandoned carts), email data, customer service info, etc.—to create a single, consolidated view of the customer,” said Allyson Pelletier, vice president of marketing with Boxever, which offers a marketing platform focused on putting big data to work for the travel industry.

以數據爲中心的經營方式聽起來似乎很好理解，但執行起來就全然是另一回事了。差旅業大數據營銷平臺Boxever公司的營銷副總裁艾莉森o佩列蒂耶指出，對於大多數航空公司來說，第一個攔路虎就是“如何把各類孤立的乘客信息整合到一起——比如交易系統中的訂票信息、網絡和移動行爲（包括搜索、訪問、退訂）、電子郵件數據、客服信息等等——以建立一個統一的顧客視角。”

“Armed with this information, and the resulting insights, they can then take specific action that helps them convert more visitors on-site, secure more revenue, or increase loyalty across any channel,” Pelletier said.

佩列蒂耶說：“有了這些信息和根據這些信息得出的見解，各大航空公司就可以採取相應的行動，幫助他們將更多消費者轉化成自己的顧客，獲得更多收益，提高一切渠道上的顧客忠誠度。”

At Norwegian airline Wideroe, for example, a single customer view “enables agents in the call center to understand the full history of the customer—not just the customer service history, but also their recent visits to the website or promotional emails they’ve opened,” she explained. “After they solve the customer service issue at hand, they’re in a powerful position to then recommend the most appropriate ancillary service—driving add-on revenue—or offer a complimentary upgrade, thereby driving loyalty.”

佩列蒂耶解釋道，以挪威的威德羅航空公司（Wideroe）爲例，一個統一的顧客視角“可以讓呼叫中心的銷售代表瞭解顧客的全部活動記錄，而不僅僅是客戶服務歷史。也就是說，銷售代表還能瞭解顧客最近是否曾訪問過公司官網，或者是否曾經打開過公司的營銷郵件。因此，在解決完手頭上的客戶服務問題後，他們處在一個非常有利的位置來推銷最適合該顧客的附加服務，這樣一來就可以創造額外收入。或者他也可以根據手頭上的信息向旅客提供免費升艙，這樣一來也可以提高客戶忠誠度。”

Insights garnered from a single customer view can also drive personalized messaging into various communications channels, and email is a popular starting place, Pelletier noted.

佩列蒂耶指出，航空公司通過統一顧客視角獲得的見解也可以轉化成服務信息，通過各種通訊渠道傳遞給旅客，而電子郵件正是一個非常熱門的出發點。

“One of our largest clients in Europe uses Boxever to understand abandoned carts and then trigger personalized emails to the abandoners,” she said. “They reported back subsequent bookings of $1 million per week from these communications.”

佩列蒂耶說：“我們在歐洲有一個最大的客戶，它利用Boxever平臺來了解機票的退訂情況，然後向退訂者發送電子郵件。據這個客戶反映，在發送了這些郵件之後，有很多退訂的人隨後又重新在他們那裏訂購了機票，由此每週都爲它多創造了100萬美元的收入。”

Boxever also cites a 21 percent reduction in customer-acquisition costs on paid media “by understanding who the customer was, where they came from and whether or not they were already a customer,” said Dave O’Flanagan, the company’s chief executive. “This way they could start to move those customers away from expensive acquisition channels to retention channels, like email, which is much cheaper.” There is also potential for a 17 percent uplift in conversion on ancillary cross-sells, such as adding hotel or car to a booking, he added.

Boxever公司首席執行官戴夫o奧o弗拉納根還稱：“由於瞭解了顧客是誰，來自哪裏，他們是否已經是自己的顧客”，有些航空公司花在付費媒體上的獲取顧客成本降低了21%。“通過這種方式，航空公司可以把這些顧客從昂貴的顧客獲取渠道轉移到成本低得多的電子郵件等顧客保留渠道上。”另外弗拉納根還表示，各大航空公司通過附帶的交叉銷售（比如酒店、租車等），這方面的收益還有提高17%的潛力。

‘Few companies are really leveraging big data’

“只有極少的公司真正利用了大數據”

Exciting though those benefits may be, there’s an even bigger pool of potential payoffs remaining untouched. “Surprisingly few [airline] companies are really leveraging big data today,” O’Flanagan said.

不過弗拉納根還指出，雖然大數據的這些好處令人興奮，但是大數據的更多潛能仍然沒有得到挖掘。“令人驚訝的是，目前只有極少的航空公司真正利用了大數據。”

Indeed, “I’ve not seen a single major airline with an integrated ‘big data’ business solution, nor an airline with a plan to integrate such a program,” said Richard Eastman, founder and president of The Eastman Group, which builds travel software.

差旅軟件公司Eastman集團創始人兼董事長理查德o伊斯曼也認同這個觀點。他說：“我還沒見過任何一家主流航空公司出臺了完整成的‘大數據’業務解決方案，也沒有任何一家航空公司有整合這樣一個方案的計劃。”

That depends on how one defines big data, however. “The airlines will tell you they ‘have it all’ without really knowing or understanding what ‘big data’ really is,” Eastman said. “Airline managements remain so focused on selling seats with their existing inventory systems that they have ignored buyer information needs as well as the tools that would enable them to reach out to buyers and travelers to serve those needs—let alone, reach buyers at decision-making moments.”

不過這還得取決於一家公司怎樣定義“大數據”。伊斯曼說：“不少航空公司可能會告訴你，他們‘該有的都有了’，但事實上他們並不瞭解‘大數據’究竟是什麼。各大航空公司的管理層仍然非常重視通過現有的庫存管理系統銷售機票，因此可能忽視了消費者的需求信息，以及那些能夠幫助他們滿足消費者與旅客需求的工具，更不用說在決策層面去接近消費者了。”

Marketing, flight operations and crew operations are all areas of rich opportunity, O’Flanagan said.

弗拉納根表示，營銷、航班操作與機組人員操作等領域也蘊含着大數據的大量機會。

“I think there’s still a huge unmet need in the marketing and customer experience area,” he said. “Companies like Google are trying to be the ultimate assistant with technologies like Google Now. I think there’s a huge opportunity for airlines to create a helpful travel assistant that knows what I need before I do by combining data with mobile—helping people through airports, in-destination, right throughout the whole travel journey.

他說：“我認爲，在營銷和旅客體驗等領域，仍然有大量的需求沒有得到滿足。像谷歌（Google）等公司正在通過Google Now等工具，試圖成爲航空業的終極助手。我認爲如果航空公司構建一個有用的差旅助手，通過將數據與移動整合到一起，能夠提前知道我的需求的話，這對航空公司來說將是一個巨大的機會。另外，它也能在從出發地到目的地的整段旅程爲人們提供幫助。”

“Imagine a travel application that knows where I am, that I’m traveling with my family and that the weather is bad on our beach holiday. It could start to offer alternative itineraries close by that are family-friendly and not weather-dependent. These are truly valuable things an airline could do for me if they could use big data effectively and join the dots between me, my travel experience and environmental factors affecting that.”

“想象一下，如果有這樣一款旅行應用，能夠知道我在哪，知道我要和家人一起旅遊，知道我們要去的海濱城市正好天氣很糟糕，而且它可以爲我們提供一個替代行程，既適合全家人旅遊，又不那麼依賴於天氣。一家航空公司如果能夠有效利用大數據，考慮到我的旅行體驗和環境因素，替我把所有的點連在一起，那麼它對我來說的確會非常有價值。”